Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree
EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY
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DONALD TRUMP AND THE GOP’S ASSAULT ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
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WHAT’S NEXT?
Donald Trump’s behavior since he lost the election clearly demonstrates that his only interest in being President is the power, status, and opportunity to strut around on the world stage playing “Mr. Big Stuff”. His tendency to fire, punish, and publicly denigrate anyone with the audacity to place their loyalty to the Constitution before their unfettered loyalty to him shows that he’s a pathological narcissist with pronounced autocratic tendencies. Another indication of Trump's despotic character is the literal blizzard of frivolous lawsuits (over 55 so far) in which he's abused our court systems in an attempt to overturn the will of the people.
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The man is clearly unstable, pathologically self-serving, and dangerous. In addition, the way he revels in reckless, disease-spewing rallies makes it abundantly clear that he has absolutely no regard for the welfare of the people. So, it is clear, for Donald, everything in life is for the exclusive benefit of Donald Trump, and for Donald Trump, only.
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Trump is a mindless, soulless, entertainer with an unquenchable thirst for reverence. He has absolutely no interest in political philosophy, world affairs, or any other area of governance. His complete abdication of responsibility, and his lack of focus on anything that doesn’t have to do with his own interests since he lost the election perfectly attests to his outlook on life - “If it’s not about me, or for me, it’s meaningless”.
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Trump has been both a Democrat and a Republican, so political philosophy means nothing to him. He’ll embrace any philosophy that the winds blow towards his personal interests. If he thought it was in his interests, he’d become a raving liberal tomorrow. He’d put Bernie Sanders to shame. He’s only a Republican because the Republican Party is most willing to nurture his self-interest, bigotry, and greed. Many of the Republicans who are allowing themselves to be dragged over a cliff with him hate his guts, but they're looking out for own their self-interest - and if that means selling out American democracy, so be it. That's not the kind of people we want in office, so if we recognize that fact, we'll not only get rid of Donald Trump, but he will have done us a favor for bringing the flaws of these people to our attention.
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The Republican Party has been perfect for his needs, because it has become clear that Trump has found many fellow travelers – people who are much more interested in gaining advantage than they are maintaining democracy. While conservatives pay a lot of lip service to being the ultimate patriots, when the chips are down, as we currently see, many of them are much more interested in pursuing their own agenda than they are anything this nation is supposed to represent, and the American people should never forget that.
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As we speak, Texas conservatives are trying to file a case asking the Supreme Court to reverse the will of the people. Microsoft News reports, “The Texas challenge filed Tuesday calls for the court to toss out the votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and allow their Republican-majority state legislatures to appoint electors who, presumably, would throw the election to Trump.”
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Rebecca Green, co-director of the election law program at William & Mary Law School says of the effort that, "The merits are so outrageous in these claims that even the most avid Trump judges on the federal bench are laughing them out of court. I don’t see any reason why his judges on the Supreme Court wouldn’t be forced into that same position.”
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Yet, still these conservatives persist. They're coming up with the most ridiculous legal arguments ever presented in court in an attempt to reverse the will of the people. While they know that their legal arguments are ridiculous, they’re hoping that their efforts to stack the courts will bear fruit. That’s not patriotism, that’s an attack on American democracy.
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But that’s not surprising, because the very word “conservative” means dedicated to “conserving” the traditions of the past, and ever since this country’s founding, conservatives have had an un-American agenda. They’re dedicated to establishing a class system where the rich and powerful ruled, and the average American quietly follows and accepts whatever handouts the rich and powerful decide to throw their way.
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Going all the way back to the very founding of this nation they’ve always used false patriotism and deception as weapons to promote a self-serving agenda to undermine the interests of the average American. As a result of that attitude, they have always been the most insidious enemies of American democracy. But the founding fathers were educated men, so they saw through these people. For that reason, when our founding documents speak of enemies of America, they included the phrase, “Both foreign and domestic.” So, even back then, the founding fathers knew that these people were out to undermine their newly established American ideals.
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“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people…. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.”
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In other words, conservatives felt that they should take permanent control of the government and pursuit of their benefit, because the average American is stupid. That's exactly the attitude, and agenda, that Trump and his allies are pursuing with their endless court challenges and other machinations. Hamilton supported a lifetime appointment of the President - after being appointed by congress, not a vote of the people – and that too is exactly what Trump and his cohorts are trying to do as we speak. Can you just imagine Donald Trump as President FOR LIFE!!!? Having to listen to tolerate his antics for life would be Hell on Earth - at least Putin keeps his mouth shut, and not always demanding attention. But America dodged that bullet during the Federalist Convention that took place between May 14 and September 17, 1787.
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Since most of the founding fathers came to America to escape the aristocratic class system in Europe, Hamilton’s desire to preserve the class system was resoundingly defeated in favor of an unfettered democracy, but that didn’t mean that the people of Hamilton’s point of view would quietly go away. Instead, they became the conservative coalition and lowered their profile as blatant aristocrats. But they continued to pursue their agenda by using their wealth, power, and various other strategies to divide the people to achieve their agenda, and that’s what we see today. That accounts for why conservatives tend to be specialists in obstructionism and division, and why the American people ALWAYS suffer under conservative governance.
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Think about it - Herbert Hoover brought on the Great Depression, and FDR had to come to our rescue; Ronald Reagan accumulated more national debt than all the presidents before him combined, that Bill Clinton finally had to resolve, and George W. Bush brought us to the the Great Recession of 2008, that Barack Obama had to attend to. Then, Donald Trump came into office and inherited Obama's upwardly mobile economy and promptly took credit for it, and passed a $3 trillion windfall for the rich that has left the nation deeply in debt again. So, under Republican administrations we live on a credit card where the rich live high-on-the-hog, and then they leave the average American with the bill.
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While conservatives fought tooth-and-nail to pass the $3 trillion dollar tax cut for the rich, now that average Americans are losing their jobs, are unable to feed their families, and are being evicted from their homes as a result of the pandemic, conservatives are fighting just as hard to limit the amount of money we spend on the people’s assistance. All of a sudden they've rediscovered fiscal responsibility. They claim that it’s too expensive, and that it would raise our national debt - and besides that, it might make the people “lazy”. So, they’ve indoctrinated their conservative base to believe that giving to the rich and powerful is the American way – "After all, if you work hard enough, you may be rich and powerful one day too" – but helping the average American constitutes socialism, and that’s un-American.
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During the 2008 Great Recession, when it was Wall Street that needed to be bailed out, in spite of the fact that it was due to their own greed, conservatives immediately swung into action and made it a national emergency. They had the American taxpayer come to Wall Street’s immediate aid with The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, often called the "Bank Bailout Bill” of 2008. Then after Wall Street got back on their feet, they used our money to hire lobbyists to lobby against our interests - and Donald Trump's Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, was one of the leading culprits.
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So, that’s how conservatives control the American people – through economic pressure, a brutal assault on our educational system so we’re too dumb to figure out what’s happening to us, and through intense brainwashing.
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Thus, Trump is depending on pressure from that conservative mindset and a stacked court as a last-ditch attempt to, once again, undermine the American people. In his desperation he even went so far as to try, in his typically clumsy and transparent way, to place psychological pressure on legislators, and remind his Supreme court appointees how they got there. A recent one his disease festivals that he held at the White House, Trump said the following:
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“Let’s see whether or not somebody has the courage — whether it’s legislatures or a justice of the Supreme Court or a number of justices of the Supreme Court — let’s see if they have the courage to do what everybody in this country knows is right,” Trump said. “If somebody has the courage, I know who the next administration will be.”
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Why didn't he just say, "If you were really appreciative of what I've done for you , you'll just tell the American voters to go to Hell, and give me the election". Trump has no problems with such things. As reported by the daily news, “Trump has privately pressured governors and legislators in Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania to undo Biden’s wins and his campaign is actively seeking to get election challenges before the U.S. Supreme Court, but Tuesday’s remarks ranked among his most direct public calls for intervention.”
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But it didn’t work this time. Today, December 8th, is “Safe Harbor Day, the deadline for all challenges to be wrapped up. “The deadline is meant to bring uncertainty to an end ahead of the Electoral College certification, which will take place Dec. 14”, and the United States Supreme Court has just spoken.
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It didn’t work this time, Buddy. Your attempt to undermine the will of the American people was much too blatant for even many conservatives. The Supreme Court’s ruling was short, to the point, and one sentence long:
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“The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the court is denied.”
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Eric L. Wattree
Ewattree@Gmail.com
BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS
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Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.