Last week Republican Senators voted to cut healthcare subsidies for people in need in order to pay for changes in the tax code that will cut taxes for rich individuals and billion dollar corporations.
I believe that qualifies as a crime against humanity. To show that claim is not political hyperbole, let me humanize it.
A small group of real Christians I belong to has adopted three families for Christmas.
We discovered that one of them, a family with four children, had a gas cooking stove that was beyond repair. They couldn’t afford to buy another one so our group did.
Two days after it was installed a group member called to see how they liked the stove.The mother could not stop saying thank you, but she said she hadn’t used the stove yet because she had to wait for her husband to get paid so they could go grocery shopping.
Families like this are the ones the Republicans tax code bill declares expendable.
It makes you wonder just what kind of person is a Republican these days, especially when you consider all the other ways they are proving they have no concern for people who are not rich, and especially people in serious financial need.
1. Trying to destroy Obamacare without anything to replace it.
2. Ignoring the serious impact of climate change around the world because they refuse to admit human beings are causing it.
3. Delaying the renewal of the children’s insurance program call “CHIP” for no logical reason.
4. Refusing to give permanent legalized status to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) kids – the Dreamers – even though most of them have been here all their lives.
5. Lying about Food Stamps being an inefficiently run program when it is one of the best.
6. Hiding wasteful military spending by stoking national security fears.
7. Backing a pedophile for the Alabama Senate seat.
As if their moral corruption wasn’t bad enough, Republicans also hate American democracy.
They say they hate liberals, but that’s a cover for their hatred of our current form of government with its policies that seek to create a more perfect union in all its beautiful diversity.
Want proof? Consider these facts.
For 8 years they obstructed anything and everything President Obama proposed, even when working with him would have been good for the country.
For five years now they have refused to renew Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights law that would protect minority voting rights. In its absence, at the state level Republicans have been passing voting laws that arbitrarily make voting more difficult for people who are not Republicans.
They are willingly legitimizing the presidency of a man who is unfit, unqualified, may even be unhinged, and who is doing everything in his power to undermine the values of truth and decency that made our nation what it used to be.
These actions are anti-American, plain and simple, leading to only one conclusion: Republicans are both morally corrupt and anti-American democracy.
Democrats have many faults, and I have always been ready and willing to call them out when I believe they are wrong in what they are doing.
On the whole, though, they remain advocates for the least of these among us, and they have never engaged in any efforts to undermine our form of government.
The fact that Republicans have never cared about “the least of these” and are constantly undermining our democracy make the next step for the American public easy.
Throw the bums out, and I do mean “bums.”
Until Republicans find some moral grounding again, that is the only sensible and right thing to do.
Indeed, voting for politicians who are guilty of crimes against humanity and are trying to undermine the government they claim to serve makes a person complicit in both.
I have to believe the majority of Americans will choose not to do that in 2018, will instead choose to do the morally right thing for the sake of the country.
Keep naming the Truth. It feeds us our weary spirits.
I am attending vigils at the Capitol and knitting pussy hats for friends campaigning in Alabama this weekend… but I do believe that all eyes are on Mueller and I pray God protects that brilliant man.
Dixcy, fighting discouragement is as hard as fighting Trump and Republican moral blindness. Communicating with one another is critical. Ultimately Mueller may be the nation’s real chance to survive Trump.
I appreciate your words and spirit Jan. Indeed it’s pretty easy to get discouraged. I have to believe though that the greed, lack of integrity, and general deprevity that now dominates the Republican Party can’t last forever. As you intimated things will turn eventually, and we’ve got to make it so.
I think the key, Wilbur, is what you said at the end. As Gandhi said, we have to be the change we want.
Jlan,
It seems to me that a “moral center” is THE issue that should be front and center in all upcoming elections, from local to national. Somehow, in order to recover a clear sense of a “moral center” and expose and root out corruption, we need to restore faith in our institutions, especially the press in all manifestations of civic discourse.
You have given us in this post good, concrete examples to deal with.
Cheerz!
Gene