I left the Republican Party years ago as I saw the Christofascists infiltrating the party and pushing for a Christian Taliban approach to blurring the separation of church and state. Accompanying this Christofascist infiltration of the GOP was a rise of racism and white supremacist efforts within the party. Yes, I equate right wing Christians with white supremacy because if one follows the so-called "family values" organizations, just beneath the surface is a strong current of racism. This effort to "make America white and Christian again" has now fully metastasized within the GOP and the end result is the policies being pushed by Der Trumpenführer. A piece in Huffington Post by a disheartened Republican demonstrates that some Republicans, but far too few, are waking up belatedly to the evil that now controls the GOP. Here are excerpts:
On Saturday morning over coffee I read a summary of Donald Trump’s executive order regarding refugees and immigrants. Then I read the order itself. And then I read it again.
And then I went online and my wife and I became members of the American Civil Liberties Union. Sunday night, for the first time in our lives, we became protestors, along with thousands of other Americans, joining a rally in Seattle’s Westlake Park.
Why would a lifelong Republican, who generally chafes at such activity, do such things? I feel guilty saying this, because millions of our neighbors are feeling real fear as a result of Trump’s words and deeds, but I did it because of what I see happening in my party.
Trump is in the process of turning the party of Reagan, who championed growth, free trade and active American leadership in the world, into the party of protectionism and isolationism. And now, with his immigration ban, he is turning the party of Lincoln into the modern-day anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party.
But many Trump supporters want to go much farther and permanently ban Muslims from entering the U.S. and with his executive order, Trump tried to take Step 1 toward doing just that.
And this is the policy intent that will drive that new procedure:
In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law.
This language sounds benign until you consider that many of Trump’s ‘alt-right’ supporters believe that Islam itself is a “violent ideology,” and that all Muslims want to place Islam and Sharia law “over American law.”
I have heard and read this over and over again from “conservatives.” Trump himself has said as much.
This is nonsense, of course. A generation ago religious bigots made the same sorts of claims about my faith, Roman Catholicism.
In a brilliant article in The Atlantic, Eliot Cohen . . . . describes precisely what life is like now for those of us who have spent our careers toiling in the “conservative movement.” It is, Cohen says, a defining moment:
For the community of conservative thinkers and experts, and more importantly, conservative politicians, this is a testing time. Either you stand up for your principles and for what you know is decent behavior, or you go down, if not now, then years from now, as a coward or opportunist. Your reputation will never recover, nor should it. … The biggest split will be between those who draw a line and the power-sick, whose longing to have access to power, or influence it, or indeed to wield it themselves, causes them to fatally compromise their values. For many more it will be a split between those obsessed with anxiety, hatred, and resentment, and those who can hear Lincoln’s call to the better angels of our nature, whose America is not replete with carnage, but a city on a hill. Trump made his views crystal clear during the campaign. Since the election, many people, especially Republicans, have tried to pacify themselves by hoping that he didn’t mean what he said, and won’t do what he promised to do. Well, it’s time to wake up and face reality: He meant every word of it, and it is anathema to everything the modern Reaganite GOP has stood for.
On issue after issue, Donald Trump is governing as Donald Trump. All of us, but especially Republicans, need to answer the question: What are you going to do about it?
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