Monday, September 18, 2017

THE DRIVING FORCES BEHIND TODAY’S REPUBLICAN PARTY

By Edwin Cooney

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, the Republican Party was sold to me as “the party of Abraham Lincoln.” It was the party that “freed the slaves because all men were created equal and slavery, with all of its implications, was immoral.” Additionally, I was assured, that if the Republican Party was anything, it was above all things, moral. By the time I was 30, I’d learned otherwise. Specifically, I’d learned that the Republican Party was equally as moral and immoral as the Democratic Party! Wow! What a lesson that was.

I’ve generally suspected that since shortly after he became president, Donald Trump has not shared the positive elements of traditional GOP Conservatism. Prominent columnists George Will and David Brooks have insisted from the outset that President Trump is no Conservative. However, up until President Trump’s cozy dinner with Chuck Schumer and (even more treacherously) with Nancy Pelosi during which he appeared ready to modify his objections to Barack Obama’s Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals order (an Executive Order known as DACA which modified immigration laws), GOP support for its non-Conservative leader seemed pretty solid.

Suddenly, GOP talk show hosts such as Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and even Rush Limbaugh all appear to have their undies in one hell of a bunch. Even such GOP stalwarts as Iowa Congressman Steve King, Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks, and — low and behold — arch conservative Ann Coulter are talking impeachment.

What’s even more amazing, they’re shocked! Somehow they’ve believed all along, or acted as though they believed, that President Donald John Trump was  a Conservative —  which only demonstrates how obsessed the party is with its own parochialism. Although President Trump is not giving up on his insistence on building his wall, he’s open to dealing with Democratic Party leaders primarily, as he sees it, because his own congressional leaders lack the capacity to make Republican majorities work on behalf of a national constituency. His willingness to drop his immediate  demand for his proposed border wall in exchange for Democratic support for enhanced southwest border security makes sense. As for his support for DACA, as harmless as it is, it is more than GOP leaders can swallow. Thus, the party that assured America that it could repeal Obamacare, slash taxes, secure our borders and renegotiate NAFTA appears to be on the verge of civil war. Steve Bannon (who has returned to Breitbart News) is convinced of that likelihood.

As I see it, the dilemma is twofold. First, there is our almost inherent dislike of foreigners. Second, there is the assumption of party unity when struggling with party policy changes. One of the most persistent threads running through our history is nativism. At the core of our American being is distrust of “foreigners.” We dislike their slowness to drop their native languages, cultures, and especially their religious beliefs. We, who beg God to bless America, can barely abide the rest of God’s peoples! For some reason, we regard ourselves as exempt, even from Biblical instruction, to love our worldly neighbors as ourselves. Although moneyed elitists have no monopoly on this prejudice, it seems the richer we get, the more insistent we become in proclaiming our superiority to others. Britain, especially during the Victorian Era, was guilty of this cultural arrogance  which was so proudly trumpeted by three of my British Prime Ministerial  heroes, Lord Henry Palmerston, Benjamin Disraeli and, above all, Winston Churchill. The fact is that the mighty among us too often pass these prejudices to the populous. They ultimately provide the voting power that sustains these institutions of intolerance which, in return, limits the whole society’s capacity to grow.

The fact is, immigrants aren’t taking jobs away from Americans who want those jobs. The reality is that immigrants accept jobs at a lower pay rate because they desperately need the money. Hence, we depend upon “cheap” immigrant labor even as we show our traditional contempt for immigrants. Additionally, too many Americans won’t take the jobs that immigrants must take in order to build families, educate their children and purchase land and, over time, merge their cultures with ours, so that in the not too distant future, unfortunately, they will be American enough to dislike a newer generation of social outcasts just as we do today. Bigotry against immigrants is as American as apple pie, cherry pie, and George Washington.  

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, Roman Catholics, blacks and Jews bore the brunt of everyday ridicule and contempt for who they were. in 2017, it’s Mexicans and Muslims who scare the “bejesus” out of John and Susie Q. Citizen who are encouraged to believe that from within their midst lurks America’s destruction. Not until I reached adulthood did I come to grips with this repulsive reality which is especially prominent in political ideological Conservatism.

The most powerful truths of late 2017 political and cultural reality are:
(1.) President Donald John Trump isn’t now, nor has he ever been, a Conservative.
(2.) While Conservatism has no monopoly on either prejudice or selfishness, the right of the people not to conform to a mainstream of human tolerance is more precious to too many Conservatives than the scriptural obligation for tolerance.
(3.) President Trump values personal loyalty above principle and it’s that reality that may well bring about his downfall.
(4.) The mainspring of Conservatism isn’t liberty, it’s money.
(5.) President Trump, who has reached the top of the greasy political pole bragging that he’s no politician, is a square peg in a round hole. He won’t succeed in a world of politicians both at home and abroad without becoming a politician.

Yes, indeed, I once loved the Republican Party. I even love and still maintain respect for its first modern Conservative leader Barry Goldwater. What drove me out of the party was the realization that contempt and ridicule of others is the driving force behind the modern GOP. Up until his recent Chinese dinner with Senator Chuck Schumer and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, two despised Democratic Party leaders, the president overwhelmingly appeared to share that political Conservative tendency. Suddenly, the president’s willingness to modify his immediate requirements for security along our southern boarder and his willingness to secure the futures of some 800,000 immigrants (specifically by accepting former President Barack Obama’s DACA program) has put in doubt his leadership of the party.
On a number of occasions this year, I’ve suggested in these pages that as reprehensible and crude, squalid, and galling as President Trump too often is, America could be worse off!

Suppose Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan were all contentedly united behind President Michael Richard Pence! Therein, if you ask me, lies the real nightmare. That prospect is almost as scary as Kim-Jong Un!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

Monday, September 11, 2017

YES, INDEED - I’M JUST WILD ABOUT THE FALL!

By Edwin Cooney

Of course, all seasons of every year are by circumstance and definition vital to humanity. However, there’s something about the fall of the year that’s particularly exciting. Like everyone else, I’m aware of the significance of events that occur every day of the year. However, try as I promise you I do to find events of equal significance elsewhere, the fall of the year, at least since the end of World War II, has been particularly vital in our lives culturally, socially, politically, and perhaps even spiritually.

First, as the sun crosses the autumnal equinox, baseball fans everywhere are anticipating the league playoffs and the World Series. Football, basketball, and hockey fans are anticipating the opening of new seasons. Schools and colleges are opening. New clothes and new automobiles come on the market, designed to respond to consumer conveniences, desires and demands.

The delights of autumn encompass our creativity and our need for distraction from the constant humdrum of reality. Thus we offer Thanksgiving, revel in the goulash imaginings of Halloween, celebrate the questionable significance of Christopher Columbus, pay homage to the sham peace of World War I, and pretend that commercialism and spirituality are equally integral parts of Christmas or Hanukkah!

As the weather cools, we munch apples (the tarter the better), swill down hot chocolate, along with cider and doughnuts, toast marshmallows, and just know they’re as good for you as grandmother’s coleslaw.

Cool days and nippy nights, crackling fireplaces and brewery delights beckon us to football fields and hockey fights. At the same time, with a gladness reminiscent of the days when all that mattered was who you were dating and what thrill might be awaiting beyond college goal posts and fall spooning rites, we studiously prepare for tomorrow’s falls.

Meanwhile, back to the real world. Some of our finest patriots were born during the fall. They include Dwight Eisenhower (Tuesday, October 14th, 1890), Teddy Roosevelt (Wednesday, October 27th, 1858), Jimmy Carter (Wednesday, October 1st, 1924), and great New York Yankee teammates and friends Edward Charles (Whitey) Ford (Sunday, October 21st, 1928) and Mickey Mantle (Tuesday, October 20th, 1931).

Since 1894, all identification of fall in the United States has commenced with the celebration of Labor Day even though still within summer solstice. It was President Grover Cleveland’s sop to the American working men and women whom he betrayed when he called in federal forces to break up the Pullman’s Strike in July 1894. What is more significant about the origins of Labor Day, however, is that even with the presidential proclamation there was nothing official about it. Working folks had to take an unpaid day off from work to celebrate their own unity and significance. 

Labor Day picnics (and, at one time, parades) mark the close of summer vacation and the opening of schools. Even more, however, I think they bring on a vital expectation that alerts us to unfinished tasks and expanding opportunities. Fall, even as it signifies the end of the growing season, energizes and nourishes the future. Some animals go into hibernation so they may awaken renewed and sometimes transformed as splendid examples of nature’s mystery and majesty.

As the fall of 2017 approaches, we may well take comfort from some of the social and political challenges that have occurred during past fall seasons. Here are just a few:

September 1945 saw victory in World War II. Fall 1946 marked the close of the Republican party’s political minority in Congress since 1930. In 1948, national Democrats took pride as Harry Truman was re-elected president over GOP Governor Thomas E. Dewey in an election he was expected to lose. In 1954, the United States Senate, which still had a majority of Republicans, nevertheless censured fellow Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for behavior injurious to the United States Senate — thus ending a period of accusation and injustice against Americans who were vulnerable to guilt by association. The fall of 1964 saw the Soviets banish Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Perhaps most gratifying was the fall of 1989 when Soviet oppression crumbled all over Europe amidst the happy destruction of the Berlin Wall.

The fall season has had its fair share of tragedies such as the November 22nd 1963 assassination of President Kennedy and the horror of 9/11 in 2001.

Over all, however, the fall of the year bathes us in a zesty aura of possibilities that we would dismiss at our peril.

For those of us born in the fall of the year, there is that special opportunity to rethink and thus revive old dreams as we revise our priorities for the purpose of mastering the beckoning future.

As we examine the favors of the fall of the year, we can, if we will, appreciate the gifts granted to all of us from the other seasons of the year.

Life is a continuum. To genuinely celebrate any part of it invariably forces us to appreciate and be thankful for all of life and the seasons which frame the fullness of time.

I’m energized by being a child of the Fall! Among my fondest wishes is that the rest of you could be so lucky to have been born during that fairest season of them all —  the season we call Fall!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY