Went to an early morning spin class at Y today. First song in the spin set list was the National Anthem. It was outside and everyone, other than two of us, turned to the flag next to the Y’s entrance and placed their hand to their heart as the anthem played on a speaker. I decided to take a knee and not to participate in the national ritual. I’m a patriot, always have been, but “the land of the free and the home of the brave” rings hollow for me on this July 4th. Too much is going on that is unseemly, dirty, and “unpatriotic.”I later learned that the woman in the class who simply stood next to her bike had told the spin leader that the repeal of Roe v Wade was a bridge too far for her. .
Trump, we should remind people, isn’t an outlier. He’s what Republicanism is these days. He’s the prodigal son of the evolutionary transformation of the GOP – a transformation that goes back a half century. Goldwater then Nixon got the ball rolling. Reagan upped the ante and spread the word. Gingrich took it to a new stage. The Tea Party and a handful of billionaires catapulted it into new territory. And Trump continued this process, while adding some new wrinkles, with only the most tepid internal resistance, to the GOP’s evolution into a full blown authoritarian party – at once white nationalist, mysogynist and patriarchal, plutocratic, christian fundamentalist, homo and trans phobic, xenophobic, labor hating and more.His capture of the presidential nomination in 2016 wasn’t a fluke. More than any other presidential hopeful in the GOP primary, he gave voice to the new music and beat of a significant section of the party – base voters and financial backers alike.
In short, he adapted to as well as accelerated the transformation of the modern day Republlcan Party into an existential and immediate danger to democracy and social progress, something worth reminding voters of now and this fall.
The gang of 6 on the Supreme Court has revealed in its recent decisions its authoritarian pedigree – racist, misogynist, christian fundamentalist, labor hating, plutocratic, corporate, and more. It’s zealously giving legal cover to a wider and coordinated effort to undo the entire democratic and social scaffolding of rights and progress, achieved by dint of struggle across generations and time.
So much for “The Shining City on the Hill” and “The Last Best Hope for Mankind.” Both metaphors never really fit the reality, but after yesterday’s hearing, the overturning of Roe v. Wade last week, and the spike in mass gun violence – in Buffalo, Uvalde and elsewhere – the fit is all the more awkard and undeserved.
It is hard to believe that the editors of the PW would publish this article, written years ago by Betty Smith, commenorating the Soviet resistance to Hitler’s invasion of that country on June 22, 1941 without mention of the irony of it all. Everybody knows that the current Russian goverment led by Putin – authoritarian and imperialist, if not fascist – is reigning down, without a scintilla of justification, bombs, bullets, and mayhem on Ukraine, a sovereign country and government on its border.
Was this an oversight by the editors? Could be, but probably not. It strikes me as a continuation of its Janus faced coverage of this bloody invasion by Russia. One day it objects to it, the next day it blames Biden and NATO for it all, and the day after that it suggests, mimicking Putin, that Ukraine is nothing but a hothouse of Nazis.
