The Not So Grand party

The current Republican party is neither Grand nor New – in its present iteration it is a festering cesspool of grievance, misogyny, cruelty and intolerance.

It is a MAGA cult inhabited by cowardly, spineless congressional Republican bootlickers, approaching their Dear Leader on bended knee – ridiculous in their matching red MAGA ties in an astoundingly juvenile display of sycophancy – lining up to kiss the ring, begging for a blessing that will allow them to continue to exist in his service.

Marjorie Taylor Green as an example of leading Republican women? Really? She has the IQ of an orange, a loud mouth and is shockingly ignorant.

Donald Trump is assuredly not carved in the image of Ronald Reagan. Reagan had his faults and his “welfare queen” trope was shameful, but Reagan was at bottom a decent man. Trump is not a decent man.

Trump got his start in business after manipulating his Alzheimer’s disease addled father Fred into changing his will and leaving him in charge of the family fortune. After his father’s death Trump promptly took control of the money, cheating family members out of their rightful inheritance.

When they complained & threatened to sue, Trump cut off medical insurance to his brother’s critically ill infant grandson because he was “annoyed,” one of the early vicious acts of revenge that would become his stock in trade.

As for forging a bond with working-class Americans, why not ask some of the working class who have been cheated and stiffed by Trump over the years – when they complained he threatened lawsuits and with imported labor, threatened deportation if they persisted in wanting to be fairly paid.

Trump had no problem with driving small businesses to bankruptcy when he refused to pay them. Trump’s only interest in working class Americans is their vote, and he will throw them under the bus after he gets it.

And then there is Project 2025, fever dream of the right wing Christian Nationalist movement, the plan that will be enacted if Trump is reelected, and it is terrifying – removing all bodily autonomy from women, making forced birth the law of the land.

Their goal is to have a society where “everyone knows their place” (wink-wink); women stay home, wait on their husbands, crank out children and white men are in charge, i.e., the 1950s or earlier, when a woman could not have a checking account or credit card in her name unless approved by her husband. There have been murmurings about the possibility of repealing the 19th Amendment – the one that gave women the right to vote.

Project 2025 includes plans to dismantle or gut agencies that oversee the environment, worker safety, transportation, education – in short the departments that provide for the well-being of ordinary Americans – and stock them with Trump toadies whose only loyalty will be to Trump and not the Constitution or the law.

Promotion of religion in public schools, which is already happening – their religion, of course, funneling tax money to private church or religious “charter” schools leaving poorer school districts in deprived areas even worse off than they are now.

Oklahoma just mandated teaching the Bible in all public schools at all grade levels. They want to eliminate teaching of any version of American history that includes the bad parts; slavery, the genocide and removal of Native Americans from their ancestral lands onto reservations, the internment of the Japanese during World War II, in favor of romancing our history.

They dream of eliminating Social Security, Medicare and the ACA, and of course getting rid of an independent Justice Department so that there will be virtually no scrutiny as they go about busying themselves shafting the country and the American people.

Of course Corporate Welfare for oil, gas and big industry will still be abundant, flowing like water over Niagara Falls.

Plans to round up millions of immigrants and put them in camps before deportation are a central theme of Project 2025. Immigrants and people brought here against their will have helped to build this country and add to the culture and vibrancy of American life.

These are the ideological progeny of the same people who called Franklin Roosevelt “a traitor to his class” when he instituted the New Deal that provided Social Security, works programs like the WPA and others that put folks back to work during the Great Depression and World War II. They salivate at the idea of eliminating these programs and going back to the good old days when a few (people like them) were in charge and the many (the rest of us) could like it or lump it.

Donald Trump has had six bankruptcies, 84 felony indictments; the scams of Trump University and Trump Foundation; 35,000 lies and counting, a good friend of dictators and white supremacists – “very fine people on both sides;” breathtaking grift by Trump and his children while in office; was found liable for defamation and sexual assault (yes, the judge said it was rape); 34 felony convictions for business fraud; taking and keeping top secret documents and storing them in a bathroom where anyone with an interest in stealing state secrets could gain access; sending a violent mob to ransack the American Capitol in an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power, no problem with executing Mike Pence; continuing to promulgate “The Big Lie,” in the face of all extensive evidence that the 2020 election was the most secure and fair in history. And who can forget the great Trumpian idea of injecting yourself with bleach to cure COVID-19.

It is astonishing that so many decent, law-abiding Americans think Trump is fit to run this country. He is a danger to democracy and has just been given a green light by the six Leonard Leo hand-picked Supreme Court partisan hacks to reign as king, above the laws that apply to ordinary American citizens.

He can, if reelected, order his political rivals to be killed, to prosecute and jail those who were “mean to him” without any constraints, and prosecute journalists who report anything he deems “very unfair” – Trump-speak for the truth. The Constitution and its protections will be rendered null and void.

As for those “impassioned voters” waiting to “rush into the outstretched arms of Trump,” my advice is to check your wallets after the embrace.

A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for the end of 250 years of our “Great American Experiment” in democracy. The country we now live in will not survive but become a fascist state with a crazed, immoral and petulant dictator as its leader. It has happened before and it can happen here if we, as concerned citizens, do not pay attention to what is happening, put aside acrimony, partisan squabbles and vote for democracy; freedom for our children and future generations is riding on this election.

Georgiana and Robert Silvestro