The GOP’s convention was a mishmash of resentment, racism, religious extremism, and rejection of rational and tolerant government. And when their chosen god leads them to the abyss and sidles away at the last moment while they plunge over the edge, they’ll howl that it is both an act of god and a liberal plot to deliver America over to Satan.
Behind the impulses that degraded the Republican party is the big lie they’ve been pushing since before a fleet of Maybachs was a twinkle in Rush Limbaugh’s eye—government is evil! Not state governments, only the national government that forces rich folk to pay income tax and provides Social Security and Medicare to the poor and middle class. The same one that imposed racial integration on proud southern states that sought only to retain the genteel chivalry they knew from “Gone With the Wind”, whose author, by the way, was a staunch supporter of integration.
This anti-federal message is enforced by a Supreme Court whose six-person majority has close ties to Opus Dei, the most reactionary, authoritarian branch of the Catholic Church. Their majority decisions often include reference to a “historicist” or “literalist” interpretation of the Constitution. The notion has no legal or intellectual basis but we’ll put that aside for now.
More importantly, Republicans do in fact selectively support an intrusive, highly assertive Federal government. They have consistently used the power of the federal government to gut federal laws and regulations that provide any benefit or relief to the population as a whole. They are trying to seize control over the federal government by waging war on it. And all indications are that once they do control the national government, they will weaponize it to advance their authoritarian agenda.
Federal activism on the part of the GOP includes:
1. Providing tax-cuts for the super-rich, a gigantic welfare program for the .1% that shifts the tax burden onto all tiers of the middle class . When Reagan became president in 1981, the tax rate for the highest income level was 70 percent, having drifted down from over 90% during the 1940s and ’50s. Today it is 37%. However, billionaires often pay no income tax at all. These` tax rates and loopholes are innovations of the conservative Republicans. When it works for them, Republicans are all for Federal power.
2. Using paid informants (snitches, rats, neighbors-with-a-grudge) against women receiving abortions in abortion-banning states, thus “incentiviz[ing] citizens with a cash ‘bounty’ if they succeed in suing anyone who has helped a person get an illegal abortion, with no exceptions for incest or rape. Texas inspired Idaho and Oklahoma to follow suit…”. But it is not the state that pays the bounty; the laws allow anyone to sue, for $10,000, employers, insurers, family or friends who drove the woman to the procedure, etc. In addition, “prosecuting pregnancy loss has been a quiet, but upward trend across the nation,” extending laws intended to protect pregnant women and their unborn babies against violence “to investigate and prosecute different forms of pregnancy loss, including miscarriages, stillbirths and self-induced abortions.”
So the same Republican Party outraged at the federal government interfering with their right to wave around automatic rifles in public, uses state governments to target pregnant women and friends, families, etc. with the most despicable tool of totalitarian regimes. And because abortion access today often means crossing state lines, a Republican-controlled federal government can turn the FBI into a woman-hunting agency. We’ll see how reluctant the GOP is to use Federal power when they can impose and drastically enforce a national ban on abortion. (At the Convention the Republicans removed a national abortion ban from their platform because it is electoral poison. Watch a national ban move front and center if they win the presidency and both houses of Congress).
3. Granting states power over women’s well-being in general. Woman as home-maker and handmaid to her husband is an explicit part of Mag-ite ideology. This has deadly implications for enforcement of rape prosecutions and stalking, wife-beating, and other legal protections against sexual predators and violent partners. With Republicans in control of the federal government, the higher courts will revert to deferring to the male version of events (“it was consensual…why’d she dress like that if she didn’t want it… just a little argument between me and the wife…he’s a good boy from a good family…”).
4. Blocking countless initiatives to improve and even maintain public health, food access for the poor, education, the environment, infrastructure, and the arts. The federal government has a long-standing legal commitment and power to look after the vital functions of our society. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was called to amend the Articles of Confederation, our governing document from 1781-89, because the central government was too weak to regulate river traffic and confront widespread outbreaks of public violence. However, the attendees realized the Articles failed to provide the level of federalism required for a functional government and the meeting morphed into the Constitutional Convention. Thus the United States was created as a central government with significant powers in regard to public safety and resource management.
5. Injecting religious fanaticism into our public schools to impose a Christian version of sharia law on America. The longer-term goal is to destroy public education either by publicly funding religious schools or turning public schools into faux-Christian training grounds.
6. Reinstalling Jim Crow era voting restrictions by closing voting booths in poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods; making it a crime to offer water to those forced to wait hours to vote; harassing voters over hard-to-get i.d.s; cutting voter lists without appeal; and using road closures on election day to keep voters from reaching the polls.
7. Actively encouraging violence and mass shootings. The federal government has indeed intervened in gun control—by reversing already minimal safeguards against runaway proliferation of firearms. The Supreme Court’s majority just reversed a ban on “bump stocks” on automatic rifles that enable a shooter to fire over 500 shots a minute. Even the NRA (!), after the Las Vegas mass killing where bump stocks were found on 12 of the murderer’s rifles, supported a ban on bump stocks. Thus one of the three branches of the federal government voted, in effect, to facilitate mass murder. So much for public safety, which the Constitution was put in place to protect. Is that reducing federal power or abusing it for the sake of the sanctity of the flintlock-era Second Amendment?
8. Reversing decades of environmental progress and increasing the likelihood of our suffering the worst consequences of climate change. Trump and his appointees as federal judges have led the charge against environmental regulations. Back in office he will use the federal government to take a leading destructive role on this (literally) life-and-death issue.
9. Cutting deeply into food safety inspections and protocols to increase corporate profit margins, with subsequent rise in food poisoning cases.
10. Ignoring and denying the impact of the COVID pandemic leading to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary COVID deaths and undermining preparation for the next inevitable pandemic, which could easily be far deadlier than COVID.
11. Consistently blocking infrastructure expenditures needed to keep bridges, roads, railroads, seaports, air traffic, and water and gas mains from collapsing. As of 2021, 46,154 bridges in the U.S. (7.5 percent) supporting 178 million trips a day, were considered “structurally deficient”. Our infrastructure is aging: the massive construction projects of the 1930s WPA years and the post-war 1950s and ’60s boom are now between 60 and 90 years old. President Obama’s 2015 infrastructure bill was laden with dubious funding methods while the $300 billion allocated was far less than necessary. Similar Republican-negotiated cuts weakened President Biden’s bill as well.
12. Seeking to end Social Security, Medicare, and on-the-job safety protections vital to the survival of many of the very people who unaccountably vote for these shills.
That is who they are. Anyone who votes for the Republican ticket out of general frustration or because they thrill to Trump’s on-stage antics or mistrust people who seem different from themselves, should reflect on how a Republican victory will affect what really matters to all of us: our children; health care; decent schools and drive-able roads to get there; safe food; air free of toxins; safer workplaces; better wages, and an undivided country. Then ask yourselves if a single plank in the Republican platform or one act of Trump’s presidency even hints at meeting those challenges.
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