By Edwin Cooney
Listen! Can you hear it? It’s the Trump Monster and it’s hungry!
First,
it will gobble the beloved Republican Party.
You know, that bastion of economic and socio/political freedom so praised
by right wing talk show hosts such as Limbaugh, Hannity, and Levin, etc. Next, its appetite only partially quenched,
it will consume with relish the religious, ethnic and racial minorities who many
believe may actually become the majority in America in the not too distant
future. After that, it will be examining
your personal sins. Suddenly, it won’t be funny, let alone entertaining,
anymore. So the question is, how did
this all come to pass?
Back
in the 1790s, George Washington tried to warn his two cabinet underlings,
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, against the evils of political
parties. They wouldn’t listen and,
within eight short years of Washington’s 1789 inauguration in New York City,
newly minted America found itself divided into two political parties,
Federalists behind Hamilton and Republican-Democrats under Jefferson. They both had territory to protect. Jefferson, the champion of state fiefdoms,
and Hamilton, the champion of marketplace fiefdoms, soon had the politically unsophisticated
taking sides.
Originally,
Washington and Jefferson, both slaveholders, agreed that slavery was immoral
and hoped that it would die away in a generation or two. Ah, but money was involved and, by the 1830s,
a new generation of southern leaders became emotionally and spiritually married
to slavery to the extent that abolitionism of slavery was considered
immoral. Slave labor versus paid labor
clashed and thus came the great Civil War.
The
20th Century found Americans dividing along socio/economic differences. There was labor versus management, urban
versus rural and, sadly, black versus white all entangled in the gears of the
Democratic and Republican bodies politic.
Next came division over the unpopular and unwinnable Vietnam War and the
fabric-wrenching political wrangles over the Watergate scandal. Add the inevitable political “gotcha” and
payback of competitive politics and slowly but surely the definition, scope,
and even faith in freedom became fractious.
Conservatives
equate government with economic, social and, ultimately, political
slavery. Liberals look to the same
government to protect them from what they regard as the slavery of the
unfettered market place. Thus, the two
essential tools needed to function on all of our behalves are invariably being
defamed to advance the causes of primarily selfish political faiths: conservatism
and liberalism. Conservatives, who
generally possess much more economic and organizational skills and resources,
have spent all of President Barack Obama’s seven and one half years degrading
his person and even his office. After
all, he’s the head of “government,” the battering ram of “radical
liberalism.” Even worse he has Islamic
ancestors and is thus racially and spiritually connected to the third world. Put
simply and directly, most conservatives insist that anyone named Barack Hussein
Obama can’t really be American. Unable
to separate the man from the office, conservatives have denied President Obama
the respect most Democrats felt honor bound to grant to President Ronald Wilson
Reagan. Like the Soviet government used to do with political dissidents,
conservatives in this country label their opponents morally inferior as well as
emotionally and mentally disabled.
Suddenly,
here comes Donald Trump! Like America
itself, he is rich and willful. Although
he is part of the establishment, he is also rich enough to be dangerously anti-establishment. Conservatives have been so taken up with
selling their brand of angry evangelical and squalid self-praising patriotism
that the very idea of political compromise has become as immoral as abolition
of human slavery once was. Thus we find
the conservative movement flummoxed, begrudgingly
led by the rise of a politician who promises that “everyone will win…” if he’s
elected — and they are very, very afraid.
Why? First, they can’t control his takeover of their party. Second, they can’t buy him and thus control
him should he be elected. Third, they
don’t believe anyone should win if winning requires a free people to
involuntarily contribute to the common good no matter what Jesus says. Of course, with sufficient majorities in both
houses of Congress they could stall him as they have President Obama. However,
if they do that, they’ll soon find themselves politically ineffectual and thus
politically vulnerable.
Yes,
indeed, anyone with ears can hear the sound of the earthshaking rumble of the advancing
Trump monster. It’s hungry, it’s
ambitious, it’s righteous and, like much of the Conservative movement, it’s
kicking tail and taking names!
Sorry,
but there appears to be only one political antidote — Hillary Rodham
Clinton. If I could bring myself to
actually love Hillary, I’d rub my hands in gleeful delight. However, I won’t do that. I’ll just vote for
her over the monster the Conservative movement itself has created!
RESPECTFULLY
SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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