It Takes a Pillage

The other day, a friend wrote me an email venting about Trump and his acolytes.  "He's completely insane.  No hyperbole.  Insane.  How can even the most corrupt or cowardly or sycophantic Republican vote for this?"
 
The problem with Trump and the support that's built up around him, I've long felt, is not so much limited to Trump.  The unfortunate reality is that the Republican Party has been leading towards this for decades.  It didn’t spring from Trump.  The blind, near-unanimous, unquestioning following of their leaders and demonization of their opponents and minorities and foreigners and immigrants is a long-held standard of the GOP.  They were adherents of the racist, anti-Semitic Father Coughlin in the 1940s. They supported Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, willing to jail Americans for their beliefs. They willingly sustained Richard Nixon's paranoid Enemies List.  They believed in Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment of the Republican Party that "Thou Shalt Not Criticize Another Republican."  They rallied in religious fervor to Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and up sprang the Moral Majority.  They raised George W. Bush to a level of idolatry that allowed his approval of torture.  They made Sarah Palin a heroic icon.  Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck became their voice.  Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson have been their conscience.  They cry out in praise of Jesus while consistently voting against helping the most-needy.  ​They let themselves be convinced that a black man Barack Obama was an agent of the devil.  They have attacked a woman Hillary Clinton literally for 40 years since her days as wife of the Arkansas governor for her appearance, for not taking her husband's name, for practicing law and more.  Fear rules their minds eternally scared ​of change and things that are different.  And then Trump stepped in.  And they voted for him, raised him above the Republican altar and enable his every action.

The is not about Trump.  This is about the elected members of the Republican Party -- and indeed the Republican Party for almost 80 years -- who enable him and are complicit.
 
Happily, he lost the popular vote.  Democrats had a Blue Wave in 2018 and took huge control of the House.  There has been an ongoing resistance of rallies and marches for three years.  He’s been impeached.  And most Americans want him convicted.