Their mindless audacity and spineless mendacity

 

“Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite.” ― Robert G. Ingersoll

Though it’s easy for me to chortle at conservative critics now tripping all over themselves to blame Trump for the utter failure of the Republican Party to produce what they were sure was going to be a  red wave of victories for them in this mid-term election, I find it disturbing that these same people in the right-wing media and uber-conservative politics are still not willing to recognize that it was their mindless audacity and spineless mendacity that backed this egotistical blowhard that brought them to this reckoning. 

A reckoning long overdue that could have kept us from the brink of an autocratic rule, of which we have historically championed our opposition to around the world and led the way for others to aspire to our American-style of a constitutional democracy.

The lazy, often absent defiance of GOP leaders to call out Trump as the toxic element that would bring down the once respectable Grand Old Party, feared more the angry hatred of white supremacist and many faux evangelical Christians, thinking some how this degenerate element within our society would achieve for them what they apparently wanted more than respect and loyalty to the rule of law - political power.

And for many of us watching from the other side, it seemed like this MAGA movement was going to succeed in dragging our great experiment of a democratic republic to the ash pile of history where other despotic regimes ultimately lay, mired with the blood of innocent people caught up in the madness that such misguided insanity sweeps them into.

So, lest those who found themselves caught up in Trump’s assault on the guard rails of our constitutional democracy realize that they are as guilty, if not greater so, than the once popular media charlatan, this reckoning that’s confronted their own failure to prevent its creation and allowed it to metastasize to a point where chaos could have spun out of control, some other version of Trump-ism will rear its ugly head again. 

And when it does it will once again be the result of fear and ignorance by those preyed upon by one  person or a small handful of people seeking power and their enablers positioned to influence individuals who too quickly ignore their first instincts, or who are either unable or unwilling to challenge ideas that are devoid of human decency.

It’s a flawed condition as old as humanity itself and has been memorialized in the tale of naive young woman who picks up a snake pleading to be aided from freezing to death, ignoring her better judgment about the deadly threat a snake can pose, only to realize too late, that her initial instincts were true. 

History is replete with such snakes that societies fail to recognize in time to the detriment of millions.  To those cowards who now want to scapegoat Trump for the failures of their Party, I say, “you knew he was a snake when you nominated him and supported him for four long years.”