Republicans are persecuting trans people, their families and physicians as enthusiastically and comprehensively as the Nazis went after the Jews. The Nazis enacted their Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and Republicans in state legislatures are enacting their anti-trans laws of 2023, both vicious, reprehensible, intolerable.
Republicans
31 I 2023: Confucius described the Republicans in Congress
“Before he gets his position, his only fear is that he might not get it, and once he gets it, his only fear is that he might lose it. And when he fears to lose it, he becomes capable of anything.” (Analecta 17.15)
6 X 2020: Republican duplicity, again stoking fear and resentment
I’ve received a document: Catholic Opinion Research Survey. On its cover it says “Daniel Sheerin, which side are you on?” and reveals the bias of the survey. On one side is a photo of a beaming Trump, a beaming Reagan, and a somber looking John Paul II before a background of the American flag. On the other side is another photo showing Ilhan Omar, Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer, and Joe Biden before a background of black.
The survey contains a series of tendentious questions intended to measure the degree of my outrage at alleged slights, insults, and atrocities against Catholicism by the left. Most of the questions are, in fact, much better suited to reactionary evangelicals, but it is assumed that Catholics and evangelicals are undifferentiated components of a pro-Republican Brand X Christianity.
This document was sent by an organization called Catholic Vote that is “Mobilizing Catholics to Defend Faith and Family in 2020.” On their website they advertise a book entitled A New Catholic Moment | Donald Trump and the Politics of the Common Good by Bryan Burch, the president of Catholic Vote. There is a reactionary Catholic club called Legatus that claims to be “the world’s premiere [sic] organization for Catholic CEOs and Presidents.” In 2018 Legatus named Bryan its “Defender of the Faith,” a title he shares with Henry VIII and the current Queen of England. Catholic Vote is just another wing of the Republican Party, trying to camouflage itself with religion, evangelical and Catholic, another group struggling to defend the “American Way,” i.e., predatory capitalism, patriarchy, and bigotry.
9 VI 2020: If Republicans can’t win, they cheat
I have read an article that describes the utter screw-up in voting in the State of Georgia (another Confederate State!). Maybe I’ve grown overly suspicious, but I have to think that the screw-up was planned. The article reported “In April, the state’s Republican House leader, David Ralston, publicly denounced the Republican secretary of state for sending absentee ballots to registered voters ahead of Tuesday’s primary, which was postponed from its original May 19 date due to the pandemic. Ralston claimed mail-in voting is “devastating to Republicans.” I can only read this as saying: If all registered voters are able to vote, the Republicans will lose.
So Georgia Republicans are trying to sneak their way ahead. They’ve been conducting huge purges of the voting rolls in Georgia to get rid of voters who are likely to vote against them. How different is this from paying voters to vote for you or stuffing the ballot box? As I’ve long maintained, today’s Republicans do not believe in democracy, but are supporters of plutocracy.
23 X 2019: Rebellion from the right
Today, Rep. Matt Gaetz stopped licking Trump long enough to lead a mob from the psychiatric wing of the Republican party to force their way into a closed-door meeting of the House Intelligence Committee, to demand, in effect, that they be allowed to shut down the impeachment investigation.
Their leader, Gaetz, is desperate to emerge as the chief of Trump’s little helpers. He was attended by Rep. Mo Brooks, a notorious blowhard from way back, and 35+ others, the ass-lickers, the lunatics, and sheep who follow anything.
These retrogressives know that the TRUMP team is losing, so they want to stop the game, and so are displaying the fundamental lawlessness they have in common with Trump. I do hope the Capitol Police will defend the United States against them.
The behavior of these congressmen is frightening.
Trying to imagine how the future destruction our Government by a reactionary take-over might begin, I thought it might start with reactionaries using ICE to jail their opponents, arrest all the leaders of the military, silence all the media except FOX, and shut down all of the ‘unreliable’ courts. These subversives would then present themselves as a new “American Party” that would select the Dictator who is going to restore America to “the way it used to be.”
But no, I think the assault on the American government could begin with lawless, anti-democratic members of Congress who will shamelessly flout congressional rules and the Constitution to reach their selfish goal. These militant reactionary congressmen know very well that they are nothing without Trump, know that Trump has been caught red-handed and could be impeached and removed from office. They must prevent this at all costs. Hence comes behavior of the sort seen today, behavior that will continue unless sober Republicans restrain these foolish hooligans.
9 X 2019: Trump near the edge
So that pathetic figure in the White House thinks that he owes nothing to our allies, the Kurds, because they did not fight along with us in WW II. Does he think that the neutral Turks fought alongside us? He might believe they did, for he is as ignorant of history as he is of government.
He is coming closer and closer to losing it altogether. It is reported that he keeps making frantic, menacing phone calls to Mitch McConnell to make sure that the Republicans in the Senate are still backing him. Many of his utterances, viva voce or on Twitter, are, it seems to me, actionable, for he is in a frenzy of slander and libel.
Will he go off the edge? will he take America with him? I’m sure that by now he is thinking, as Hitler did of the Germans, that we are not tough enough to deserve him. Will he hang on, backed who cannot admit they have erred? Will he get away with all his crimes? If he does, America will have ceased to exist.
What about the Republicans in Congress? Will they, as his abuse and intimidation of them gets even worse, have the guts to give him the shove? Getting rid of Trump will be made especially difficult for the people he has debauched. The Republicans seem to have sworn allegiance to him as the Wehrmacht swore obedience to Hitler. They will have to find a way to distance from him, for if they do not, they will become infamous.
And the American people who voted for him, can they acknowledge their mistake, their having been scammed? Will those who proclaim “He’s my President!” come to realize what such a declaration actually says about themselves?