The Scariest​ Thing

The scariest thing about all that is going on in our country politically is not the antics and behavior of the president – although he is a troubling reality – but it is the people who are lining up behind this man, willing to throw away everything they worked for in order to prove themselves to be “loyal” to the president.

From Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to Sen. Lindsay Graham, to the Trump surrogates who appear regularly on television what we are seeing is troubling. Senator Mitch McConnell, who recently called himself the “grim reaper,” is determined to use his power to create a far-right government. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mitch-mcconnell-vows-to-be-the-grim-reaper-to-thwart-all-democratic-proposals/)  Sen. Graham simply endorses everything the president does; Attorney General is the answer to the president’s search for his own version of Roy Cohn, a noted attorney who has been said to be a “fixer” for people in the president’s past, including his father and others who were engaged in questionable behavior. Cohn himself was disbarred in New York in 1986. (https://www.npr.org/2018/01/07/576209428/president-trump-called-for-roy-cohn-but-roy-cohn-was-gone)

On the governmental level, we are work to make everyone adhere to it.. As Brian Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has said, “it is better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent.” We are seeing that belief played out.

“We the people” have an inordinate amount of power which, if used, can be the impetus for social change and justice. When we are silent, we give a pass to those who have no interest in the well-being of the very people who elected them. The powered elite have one goal, and that is to keep and increase their power and they will do almost anything to meet that goal.

So, I am not concerned with what the person in the White House is doing and not doing. I am concerned about the people in the Senate, in the Justice Department, and, frankly, in evangelical churches who are giving him a pass. The only thing that matters to this group of people is winning, and what they are working to win is complete control of the government. Democracy as a governmental practice is being ignored and discarded.

Over the years, people in this country, whether on the Right of the Left, have had a sense of morality which was more common than not. It was not a matter of partisanship; it was about right and wrong, moral and immoral, that drove people to stand up and make their voices heard. It was a sense that America was “better than” those who flaunted their will to act immorally – and be clear, their integrated support was about morality and values, not about policies.

But morality does not matter to “we the people” these days. It does not matter what the president has done, Nothing – not lying, not accusations of sexual impropriety, not his racism, sexism, homophobia, not the holding of families in what might be called modern-day concentration camps on this country’s southern border – nothing has swayed them. He wants complete power and his people are giving him just enough support to get what he is after.

When dictators have been successful in overthrowing democratic governments, they have followed a path similar to the one on which we are seeing this president and his supporters trek today. It is scary. When democracies have fallen in the past, people who believed in the despotic leader responsible for the fall have historically found themselves to be morose, sad, and angry. They do not see how “it” could have happened, and they do not “own” their role in it. The people who will suffer the most the more this administration dismantles this government has the most to lose, but they do not see it. If our democracy continues to be beaten down by the current group of oath-breaking lawmakers, his current supporters will be surprised at what it will mean for them.

It is a scary, scary time.

A candid observation .