April 6, 2018
By Mickey Friedman
And so at the end of the day it’s been The Right not The Left that has smashed the myth of America to smithereens. A long time ago, in the midst of the War in Vietnam, some on The Left referred to America as Amerika to make the point that the nation was veering perilously close to imperialism. Though not everyone understood it at the time, the victory of Nixon over McGovern, the assassinations of Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and the growing rage and retreat of some in The Left from nonviolent civil disobedience, all together spelled the beginning of the waning influence of the progressive movement in America.
A weakened Left saw successful systematic attacks on the labor movement, a series of military interventions around the world, including the invasion of Panama, Grenada, the contra war in Nicaragua, and the never-ending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and, now, the mostly hidden action in Yemen. The post-World War II gains that ushered in the growth of a middle class that empowered home ownership and college for their children began a slow erosion and the gap between the rich and poor steadily increased.
Even so, there was, until the election of Barack Obama, a fairly resilient consensus between Democrats and Republicans that there were agreed upon common goals, that fail as we might, our democracy was an example worthy admiring. We touted our foreign air and willingness to take in immigrants.
While many around the world could quickly remind us of our dark side: the victims of American-supported dictators like the Batistas and Shahs and Somozas, and, of course, the Vietnamese and Cambodians who died by the millions, still American political leaders felt it incumbent to pay allegiance to the notion that our Constitution and Declaration of Independence and our commitment to fair play and human decency made us an example to the world.
Meanwhile, the Republicans were increasingly influenced by evangelicals and the so-called Freedom Caucus. They began the steady shift to the more extreme Right. Traditional Wall Street Republicans seemed to retreat, to become more and more irrelevant and the Party decided their future fortunes demanded they wage as much of a war on Obama as our foreign adversaries.
Still it was hard for many to anticipate exactly how far afield from the post-World War II consensus of anti-communism, internationalism, and interconnectedness – NAFTA, NATO, the Paris Climate Accord, for example – the Republican Party would find itself.
Enter Donald Trump. Exit Jeb Bush and dozens of more traditional Republicans.
We are now living with one head-spinning retreat and reversal after another.
Can you even remember when the Republican Party relentlessly sold itself as the party of traditional family values: love of wife, love of God and Country, the military, the FBI and NSA and CIA? Fiscal Responsibility?
Today, a Republican Congress shamelessly collaborates with fraudulent and unbelievable piety, a serial adulterer who thinks nothing of cheating on his pregnant wife, and a man more comfortable praising a Russian tyrant than a British Prime Minister.
The Republican Right – in thrall to Donald Trump – is relentlessly obliterating their reasons for being.
They should have known this the moment they allowed Donald Trump to publicly humiliate John McCain for having been captured in Vietnam. Five excemptions for bone spurs yet he mocked a man who endured torture few of us could survive.
If that wasn’t enough, Donald Trump went on to attack a Gold Star Family. Humayun Khan, an ordnance officer with the 201st Forward Support Battalion, 1st Infantry Division was killed at the age of 27 in 2004 by a suicide bomber in Iraq. Khan made sure his fellow soldiers took cover while he approached a taxi filled with 200 pounds of explosives. When it blew up, he was killed.
“He died selflessly and courageously, tackling the enemy head on,” his commanding officer, Lt. Col. Dan Mitchell, wrote in a letter read at his funeral. “We will not forget him and the noble ideas he stood for.”
Donald Trump doesn’t have a clue about service. He has never been called to serve any cause other than his need for fame. His greed. And clearly his incipient racism makes it impossible to imagine that an American Muslim is a far greater patriot than he.
That the Republican Party allowed Donald Trump to attack the parents whose son sacrificed his life in Iraq was but the beginning of the end. Trump has viciously attacked those who have spent their lives combating terrorism – the very men and women the Republicans claimed only they, and never the Democrats, cared about – to a deafening silence from Republican leaders. He has embraced Nazi sympathizers and those who assault women.
So tell me, if the Republican Party has abandoned the families of the fallen who do they represent? And what America do they serve? Their Right Makes Wrong.
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“When Right Makes Wrong” was first published in the March 29, 2018 issue of the Berkshire Record.
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