(Abetting the Crime)
Since America’s inception, there have been two forces seeking to become its soul. One is a democracy that acknowledges innate human worth, seeks their common good, and avows their right of self-government. The other is despotic economic imperialism that sees the goal of life to collect wealth and live the luxury of the collection – irrespective of the effect. The struggle between the two has created the nation’s history. The country’s major political parties have evolved into proponents for these two forces – the Democrats espousing democracy and the Republicans championing economic imperialism.
When Joe Biden was elected president over Donald Trump, the Republicans decided to overthrow the election. They sought to discredit the election machinery with all manner of political ruses but failed. Finally, they attempted a coup to capture congress and, by force, make them concede the election to Trump. This event has become known as the Jan 6th insurrection. It failed but its violence revealed the length to which the Republicans would go to overthrow America’s democratic government and convert it into a despotism.
On February 4, 2022, the Republican Party announced that this insurrection was nothing more than an act of “legitimate political discourse”. If such an attempt was a legitimate political discourse so was the Civil War. Such linguistic down-grading of attempts to overthrow government to legitimize betrayal is typical of despotic minds. And no politician has modeled this use of language as political weaponry as has Donald Trump and his followers. Behind this usage is the desire to convert violent sentiment into reality. And, if such politicians actually gained sufficient power, they would promote this conversion. This is typical of history. Up to this point, only the social and legal constraints of American culture have stayed the hand of such despotic perversions. But the boundaries of these constraints continue to be pushed toward actual despotic government.
This is a wake-up call for the citizens of America. The Republican Party has sold its soul to the despotism of economic imperialism and aligned itself with Donald Trump for potential political empowerment. With this announcement about the January 6th insurrection as nothing more than “legitimate political discourse,” it has publicly announced its pledge of allegiance to despotism. This is not new. The nations of Africa are quite familiar with the phenomena. Indeed, they have a proverb to describe how it happens:
He who beats the drum for a madman to dance is no different than the madman.
Despots triumph by getting enough of the populace to beat the drum to their dance.
Robert
mythinglink.com
The Christian Right is a sworn and potent enemy of an open, multi-racial democratic society. Demagogues and despots are poised to manipulate fear and chaos ruthlessly to reshape America in ways never seen before. Tolerance might be a virtue, but, when coupled with passivity, it may signal that the end has come. May we strive to see that this never happens!