THE TRUMPIST GOP SHOULD BE RENAMED
Dr. Common Good
I am not typically one to spout hyperbole, but what we are seeing from the GOP and its media flame-fanners is off the charts for the United States of America.
The GOP in its current form should be re-named. Something like “The New American National Socialist Party”? Will that do?
Take the case of conspiracy theory and lie-peddling right-wing media sycophant Tucker Carlson. He just took a trip to Victor Orbán’s neo-fascist Hungary, to celebrate that leader’s increasing authoritarianism, crony kleptocracy, fawning Putin mimicry, control over the media, courts and all other government institutions, and ugly nativism, and even to film his show there. He also spoke at a far-right, Orbán-sponsored conference. Yet Carlson, and all those like him, claim to be “patriots.” Patriots of what? Surely not the Constitution of the United States.
Carlson’s visit displays, in all its bare-toothed, seething character, a shredding of the American concept perpetrated by today’s GOP. And, no surprise, animating that destructive ethos is what I call zero-sum racism. As Orbán has stated (per reporting by CNN), “We do not want to be diverse. We do not want our own color, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others.” Well, there you have it. QED.
So, to all those, liberal or conservative, who value the Constitution of the United States and what it represents as a constructive guide for how this country should be governed, and what it represents with respect to the relations between people, and between people and the state, take stock. What Tucker Carlson, Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the entire gang of hate-spewing, so-called populists advocate is not American, in the best sense of the word. It is anti-democratic, thugocratic, nativist, intolerant, and proto-fascist. It is the emulation of Putin, Orbán, Lukashenko (Belarus dictator) and their ilk.
Remember, many Americans once gave their lives to fight against that.