OK, so I could elevate one of about 7,203,194 issues currently swirling around the person in possession of the Presidency of these currently United States of America. But there's really no need to for the purpose of this rant. And actually, the inhabitant of the Oval is not the focus of my current irritation... it's his GOP Minions. So without singling out or focusing on any issue/impropriety in particular, here's what i don't understand about the GOP.
For 8 years, they obstructed President Barack Obama, the nation's first Black President. They didn't even try to cover their hatred of the man. They openly admitted that immediately following the 2008 elections, they all got together and made the decision that they were not going to support ANY initiative offered up by President Obama. Of course, they said it had nothing to do with his being Black. Instead, they claimed it was solely because the policies he had campaigned on were just SO awful.
The issue of President Obama's race vs. policies has been debated ad nauseum. And although I personally do believe it was all about his color and not about his policies, I don't want to rehash that argument.
Stay with me.
Let;s jump ahead to the 2016 Presidential Election Season. During the GOP primary, with their whole clown car of hopefuls, the potential candidates themselves were dismissive of Donald Trump, pointing out that he had no politics, was crass, uncouth, and did not have the temperament or skill set to lead this nation on the World Stage.
The rest of the GOP lot... senators, congressmen and women, governors, party leaders, etc... they all openly criticized Trump, labeled him basically a buffoon and a joke, and dismissed him as a serious threat to win the nomination.
And then the craziness really kicked in. Candidate after candidate dropped out of the primary and Trump was not one of them. HE was sticking around. As it got to be more and more plausible, and then eventually it became evident, that he really was going to win the nomination, the GOP stopped being so openly disdainful of him but their support was lukewarm at best.
And then, the impossible happened. Donald Trump actually won the election. Well... let's not give him all the credit. The use of the word "won" is used very loosely here. But the bottom line is that Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States of America. Period.
Thanks for sticking with me!
SO here's where I get confused about the actions of the GOP as a whole. After fighting the 44th President of the United States in every way imaginable, and asserting over and over it was NOT because he was Black, I expected the GOP to take this opportunity to build a "body of proof" that it wasn't about Obama's skin color. They wanted us to believe that they had America's and Americans' best interest at heart when they opposed him. That it WASN'T party politics or racism.
This was their chance. What I expected, what I had hoped would happen, is that the career politicians whose primary concern was keeping their office and their comfort, would get together like they had in 2008 and decide that they were not going to just lay down for Trump. They would challenge every initiative based on its merit. That they would extend a hand to their Democratic colleagues after 8 years of antagonizing them, and come together to limit the damage the President-Elect could do.
What actually has happened, and continues to happen, is that they are, in fact, falling into line like good little Nazi soldiers. They are blindly supporting every initiative of Trump much the same way they blindly opposed every initiative of Obama. And that's what I don't understand.
Had they done what I expected, what I hoped they'd do, they could have at least reasonably continued to defend their treatment of Obama by saying, "See? It wasn't about opposing a Black President, because look! We have an old rich white guy in the Oval now and we are fighting him too!"
But no. They took the coward's route. They have allowed Trump to appoint incompetent and dangerous people to his cabinet. He has taken steps to eliminate the EPA and declare Climate Change as a falsity. He is stomping the life out of anything that resembles democracy. All in the name of obliterating anything that is a part of the Obama legacy.
So I guess instead of taking the opportunity to create a plausible defense for their contempt of our first Black President, they cemented their fate. They double-downed on being assholes and are now ingrained as complicit in what will be Trump's legacy of lunacy and destruction.
Well done, dick heads. Well done.
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