THE DESPERATE TRUMP GOP CULT ESCALATE AUTOCRACY AND EVIL

 

 In the last blog Jay H. Ell argued that the GOP had morphed into a Racist, Amoral, Selfish Hypocritical, (RASH), cult. In the past fortnight the process has escalated exponentially as Trump and his intellectually and morally bereft followers have upped the ante as it looks more and more that they could never regain power in a free and fair election. The three key planks in their approach, which Republicans are expected to accept and not deviate in the slightest are: that Trump was robbed of the Presidency and Biden’s legitimacy must be fought with a view to introducing legislation that ensures Trump will be elected in 2024: that Biden’s Covid thrust must fail and abortion under any circumstances must be banned. 

It is irrelevant that in all three issues that Biden has broad public support in addition to his efforts at narrowing the massive wealth inequity. The central theory of the cult is that by further manipulating the voting system, that already favors them, that they can easily regain power with a significant minority of votes. With the current state of parties the legislature is easily within reach in the 2022 midterm elections.

The factors exacerbating the cult’s panic are multiple. They include  the outcome of the recall election of the Californian Governor election; the pathetic nation wide response for the  Trump backed "Justice for J6" rallies held throughout the country - a hundred and fifty participants in Washington,  fifteen in Seattle, and twenty in Charlotte for example; the devastating revelations contained in Robert Woodward’s latest expose which inter alia questions Trump’s mental stability and lets him know in no uncertain terms that the military is not behind him; the defendants in the post January 6 insurrection trials all pleading in mitigation of sentence that they were either inspired by Trump or did it for him and most importantly the Republican Governors failure to mitigate Covid as the deaths mount up. The cult Governors are in effect arguing that Biden is hindering their support of the right to allow citizens to die and kill others in the process while overwhelming the health care system thereby hampering the management of normal medical emergencies.

Trump and the GOP cult’s cause is further being hindered by the few vocal non believing Republican legislators and Trump’s desire to rid the party, aka cult, of anyone not a hundred percent supportive of him, including notably Mitch McConnell and those seventeen Republican legislators that voted to impeach him. McConnell is a cult member who just has some reservations about its leader.

KEY CULT WOES: COVID CRISIS AND CALIFORNIAN DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR’S OVERWHELMING ENDORSEMENT FROM THE ELECTORATE. 

The overwhelming Republican albatross at the moment, is the Covid crisis where the cult has slavishly followed Trump’s criminal neglect and sabotage of scientific management. Their hope however is that the USA's overall poor performance will reflect rather on Biden than them even though they are causing it. The outcome of the Governor’s recall race in California where the two central issues were “Do we want another Trump” and Governor Newsom’s strong support of Covid control however must give them pause for thought.. Significantly Newson expanded his attack on his main rival Trump’s alter ego Larry Elder to the two most powerful Republican Governors, possible 2024 cult Presidential contenders, Florida’s De Sanctis and Texas’s Abbott who also are Trumpists to the hilt and Covid mitigation deniers. 

On the face of it Governor Newsom faced an uphill battle albeit in the bluest of blue states. The way the recall was set up is if the incumbent doesn’t receive fifty percent of the votes, the leading opponent, ie,  Elder, could win with as little of twenty - five  percent. Inevitably in these affairs the opponents are far more motivated to go to the polls than the incumbents. Newsom had some cardinal handicaps. First of all he was a card carrying member of the elite. His children attended private schools when the public schools were under Covid lockdown. In addition at the height of the indoor mask recommendations he was photographed, maskless, in a cordon bleu French Restaurant. All this was mounted on top of the uncontrollable fires, never ending droughts and economic woes California was experiencing. A month before the election the odds were even that Newsom would be recalled. 

Newson went into top gear and it was all about Covid and Trump. Added support to his full court press were Biden, VP Harris, Elizabeth Warren and messages from Obama and Bernie Sanders. The Democrats were turning this into a National race. This is not normally their approach but the stakes were high. The effort paid off Elder in effect got a vote total of twenty - three percent and the Democrat sixty - seven. 

WHAT DID THE CALIFORNIAN RACE MEAN?

Elections in America are usually characterized by being a referendum on the incumbent with the opposers being more motivated than the defenders. The reverse occurred in the Californian encounter. While California isn’t Texas the Trump coalition is made up by the same constituencies everywhere.. Most significantly none of the crossover vote such as Republican women and Independents gave Elder the nod. On the face of it there couldn’t even have been a full Republican turn out. 

The Republicans have no where to go other than following the cult’s mantra - the Big Lie that Trump really won the Presidency and organizing ersatz “recounts” in the key states of Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That will all come to a row of beans but will keep their electorate minority involved. They are then banking on redistricting, voter suppression legislation, that Biden and company are communists and more importantly fighting for “your freedom” not to have a drug forced into your arm against your will. As the Democratic Majority in the House is only six and the Senate deadlocked with Vice President being the tie breaker this is still a very feasible objective. 

Notwithstanding the low bar the Republicans face to regain the Legislatures they could face a backlash from their Covid policy that is nothing short of evil which for whatever reasons they are hanging on to for dear life. In addition Trump mixing in to close races with only one objective to seek revenge on deviators and to nominate his own sycophants in Primary Races where Trumpists have less chance of winning in 2022 legislature races, might kibosh their plans.

COVID TRUMP AND THE REPUBLICAN CULT

More Americans, six hundred and seventy five thousand have died from Covid than the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918. While the country vaccination rates are sixty - four percent with at least one shot and fifty - five percent fully covered the Republican States are responsible for pulling these rates down from the seventies as their figures hover in the forty percentage. Death rates are four times higher from Covid  in the Republican States. 

Thus in spite of the higher overall American vaccination rate the USA still have the highest death per 100,000 population, in the OECD countries  - 0.6 versus’s for example Germany’s 0.1.

These statistics are reflected in the chaos of the Health Care systems of the Republican States. Idaho, for example, where the percentage of those receiving two shots is only forty percent, the hospitals are over a hundred percent full and there are no ICU beds available because of unvaccinated Covid patients. Most critical patients are being flown out to contiguous states, particularly Washington. The latter have stated that Idaho must get its act together because they are overwhelming their system. The Idaho Hospitals Organization states that they will have to ration care. Two other Republican States, Montana and Alaska, have also declared they too have to decide who and who not to admit to Hospital and the ICU. Democratic Washington is on the verge of crisis due to pressure on beds from Idaho transfers. 

However true to form the State of Idaho have signaled that they will sue the Biden Administration to abandon one of the aspects of its vaccine mandates for companies with more than a hundred workers. All indications point to twenty three other Cult controlled states to join them.

The Great State of Mississippi, if it was a small nation, would have the second highest death rate in the world. However there is no way that the Governor is going to usurp the freedom of his electorate. He blamed Biden for not giving him enough monoclonal antibodies. “These decisions must be discussed with your doctor,” he opined. (To think Mississippi have as many senators as California). The Governor of New Hampshire declined moneys from the Federal Government to make their vaccination effort more efficient. 

However the center pieces of the RASH cult’s desire to thwart the Biden Administration’s desire to rid the country of Covid, are the key states of Texas, (Governor Abbott) and Florida, (Governor DeSantis). Both these Governors, will be the cult’s key presidential contenders should The Man himself not stand. Both are trying to outdo one another so as to allow their respective dominions to have their “freedoms”. Both have banned school districts from mandating masks. Florida has gone one better in that it has court injunctions to enforce their madness and threatening to remove pay from school officers enforcing a mask mandate. Also in Texas and Florida you can go into bars and restaurants maskless, All this lunacy in the wake of the fact that the two Republican states for an extended period of time were responsible for one third of the country’s new Covid cases. Both Governors asked for outside help as their plague raged. Florida asked for portable morgues and ventilators from the Federal Government while Texas asked for out of State Health personnel. 

While DeSantis has the lead on Covid evil in Florida, Abbott has outdone him on abortion by legislating against all abortions past six weeks with no exceptions for rape or incest. When challenged about this outcome of the legislation he claimed Texas would get rid of every rapist. To indicate what an utter hypocritical lie that was he has full knowledge that there over five thousand rape kits hanging around not having being analyzed for years. One story related to the kits - when one of the backlog was finally analyzed and the perpetrator identified, he could not be prosecuted as the statute of limitations had run out. Not to worry he was in prison anyway having been found guilty of raping two other women afterwards.

Bottom line of the Covid story is that from the get go Trump spun it regardless of the toll on lives it was taking. He added kerosene to the flames of quack remedies, held and is still holding Covid spreading events and lied and lied about about anything and everything related to mitigation of the pandemic. He even really couldn’t take any credit about his “Operation Warp Speed” because the cult are ambivalent, to say the least, about vaccinations. He hypocritically hid the fact that he had been inoculated for a long while. His appointed head of the Covid response Dr. Deborah Birx, who shut up for as long as she could, sadly reflected on “Sixty Minutes” that had his leadership been different hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved. The Republican controlled states are just more of the same - a continuation of evil for supposed political ends.

THE BIG LIE AND WOODWARD AND COSTA’S BLOCKBUSTER “PERIL”

John F. Kennedy is reported to have answered the question as to what was his biggest shock upon entering the WhiteHouse, “That things were as bad as he had said they were”. The lengthy tome with Woodward’s impeccable imprimatur shows that “things” on January 6 and the events leading up to it were even worse than we already knew. If the Speaker of the House and the Trump appointed Chief of Staff Milley agree that “Trump was crazy” and Milley dramatically responded with actions that would prevent a coup or a nuclear war, when the Vice President is continuously and aggressively pressured to commit treason and two of the Trump’s most conservative Senate supporters believe that the plan to overturn a legitimate election is bunkum you know that in spite of whatever was out already in the public square, American Constitutional Democracy had hung by a thread. 

The problem is the Big Lie is still being perpetuated and has become reality. Nearly eighty percent of what is left of the Republican Party believe that Joe Biden is an illegitimate President. Republican States have initiated nearly three hundred voter suppression laws that may well ensure that thirty - five percent of the electorate elect the next administration. And the former President and his RASH cult don’t care. Their tactics are coupled with threats and recounts of State elections that would make a Gilbert and Sullivan satire look plausible. Much the same as the Covid evil the Big Lie has become enshrined into legislation in the Republican controlled states. When the results of the bizarre Trump supported “independent” audit of the Arizona vote becomes public the MAGA crowd will once again be reinvigorated whatever the outcome.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

The Republican Party that has morphed into a cult with only white power as the objective is abandoning any pretense at being democratic. Their game plan lacks public support, for example, - a recent poll showed that seventy percent of the participants backed vaccine mandates and masks. The cult are reliant on gerrymandering and voter suppression to regain legislative power with a minority. The latter is a distinct possibility with the Democratic majorities being so thin.

The Democrats need to get their act together otherwise they will have no act to get together.

.

Jay H. Ell wonders what it will take for the penny to drop for Senators Manchin and Sinema that the Republicans are not interested in bipartisanship. Former Republican Treasury Secretaries Mnuchin and Paulson literally begged McConnell to co operate on the debt ceiling because of the dire consequences it could have on the nation’s economy, but he refused. What hope has good old Joe the Smoe got? Cults just don’t compromise they drink Kool Aid,

RACIST AMORAL SELFISH HYPOCRITICAL CULTISM - A NEW ISM

The monumental hypocrisy and blatant anti democratic actions being displayed and undertaken over the Afghanistan withdrawal, voter suppression, the January 6 insurrection, the barbaric anti abortion legislation with its Nazi like vigilantism, with the Supreme Court’s acquiescence, threats of violence by Trump supporters, and the bizarre cynical response to the Covid crisis is enough to fear that American democracy has finally run its course. In its place there is cult leadership, minority rule, abandonment of the rule of law, wild conspiracy theories, the creation of a bogus reality and belief in the white master race. 

There is the pretense of democracy and the mantra that

authoritarian legislation being enacted at a state level is in fact democratization. A cardinal feature of this new political order is that they have thrown off all the trappings of liberal democracy to the extent that they don’t care that they are unashamedly accepting that they are a minority who to gain power have to suppress the will of the majority. By hook or by crook they will rule society.  They will pack the Supreme Court with those who Trump has guaranteed will vote with him and sabotage the efforts at ending the Covid Crisis. In fact a new ism has been created,

WHAT CAN STOP THE MARCH TO AUTHORITARIANISM?

What stands between this revolution and a return to normalcy is the Democratic Party who are fighting by the Queensbury rules as the opponents kick them in the groin. Currently they have narrow legislative majorities and a President who is hoping that somehow or another the old order will return. He won what was considered to be the most crucial Presidential election since the civil war. Now he has to oversee what arguably will be the most consequential mid term legislative battles in a life time. It is not a fight for who is to rule in a liberal democracy it is a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. 

The other hope is that the Republicans in their frantic attempt to cling to white supremacy have overreached to ensure that their base remains firm, all in all thirty - five to forty percent of voters. There is no attempt to retain the white suburban Republican women, independents or win over people of color in any meaningful numbers. There are just the good old white men, the Evangelicals and the attempt to create enough paranoia to get the white blue collar workers who defected back to Biden in 2020 back in the fold. Then together with gerrymandering of the constituencies, naked voter suppression, control of the electoral process, voila, white civilization will be saved. The latter scenario is well within the realms of possibility. The belief that Churchill had that the Americans always do the right thing after they have tried everything else is just that a belief albeit backed up by history. 

Biden has been a savvy political operator - always slightly ahead of the curve. It will take genius and good fortune to lead America out of this abyss. He has with the help of Nancy Pelosi a political master, Chuck Schumer and Jim Clyburn to hold his fragile coalition together. His public position of not giving up on the Republicans has kept the independents firmly in place. To a large extent his and his party’s future is bound up in what he can achieve and the outcome of the pandemic.

THE NEW ISM - DRIPPING WITH HYPOCRISY

All the dysfunction which is accompanied by flagrant hypocrisy and the rationalization of their actions - home grown insurgents and terrorists are patriots for example. - contribute to creating a new ism. It is closest to Soviet style “democracy” but the latter has no pretense at free and fair elections open to everybody.  This Ism maintains the pretense of democracy by propounding that its legislation is in fact to further democracy when it does just the opposite - voter suppression is to avoid non existent voter fraud. Thus to compare it with fascism where the latter abandoned all pretense at democracy is inaccurate. For example, Fascism did not hold that its race purification laws were to protect the jews. The doctrine was designed explicitly to protect the master race. 

Another startling difference to current authoritarian is that its philosophy rests on unbelievable conspiracy and fantasy - that there is an underground Deep State that Q,Anon is exposing and that the Democrats kill children to drink their blood. Not since the anti semitic The Protocols of Zion has such falsehood been unchallenged by a political party, 

The intent of the Republican maneuvers is exactly the same as all totalitarian states. but it is all clothed in hypocrisy. A ten dollar prize to give this new political order a name. Populism only covers one a few of the  components such as a cult leader with a disgruntled following. Perhaps? ……. “Racist amoral selfish hypocritical cult” or RASH CULT.

THE METAMORPHOSIS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY INTO A CULT

In this surreal era magnified by the digital social media RASH CULT promises a return to a Utopian past that never was other than it represented racial dominance. World wide the number of populists, dictators or religious bigots who are being followed by the disillusioned, those who have lost hope, feel left out or angry at the growing disparity between the haves and have nots, has increased. In the USA they are allied with the Evangelicals, neo Nazis, racists of all stripes, sexists, homophobes white supremacists and nativistic groups.This unholy alliance has taken over the Republican Party to the extent that Trump may not survive but the RASH CULT that he has crystallized into a reality has become the official doctrine of the Republican  Party. The insanity that we are witnessing is that every one swears fealty to Trump. It is political suicide if you don’t. Within the space of a decade the fiscally conservative, globalistic and liberal, in the broadest sense of the word, GOP, has become a cult.

All of the leaders claim that whatever they are perpetrating is in the "best interests" of the people. However the Republican Party led by Donald Trump have abandoned all semblance of serving all the citizenry, the rule of law and science. They encourage selfishness - why should they get vaccinated, it is their bodies. Yet hypocritically they back the most barbaric restrictions on abortions - even denying them to a thirteen year old who has been raped by her grandfather. And this abomination has been enshrined by Justices of the Supreme Court, the final arbiters of what is law in America, who Trump reassured us is what he specifically nominated them to do.

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN SOCIETY TO COUNTERACT RASH CULT 

The institutions of society with its checks and balances continue to exist as if this lunacy is non existent. Lawyers who present this rubbish to the courts are sanctioned. Rudi Giuliani has been disbarred. The lawyers who presented Trump’s “arguments” as to an election that was stolen have been referred to their governing bodies for misusing the courts to present falsehoods. 

The narrow Democratic legislative majorities have introduced enquiries to “get to the bottom “of the January 6 insurrection. (No doubt they will be met by the same disregard for political convention, constitutional defiance and legal road blocking that has been used to date). Trump and various members of his entourage are under criminal and civil litigation. For practical purposes the lower courts, with the flagrant exception of the Fifth Circuit of Appeals have maintained the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

Notwithstanding the argument that January 6 was a "peaceful protest" the presiding Judges are complaining that the prosecutors are being too lenient on those that have pled guilty to riotous behavior.  With six hundred arrests the guts have been taken out of The Proud Boys and Ten Percenters and the like. The Military have made it quite clear that they are there to defend the republic  against internal and external threats.

The media have maintained their drumbeat of exposure and opposition. Contrary to all expectation The Washington Post and New York Times have grown in strength and through digital media become truly national media. The RASH CULT have dominated the social media and have their pundits such as Tucker Carlson and Fox News unbelievably echoing the “philosophy” of this new political creed.

Corporate America represent the biggest stumbling block to the Covid spreading and denial policies of the Republican administrations. Gradually it is becoming the norm to be vaccinated to do anything, whether it be to attend or play sport, fly in a plane, ride in a train, watch a play or even attend a concert. However with the delta variant that does not appear to be good enough.  The business sector have also in large numbers voiced their disapproval to voter suppression and there are the beginnings of opposition to the blanket abortion ban.  

Sport generally have found it difficult to go along with the RASH CULT agenda. Other than ice hockey it is dominated by those of color. In Football and basketball African Americans and baseball Hispanics are dominant forces. The packed US Tennis open in NY required proof of vaccination by the attendants as did the Lapolozza Festival in Chicago.

All in all RASH CULT is running upstream to American recreation, commerce and culture. But doing enough to mobilize their base.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

The GOP as it has been understood for well over a century is dead. It has been taken over by the elements that have never relinquished a return to white supremacy. The latter are going against every value the American Republic purports to aspire too. However it remains to be seen whether the new ISM - RASH CULT  will triumph. They have shown they are willing to trash every covenant in the Declaration of Independence to achieve their aims.

In the forthcoming months Biden will be central to the outcome. However much is out of his control as the past few weeks have shown. It is no use telling him to take off the gloves and dump the filibuster when, as matters stand, several of the team just want to spar. Crucial to his standing is the fight against Covid. However he is not going to stand around and let the Republican Governors literally allow their citizens to die and blame him for the outcome. In addition the health care system is being overwhelmed by unvaccinated Covid cases. Biden has now gone as far as he legally could in mandating vaccination. This is going to create hysteria amongst those who are using the issue to rally their selfish base. Apparently they all believe in their democratic right to drive drunk without seat belts. 

On September 18 Trump’s, right wing coalition aka RASH, (Racist amoral selfish hypocritical), CULT are gathering in support of the January 6 insurrectionists, This is not going to end well for anyone, least of all RASH. More of them will get locked up and narrow Trump’s base's leadership even further.