Donald Trump and the GOP’s Ugly Last Stand

The Republican Party is falling apart.

The nomination of Donald Trump, an insurgent candidate running on a platform of open racial, religious and gender bigotry has accelerated longstanding internal divisions. It is not likely the GOP will survive this process, at least not in its current unified form.

The long path the GOP has taken to this moment, has left millions of lives in ruin, both here and abroad. It has led us to war based on lies, left our respect for reason and science despoiled, shattered our civil public discourse, left our air and water polluted, our people sick and dying for want of a doctor or a pill, our workers hopeless, our homes worthless, our children’s educations collapsing, and our communities under siege.

Whatever the GOP has achieved, it has acheived primarily by pitting Americans against each other.

For forty years, the Republican Party has leveraged a carefully focus-grouped strategy of division, fueled by toxic wedge issues designed specificly to undermine our civil public discourse. They have replaced measured debate in our public square with knee jerk reactivity. The GOP’s Southern Strategy, their nurturing of the Religious Right, the political rise of guns, the attack on women’s bodies, the jailing of Americans for profit, the war on drugs are all part of the politics of division.

When Democrats passed transformative federal civil rights and voting rights legislation in the 1960’s, Republicans came to see that it was to be at the federal level that progressive change would be enacted. And so, the Republican Party began a forty year strategy designed to undermine our federal institutions. This has been the GOP’s primary goal above all others. The politics of division have worked beautifully, turning millions of American’s against their own democratic process, against their own government; and in the end, against themselves.

And so, through the power of wedge issues, the Party of Lincoln has been reduced to fetishizing the hot barrel of a gun, making cordite and bitter smoke America’s purest expression of personal freedom. Lincoln would no doubt see the tragic irony in that.

Meanwhile, the party of smaller government has undercut the power of federal agencies to regulate either by changing their mandates or gutting their funding. Now underregulated banks foreclose on houses they themselves made worthless. Unsafe drinking water fills our children’s bodies with lead. Plumes of dead bays and oceans blossom full of pesticides and spilled oil. Our work lives deteriorate, providing us ever less compensation and security while demanding ever more of our sweat and effort. Our communities and cities have been left to fend for themselves through catastrophic economic downturns. One in five children in the US live in poverty.

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Today, we stand knee deep in the filth and despair of the politics of division, designed to obscure the fleecing of America. The decay of our bridges and roads matching the collapse of our sense of who we are collectively.

But the GOP’s cynical politics of division always held the seeds of its own destruction. No matter how carefully crafted, how lovingly strung out, it had to end by spinning out of control.

Forty years of attacking the Federal Government, doubling down each election cycle on fear and division, fuel injected by the billion dollar business model of Roger Ailes and Fox News, it all had to fail. As did Ailes, who spread his profitable lies and hate, massaging angry voters’ darkest inclinations even as he grotesquely fondled the panicked women in his office.

It’s all finally over, because this primary season, a GOP Presidential candidate took the next logical step.

Donald J. Trump is openly running on a platform of racism, sexism, bullying and hate. And of course, he won the nomination handily, reaping what was sown for decades, across generations, actively reviving the oldest wounds and the darkest obscenities. North and South. Rich and poor. Attacking his fellow Americans based on race, gender, religion, origin, and orientation.

Donald Trump and his core supporters are openly proud to be pushing a white nationalist agenda. They are attacking difference where ever they see it. Its is an orgy of release. Finally, Donald Trump has freed them to proudly say what they think. And we can see it openly displayed all around us. Every. Single. Day.

It is clear that supporters of Trump are being driven by more than just race. They have been described as the “left behind.” As men and women whose political institutions couldn’t be bothered to notice their blue collar lives collapsing in the backlash of a global economy that pitted them against vast armies of working poor around the globe. Never mind that their candidate Trump makes his shirts in China. The damage is real and they prefer to blame immigrants.

What once might have been a working class movement of workers or farmers, unified, demanding economic justice, has now been distorted into rage against the government, against immigrants, against difference. It is a perfect storm of self destruction. The logical conclusion of the politics of hate and division. A nation of angry white voters, carefully groomed to remain in psychological stand-your-ground silos, trusting no one.

But now we can finally see them. Right out in the open, speaking unambiguously their race and gender rage into the public discourse, even as they deny their connection to the diversity around them.

I am deeply sorry for those who continue to bear the brunt of the GOP’s culture of race and gender hate. I don’t wish to make light of the white hot pain this creates for millions of Americans. But at this moment in history, Trump’s decision to employ open unfiltered racism and sexism is a gift.

Trump’s base, speaking in openly racist and sexist ways is finally forcing every single American to pick a side. And by all accounts, we are breaking for human compassion and decency at about 65% to 35%. Maybe more. The GOP culture of hate and division has finally brought their troops out onto the open ground. We are looking down on them and we have line of sight and massive firepower that, until now, could never fully be brought to bear.

Trump supporters are no longer relying on forty years of the GOP’s coded language on race and gender. The carefully focused grouped bigotry of “family values” or “welfare mothers” has been blown to pieces. Coded language which, for decades, allowed the GOP to cheerfully spread its bigotry in the parlance of the Sunday morning talk shows.

From day one of his campaign, Trump offered his base the sweet bloody bait of racism and sexism and they took it, hook, line and sinker. Now they are hooked deep down. In their guts. The hook will not come out easily. Even as it poisons them, they take the bait over and over again.

This is a turning point for America on race and on gender. We are being forced to look in the mirror and see our own savage faces glaring back at us. There are no more sly winks of the grinding status quo. The lid has blown off of the illusion of race and gender equality. This is the final stand of the raving, spittle spewing GOP, morphed by years of manipulation into something a generation of Reagan Republicans can’t even recognize.

And so, we who oppose Donald Trump are confronting a choice. Do we remain mired in the ambiguity of the GOP’s carefully sown divisions, not only right vs. left, but also liberal vs. progressive? Do we select reasons to stay away from the polls, or vote some third party, clinging more tightly to our purest ideologies while Trump marches to power? Or do we take on the hard work of fighting for change within the only party that is powerful enough to oppose Trump’s movement, while reaching out to those who need help? For the moment, this is it, kids. Hillary or crazy. The Democrats or the end. Later, more parties, more change. Yes. But for today? This is it.

What Comes Next
We now know for a fact that clear and unambiguous racism and sexism is the most effective way to win the Republican Presidential Primary. This is because the majority of the GOP base is racist and sexist. There can be no other explanation. In four more years, it will erupt again, either on the stages of the GOP primaries or on those of a new third party of hate. But make no mistake, we have a singular opportunity. One not seen in generations. This election can provide the killing blow that will shatter a powerful coalition of hate. One built over forty years by the Republican Party. This election can relegate the GOP’s political status to that of a regional party.

But only if we defeat Trump.

How we vote will determine the fate of our nation and very likely the fate of the world. Donald Trump’s madness has afforded us a unique opportunity. He has demoralized more moderate members of his party, who, although comfortable with the coded language of racism and sexism of the past are put off by the raw reality of Trump’s messages. He has crippled the party by expressing openly what was previously acknowledged with a collective wink and a nod.

We must join forces and vote Donald Trump back back into political obscurity from which he came. We must take this opportunity to swarm down ballot races and crush the GOP machinery of division. An opportunity like this will not likely come again.

We have line of sight. We have the high ground. We need only pull the lever, collectively, in the largest numbers we can muster.

Then we’ll get to work improving the Democrats. Once they no longer have the GOP to blame, they will have to answer to us.

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Flame photo by David Amsler

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