It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Although I’ve always been a registered Democrat, some might say I have no business stating the following: The GOP has become fractured, exhibiting a split personality reminiscent of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. One side of the GOP personality is the Grand Old Party that we are all familiar with, and the other is an extremist group seduced by violence, bigotry, conspiracy theories, and bent on taking down our democracy.
Like the characters in Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, one personality is reasonable and open to negotiation, and the other absolutely crazed and opposed to any kind of bipartisanship.
I remember when both parties worked together to solve issues and serve the American people. For example, former Arizona Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) worked in tandem to pass the VA reform bill in 2014. Other examples of bipartisanship include The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act, the 20212 Jobs Act, and the 2017 Affordable Care Act.
I was shocked but not surprised by the expulsion of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) from her position as the No.3 leader in the GOP. She was booted by the party for two reasons, First, denying Donald Trump’s dishonest claim to have won the November 2020 election, and second, voting for Trump’s impeachment for his role in fueling the insurrection of January 6, 2021. Then Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of the most prominent critics of former President Donald Trump in the House Republican Conference, announced he won’t seek reelection next year.
Things are very different now. The turning point was the election of Donald Trump to the presidency. His behavior and social media posts opened a Pandora’s Box of racism, bigotry, and prejudice that awakened a part of American society that I thought was an anachronism confined to rural areas in the Southern states.
Boy was I wrong.
But when doing some research, the fracture of the GOP has been brewing for quite a while. Under the Reagan era, the Republican Party traded integrity for tax cuts, deregulation, and a corporate-dominated economy. Now, the party is capitalizing on Trump’s legacy, pushing the “big lie,” downplaying the January 6th insurrection and the national security ramifications of the Maralago FBI raid.
Many GOP midterm candidates demonize Democrats as left-wing radicals, idolize Putin, and adhere to conspiracy theories. One popular looney theory among many of these running in the midterms is the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. This whack-job view fosters the belief that a cabal of Democrats and Jews are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations with non-white immigrants who are overwhelming our borders. They claim this will lead to a nationwide “white genocide.”
It’s hard to believe that many voters who support extremist candidates such as Marjorie Taylor Green, Paul Gosar, Tommy Tuberville, and Lauren Boebert are still afraid of black people, immigrants, women, Democrats, and people who don’t believe in the same things they do. These candidates are playing on such fears to get elected.
As Trump showed us during his tenure, fear is a very useful tool when swaying public opinion. Fear is a visceral and instinctive response, albeit a survival mechanism, but fear makes us very vulnerable as humans, and irrational fears tend to cloud reality.
Instilling fear seems to be the vogue with Republican candidates as of late. It has been a tried and true tactic to make people think that they have something to lose. The fear of immigrants taking jobs, the fear of black people committing crimes in all-white neighborhoods, the fear of stolen elections, lost oil and gas jobs, the fear of a transwoman using the woman’s public restroom, the fear of rising gas prices, vaccines, inflation, the federal government, and taxes.
Talk about clouded reality.
The real fear is the loss of fair elections, the loss of voting rights, the loss of a woman’s right to choose, the loss of worker’s rights, the loss of social security, free speech, human rights, livable wages, affordable healthcare, and the loss of Democracy itself.