As we near the end of 2021 and with Christmas around the corner, the Republican Grinch continues to be a mean one. In early November, when 49 of the fifty members of the current GOP in the Senate voted against even debating the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, it was not surprising. In the grips of a pandemic that will soon be reclassified as an endemic, primarily because (C)onservatives will not sacrifice wanting to be right, for saving lives, Republicans voted en masse against the American Rescue Plan.
Having no shame, and after voting against the ARP, Republicans like Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., went home to their districts and led the cheers. She waived her trunk, touting the benefits she voted against contained in the American Rescue Plan: $1,400 checks to millions of Americans, extended unemployment benefits until September, an increase to the child tax credit, housing assistance for millions of low-income Americans, and expanded health care coverage. Rep. Malliotakis, inexplicably, said [she] prided herself on “bringing federal funding to the district and back into the pockets of taxpayers.”
The cultish approach of how conservatives conduct their lives and their anger when liberals do not want to go along is amazing. It is outlandish to conservatives not to be allowed to barf, sneeze, or cough without masks on planes or infect our children in classrooms because they are teaching theirs to defy science. Even after getting sick, in massive numbers in red states, they scorn the nurses and medical staff forced to play Covid-roulette with the unvaccinated. The disconnection from reality has reached such a zenith that Republicans want to argue over beating police officers with poles and hockey sticks, spraying a chemical irritant in their eyes, or crushing them between pneumatic doors as whether it was a peaceful or violent protest.
So, as the GOP faithful follow the GOP faithless into perdition—dragging America kicking and screaming—autocracy is but a competent GOP President away. I often wonder if Donald Trump was the canary in the coal mine. The Republicans tested the pernicious gasses in the darkness, and now they know what they needed—to perfect—for the ultimate power grab.
The finger-pointing aimed at Joe Biden over Covid-19 because over forty million Americans have decided not to take the cure is warped thinking. Not reading because you are visually impaired is one thing; not reading because you refuse to open your eyes is another. Yet, the President who told us that it would go away, stick a UV light where the sun doesn’t shine, take medicine for malaria, and overthrow the government is their hero. The GOP is now confident their base will not only accept incompetence but treason as well.
All that is left for the destruction of the most successful democracy in history is the installation of local election board zealots, lackeys, and toadies in Congress, an Attorney General that will not back down—next time, and a Supreme Court ready to take away the rights of the people. Beware of Republicans and the horse they rode in on.
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