When Will America Wake Up to the Evil That Has Seized the Republican Party?: Thom Hartmann for BuzzFlash

December 8, 2020

It was inevitable that a party serving the wealthy and corporations would slouch into authoritarianism to stay in power. (Gage Skidmore)

By Thom Hartmann

We’ve seen it around the world and throughout history: when a political party or government exists solely to serve the very wealthy, and begins to lose power, they inevitably turn to authoritarianism and police violence.

We saw this in Florida when Gov. Ron DeSantis sent State police with guns drawn to intimidate the family of whistleblower Rebekah Jones, who he’d earlier fired for refusing to lie about Florida coronavirus statistics and is now publishing a daily “Florida coronavirus dashboard.“

We see it with Donald Trump committing a felony for which you or I would immediately go to prison, trying to tamper with the outcome of a legitimate election by threats, intimidation, and offering bribes to government officials.

We see it in Michigan where the Macomb County GOP seems to share an address with the group that showed up, armed, to threaten and intimidate the Secretary of State and her four-year-old son as they were preparing to watch “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.”

We saw it when armed Republicans with swastikas and Confederate flags invaded the Michigan capitol, and then tried to kidnap and assassinate Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

We see it with Lindsey Graham threatening Georgia Republicans that if they don’t support Trump’s brutal authoritarianism, crimes, and coup attempt they won’t get Republican votes. Violence and the threat of violence are the new currency in the GOP realm.

Because the Republican party only serves great wealth, when the Fed intervened in late spring to create $7 trillion out of thin air and use it to buy corporate stocks and bonds, reinflating the stock market, Republicans lost all interest in any kind of Covid assistance.

As long as the stock market stays high, wealthy people are good and the GOP doesn’t care what happens to average people – unless they speak out to expose Republicans like we saw in Florida. Then they bring in the police, guns drawn.

Now that Mitch McConnell‘s power in the Senate hangs in the balance in an election in Georgia, he’s suddenly willing to pass a tiny amount of relief for average working people, but the price he demands is to make it illegal for workers to sue their wealthy employers.

Meanwhile, the Republican Trump administration just quietly took an action to cut eligibility for Social Security Disability. They don’t give a rat’s ass about average people in pain; they only care about the rich. And most wealthy people right now are very, very happy with the GOP.

For Republicans, it’s all about money and the political power which gets them that money and helps them avoid paying taxes on it. When their power begins to slip, they roll out the threats, armed goons, and the police, all while chanting “law and order!“

The Republican Party neither represents law or order. Since Reagan’s election, they’ve exclusively represented the interests of giant corporations and billionaires, while using racism, regionalism and misogyny to manipulate working class voters.

The question our republic now faces is, “When will the people wake up?“

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the War on Voting 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

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