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John G. Stewart
- John G. Stewart has been active in nationwide Democratic politics considering that the 1960s. The previous Tennessee Valley Authority government and his wife, Nancy, live in Knoxville.
Can you name a time when it was more complicated to determine out what is taking place with American politics? As I’ve famous in advance of, I have been energetic in politics due to the fact the early 1960s and I know with certainty practically nothing arrives shut to what’s likely on these days.
Commence with the previous dude, or else recognized as Donald J. Trump, the previous president of the United States. Given that the dawn of the Republic in 1787, there has never been a president who refused to settle for the end result of a presidential election and thus willfully violate one of the most sacred features of American democracy, the tranquil transfer of political ability.
Not only has Trump failed to acknowledge the continuously verified final results of the 2020 contest with Joe Biden, he has for months sought to deny Biden’s legitimacy with the Trump fabrication that the election was by some means “stolen,” otherwise identified as the Large Lie.
Then he actively fomented open insurrection against the U.S. Congress on Jan. 6 as it was carrying out its constitutional mandate to certify the Electoral University results. The insurrectionists’ assault on the U.S. Capitol brought on loss of lifetime and actual physical injury to dozens of defenders.
Just in case this message of sedition was not adequately clear, 147 House Republicans — such as Tennessee’s Tim Burchett — and eight senators voted not to certify the officially regarded election outcomes only several hours just after the carnage had been halted.
Because that dreadful working day, the former president and several of his acolytes have been propagating the fantasy that other people have been accountable or that the crowd was really tranquil or that, in any function, we just have to have to go on.
Even more distressing is the abject failure of Trump’s allies in Congress to reject this epochal assault on the sanctity of totally free and good elections. In so performing, these Republican toadies have simply just walked absent from their constitutional obligation to counter excesses of government ability, which is at the heart of James Madison’s constitutional layout of separated legislative, govt and judicial electric power.
Slice it any way you want — sugar-coat it from dawn to dusk — but this all provides up to energetic sedition towards the govt of the United States.
From Liz Cheney to Elise Stefanik
The congressional Republicans’ incapacity to stand up to Trump’s seditious agenda is starkly revealed by the sacking of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) as GOP caucus chair. Just dwell on the idiocy of what is taking place: Cheney has supported Trump 97% of the time on his legislative agenda. But she also voted to impeach Trump for instigating the Jan. 6 insurrection and she has resolutely referred to as out his failure to admit the election of Biden as president.
She was changed by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) who in the beginning criticized Trump for his perform pursuing her upset election victory in 2014 and has supported his legislative agenda only 77% of the time.
Stefanik has miraculously reworked herself from a moderate into one of Trump’s most outspoken and articulate supporters. Which is all that was necessary. Trump has been praising her to the skies and enthusiastically endorsed her campaign to dethrone Cheney.
And so it goes. In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep, Kevin McCarthy (R-California) all strongly denounced Trump for his job in instigating the riot.
GOP leadership caved
These phrases ended up quickly swallowed whole as the GOP management slunk back and went about kissing the ring of the political mafia don keeping court docket at Mar-a-Lago.
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McConnell subsequently proclaimed that “one hundred % of my target is standing up to this administration. … What we have in the United States Senate is overall unity …” What factors has Biden proposed that McConnell is lifeless set from? The Wall Avenue Journal summed it up in a one phrase: almost everything.
In the meantime, about the country, GOP condition legislators released a entire-scale offensive to enact a variety of so-named “anti-fraud” actions even with the 2020 election staying regarded as the cleanest and finest managed in generations. These endeavours could only be seen as an effort to underwrite Trump’s falsehoods and delusions regarding the election’s legitimacy.
Bamboo? Critically?
As of this creating Arizona Republicans gain the prize for the most wacko effort, a thoroughly discredited recount of all votes cast in Maricopa County. Operate by a man or woman with acknowledged QAnon delusions, the very last report had untrained election staff focusing on identifying “bamboo-laced” paper ballots allegedly flown in from an unknown Asian place and “stuffed in the bins.”
As a lot more than a person political pundit has observed, you just can’t make this stuff up. Genuine plenty of, but these strange actions are even so seditious and strike at the main beliefs, ideas, practices and traditions that have held the American democratic experiment together, with the sole exception staying the Civil War in the 1860s.
Winners, losers and Trumps
The American Founders experienced no illusions about human frailty. They created a constitutional framework that would respond to all way of human duplicity and self-dealing. But in their wildest imaginings they could not have conceived of another person as self-possessed, ruthless, dishonest and pushed as the former president.
What motivates and drives these a particular person? Potentially Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, arrives close to the fact when she writes about how Trump’s father, Fred, set the ground rules: “Be tough at all expenditures, lying is ok, admitting you’re mistaken or apologizing is weak point … in life, there can be only a single winner and everybody else is a loser … ”
In 2020, Trump grew to become what his father proclaimed unacceptable: a loser. The only path then open to the “loser” was to unilaterally declare he did not really lose. No, the election was stolen and that made Trump, in his own notion, a “winner.” In his twisted head, he basically received the 2020 presidential election.
That may well explain Trump’s seditious behavior. But what points out the willingness of GOP leaders and thousands and thousands of standard individuals to invest in into this nonsense? How can we reveal that?
John G. Stewart has been energetic in national Democratic politics since the 1960s. The previous Tennessee Valley Authority government and his wife, Nancy, dwell in Knoxville.