By Charles Thomas
Guest Columnist
As if it wasn’t enough to call immigrants out for “poisoning the blood of America,” last weekend the Republican frontrunner for president went after the late John McCain once again.
It seems as if the man-child from Mar-A-Lago has a very obvious problem with military leaders, in addition to judges and court authorities all across America. He has called for the execution of retired Gen. Mark Milley after his former chief of staff, John Kelley, confirmed that Trump did in fact call dead U.S. service men ‘suckers.” Trump said he was dumb and that he was “fired like a dog.” Perhaps his disdain for military personnel is centered on his guilt from receiving multiple deferments because of those deadly bone spurs that prohibited him from living a normal life.
During his term as president, far too many Americans died during the COVID-19 pandemic unnecessarily because he was a man more interested in what was in his best interest and not what would be in the best interest of America. The people who are consistently sounding the alarms about his return to the White House are not Democratic operatives; to the contrary, they are Republicans who worked close enough to Trump to realize the dangers that another Trump presidency would invoke on not just America, but the world as a whole.
Male courage in the Republican Party is an entity that is in short supply. Those who braved the harassment of the right-wing zealots appear to be mostly ladies with courage and dignity, people like Meghan McCain, Cassidy Hutchinson, Allysa Farah Griffin, Liz Cheney, all Republicans.
Oh, there were some male staff who gave their views on Trump but were not willing to go on national television the way that these ladies have and say what they said privately on national TV. The list is long: Reince Priebus, H.R. McMaster, Steve Mnuchin, Roy Cohn, John Kelly, James Mattis, William Barr and Rex Tillerson, all had negative opinions of the former president. Some of the statements are not printable for this newspaper.
He has called for the release of the Jan. 6 terrorists, calling them, even after 90% guilty pleas, “hostages” knowing that they assaulted law enforcement, stole government documents, defecated on the floors, paraded with an enemy flag and called for the death of the vice president and speaker of the house. Would Republicans call them “hostages” if they did exactly the same things but had names not native to America like Mohammed, Khalid or Hamza? Would they be calling for their release?
And when Elise Stefanik celebrated the removal of Harvard President Claudine Gay because she didn’t condemn anti-Semitism as vigorously as she thought she should have, I look back and wonder why she didn’t feel as strongly about asking the then-President to step down when White supremists paraded in South Carolina shouting, “Jews will not replace us” after the White House occupant said, “There were very fine people on both sides.” If she thinks it is a priority for a college president to step down for those reasons, why does she feel that a president is OK with much more severe offensive language?
The Republican Party today is not the party of your father and grandfather. It is a party unrecognizable at times as it spews venomous rhetoric daily against anyone or anything opposed to its ideology as well as vocal critics of the current party leader. That’s the MAGA takeover and the reason Republicans with dignity and respect for the law have exited this current brand of Republican conservatism.
Ronald Reagan once said, “You can live in France, but you can not become a Frenchman. You can go live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you can not become a German, a Turk or a Japanese. But anyone from any corner of the earth can come to America and become an American.” That is what Republicans used to sound like, and that is why so many have left this current version of whatever it has become now on the right.
From banning books in libraries in an effort to rewrite history, to cheering on Capitol rioters, to defending America’s worst self-inflicted injury, we will survive because good people on the left and good people on the right are the people that make up most of America. I believe that dignity will be on display next November.
Charles Thomas lives in Lima. His column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Lima News editorial board or AIM Media, owner of The Lima News.
