To the Editor:
A political party that incessantly fearmongers about the dangers of “socialism” while breaking from all democratic norms of a republic – by embracing a “big lie” and obstructing an investigation into a seditious insurrection – is only flaunting its own autocratic ambitions.
Three weeks ago, Senate Republicans and a couple of Democrats stonewalled Democrats’ hopes to establish automatic voter registration and advance mail-in voting among other voter protections.
In the meantime, former President Donald Trump’s seditious “big lie” welcomed Jan. 6 but has emboldened GOP-controlled state legislatures across the nation to push a flood of legislation, some 440 pieces in 49 states.
GOP lawmakers have ginned up maneuvers to nix mail-in voting, early voting, and same-day registration. They’re working to implement restrictive voter ID laws.
Discriminating with “surgical precision” is how Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota described Republicans’ full-court press.
While many in the Trump party malign a congressional committee probe into what House Investigative Committee Chair Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) describes as Trump’s “self-coup” attempt that ultimately took six lives – much of the conservative citizenry is silent. More than 70% of Republicans still back Trump’s “big lie” 15 months hence, according to a recent poll.
Never mind that Trump Jan. 6, 2021, sat in front of his flat-screen TV just off the Oval Office for more than three hours relishing the unfolding mayhem at the Capitol building, rebuffing calls to act.
America, are you listening?
How can Senate Republicans doggedly oppose “Build Back Better” legislation that would simply help level the playing field for tens of millions of struggling Americans – and which 17 Nobel Prize-winning economists agree is just what “the people” need to relieve the impact of inflation while fighting a deadly plague?
In the spring of 2016, I wrote in The Herald:
“Donald Trump is what happens, he’s the result, the divine justice administered, in the wake of so much criminal negligence and inexcusable abandonment of the people in their most desperate times of need.”
I concluded: “Rock bottom line: Obsessive greed and the relentless pursuit of absolute power, is the mad scientist that inadvertently electrified and enlivened this amalgamation of our lesser selves, (Donald) Trump, to run amok, deceive, disparage and ultimately destroy with impunity.”
Enough said. Come spring, two years after the initial pandemic shutdown, it’s likely that 1 million Americans will have died from the Covid virus which Trump repeatedly downplayed for weeks while the contagion incubated death in our nation.
One million American lives were wiped out. Studies inform that hundreds of thousands of Americans would be alive today if Trump hadn’t acted more like a facilitating agent of the plague than anything remotely resembling a commander-in-chief.
Just what will it take for all Americans, regardless of political party, to open their eyes and finally see?
– KEVIN MCKINNEY
Court House
