Thom Hartmann for Buzzflash: How Much Longer Will Americans Allow Themselves to Be Abused by Republicans?

July 23rd 2020

President Donald J. Trump celebrates the passage of the Tax Cuts Act with Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan | December 20, 2017 (Joyce N. Boghosian)

By Thom Hartmann

Ever since the 1920s, when big business took over the GOP leading directly to the Republican great depression, Republicans have fought to give taxpayer dollars to billionaires and giant corporations while they actively try to screw working people and the poor.

Both Bush and Trump lost the national vote and only got in because of the electoral college loophole. The majority of Americans have not elected a Republican for president since 1988, because the majority of Americans know what the Republican party is really all about.

Now the Republican war on average Americans has gone into high gear and they are trying to use the coronavirus crisis to further impoverish average Americans.

As the pandemic and unemployment rate get worse,Republicans are fighting among themselves over whether they should cut the $600 a week unemployment benefit to $400, $100, or zero.

Meanwhile, of course, they want hundreds of billions of dollars in additional subsidies, tax breaks and outright gifts to giant corporations, hedge funds and even to individual billionaires.

Instead of helping unemployed workers and the poor the GOP wants to send federal secret police into our cities to tear gas our mayors and citizens and shoot at journalists and protesters.

America is at a crossroads and will soon decide whether we are going to be a country based on white supremacy, fear, and greed or if we are going to embrace the values of equality, respect and support for people in need.

For 40 years, the GOP has worked to reduce America to Third World status, and today they have nearly accomplished that job. Across America, they’re purging voters from the rolls and trying to make it hard or even impossible to safely vote this fall; it’s a desperate attempt to hang onto power that will only work if we let it.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of American Oligarchy and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.