Lifelong Republican here.
This is the image GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump promoted.
It’s one thing for an image like this to be created by some random Biden hater. It’s another thing entirely for this image to be promoted by a US Presidential candidate. For most of the history of the United States, this sort of behavior would never have been even remotely “okay” for either Republicans or Democrats.
But in 2016, we entered the Trump era. Donald Trump defied all the norms of conduct, civility, honesty, and decorum that American voters had always expected and demanded from a Presidential candidate.
The majority of Republicans, practically without even realizing it, allowed their standards to plummet in order to accommodate Trump. They were conditioned to view Trump’s boorish behavior as “toughness”. Even worse, many Democrats and Independents were apathetic about the possibility that such an unfit person might seriously become our President — and they failed to do their best to prevent that from happening. Thus, Donald Trump became President of the United States.
So, here we are in 2024, and Trump is again the GOP nominee to become president, despite his unprecedented behavior. No previous generation of Americans would have ever tolerated a President who has done the things Trump has done:
- A botched COVID response, featuring many lies and defying disease experts.
- Having a heretic “Spiritual Advisor”, who says “Saying no to Trump is saying no to God”.
- Bragging about trying to fu#k a married woman, and that he can grab women by the pu$$y because he’s such a big star.
- Wanting to stop ballot counting on election night, declaring himself the winner (he lost).
- Inciting a riot at the Capitol in an effort to prevent the certification of the lost election.
- Saluting those rioters and calling them true patriots, promising to pardon them.
- Facing numerous criminal or civil indictments, including election tampering, stealing documents, and defrauding the US.
- Losing a defamation lawsuit from a woman he sexually abused.
- Losing a massive financial fraud case (and having the CFO of his business plead guilty to numerous fraud charges).
- Causing an utterly dysfunctional GOP-led congress that would let the government shut down or default on paying our debts just out of spite. Trump compelled them to block their own immigration reform bill! They can barely even elect a Speaker.
- Having his own former VP accuse him of putting himself above the Constitution.
- Selling crap to his followers to raise money ($400 gold shoes, NFTs of Trump depicted as a superhero, $60 Bibles).
- Doing a commercial for Goya Foods from the Oval Office. Also calling for a boycott of a US Company because they have a policy disallowing employees to wear partisan political attire (such as MAGA hats).
- Going to a disaster site to see victims of hurricane flooding, and throwing rolls of paper towels at them.
- Referring to political enemies as “vermin” and speaking of migrants as people “who poison the blood of our country”.
- Causing so much division that extreme expressions of hatefulness and violence have become normalized. For example, a Presidential nominee promoting an image of the current President being tied up in the back of a pickup truck.
That Trump is again a Presidential candidate with a very realistic chance of winning reflects how far the USA has fallen since we were foolish enough to let Trump become President in 2016.
Fortunately, Democrats and independents improved greatly in 2020, coming out to vote in record numbers to stop this madness.
It remains to be seen what happens in 2024. This election will be our legacy:
(1) We can firmly state that such deplorable behavior will not tolerated by a US President.
(2) Or we can encourage more deplorable behavior, and cause it to become even more normalized in the USA, causing even deeper divisions and violence.
No comments:
Post a Comment