Opinion: Republicans are still helping Trump destroy America

There was an unexpected, but fairly important, revelation this past week that very few media outlets made a big deal out of – and as one straight-talking Vice President once said, this revelation was “a big f*cking deal.”

For the sad, pathetic souls that spend an inordinate amount of time closely following politics, the release and results of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the Trump campaign’s collaboration with the  Russian government to interfere in, and influence, the 2016 election was no great surprise. The only real surprise was that most Senate Republicans signed off on the report that confirmed what any semi-conscious American already knew as fact: Trump and his campaign were intimately involved in the entire WikiLeaks-Russian effort to smear former Secretary of State, and Senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. And that it was a vile crime to allow a hostile foreign government to influence an American election to install a friend in the White House.

What is stunning indeed, and what the media generally ignored reporting ad nauseam, was that months prior to dirty Don Trump’s impeachment, Senate Republicans involved in writing the report were aware of just how corrupt Trump was and still is. But they acquitted him of any guilt in abusing the office he doesn’t deserve and of obstructing justice. Apparently the rash of Trump lies were never going to be addressed by his GOP facilitators.

It is still a mystery why the  majority of Republicans continue sitting idly by while Trump denigrates America’s superb intelligence community for doing their jobs defending America’s national security. As noted over at Mother Jones on Tuesday past, the Russian interference in America’s election was not a hoax as Trump continues braying like the lying jackass he is. Mother Jones summed up the report thus:

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“On Tuesday, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committe released a 966-page report that definitively shows that the Trump campaign aided and assisted Putin’s attempt to sabotage the election to help Trump.” (author bold)

Now, it is important to note that Senate Republicans were hard at work on this particular “investigation” for a long time prior to Trump’s impeachment, and they knew that Trump and his closest “advisors” were certainly working with Russia to undermine America’s democratic process. And yet they said nothing except release a report seven months after Trump’s trial verifying every dirty detail the intelligence community and Robert Mueller III uncovered; including flagrant lies by the culprits so close to Trump that he had to know they were intimately working with Russia, not Ukraine, to purposely interfere with an election.

This incident is a microcosm of the GOP’s complicity in Trump’s systematic destruction of American government and democracy. The reason Republicans support Trump’s criminality is not a mystery; he signs anything they hand him.  However, the flood of what are certainly Trump’s unconstitutional acts are only due to the Republicans’ failure to provide oversight and enforce the Constitution’s so-called “balance of power.”

The GOP’s abdication began shortly after Trump’s very poorly-attended inauguration and continues today while Republicans in Congress pretend everything is normal instead of being terrified that voting Americans are watching Republicans aid in their representative democracy’s demise.

One prime example of Republicans shirking their constitutional duty was allowing Trump to unilaterally levy tariffs and, most recently, use an executive order to control taxation. Both of those tasks are plainly laid out in the Constitution as being mandates for Congress, not the Executive Branch. Still, Republicans allowed Trump to violate the Constitution as well as inflict a significant amount of financial damage on Americans – many in Republican-majority states.

As an aside, of course Republicans support starving Social Security to death. But if they were intent on a payroll (FICA) tax cut as a means of defunding the Social Security Trust, they could have introduced and tried to pass legislation to achieve their 80-year-long goal of destroying the elderly’s self-funded retirement program.

Many regular Americans agree with a fair number of pundits and political columnists that Trump’s myriad unilateral acts are a prelude to an honest-to-dog dictatorship. And yet if Republicans had not abandoned their constitutional mandate to make laws and provide oversight to keep the Executive Branch from becoming an authoritarian monarchy, America would not be in serious decline at home and around the world. In fact, every last untoward, and blatantly criminal, act Trump has committed is only because Republicans have granted him the unquestionable authority to do so with impunity.

Of course it is easy to blame Trump for America’s decline; he is the most visible and loudest Republican in the land. However, if Republicans in the House and Senate had not abdicated their Constitutional duty to govern, as well as force Trump and his dirty, filthy administration to adhere to the law of the land, America would not be a nation in decline and the laughingstock of the entire world.

Rmuse

Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.

Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.

Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.