Mammon Smirked
MAMMON SMIRKED
By Deborah Long
The Republican Party is all fringe and no center. But the GOP leadership is another story. It has essentially run the country as a perverse public/private partnership for decades. Our tragic flaw, as the ancient Greeks would say, is that we continually fail to understand the difference between Republican strategy and Republican tactics.
We’re a lazy bunch here in America. We are raised to believe in belief – a dangerous style of thinking that predictably casts us as the fish being shot at while swimming contentedly in the barrel.
The strategy to use public resources to dominate the global demand for energy by owning, providing and managing a steady stream of crude oil, will permit a few companies to own and maintain the means by which entire economies can function. A tactic to achieve this would be to oppose all means by which the global economy can shift away from its dependence on fossil fuels. It would be successful if the actual costs of an oil economy are not part of any political debate on its use. Climate change denial, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, deregulation of the oil and gas sector, undermining the EPA, under-funding energy diversification and renewable sources such as wind and solar, and decades of oil wars in the Middle East - are Republican tactics used to protect this industry. According to a 2018 Pew Research study, three-quarters of Democrats and Democratic leaners believe the Earth is warming primarily due to human causes, compared with only 26% among their Republican counterparts. Fossil fuels are responsible for climate change. The oil and gas sector produces fewer jobs than the renewable energy sector does. Renewable energy is the future.
Guess who is the largest crude oil producer in the world. We are. And as glaciers melt, a warm welcome from the barrel goes out to all Republican voters who never ask why.
And then there are guns. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), of the top 100 arms-producing and military services companies in the world, 42 of them are based in the US. In 2018 the top 100 sold $398.2 billion in arms globally, and of that number, US based companies sold $226.6 billion, accounting for 57%. Russian companies are second with 9.5% with sales totaling $37.7 billion.
According to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the American gun industry manufactured more than 11 million firearms for domestic consumption in 2016. And 70% of the guns recovered from crimes in Mexico are of U.S. origin. We are the world’s leading merchant of death. So, thank you Republicans who think we’re under attack by brown skinned rapists; thank you NRA …. and welcome to the barrel for those Republicans who think it’s all about the right to bear arms.
The Republican policies that earn the US the distinction as the world’s leading merchant of death – with our willful destruction of the biosphere and our support of continual wars across the globe - succeed because of the tactics that Republicans use to persuade Americans to sign on to the ideas that preserve their contemptible ideology. These include propaganda like: Liberals are docile sheeple with no guts and no patriotism; and Republicans are the makers, and the rest are the takers. Republicans have weaponized racism and continually drum up fake patriotism, while simultaneously gorging on the public treasury. They cut corporate taxes while seeking to dismantle our social safety net - and they call it “reform”. They introduce Christian fundamentalism into our constitutionally mandated, secular government and call it “freedom of religion”. This party is poisoned with dishonesty and greed, and its voters are on the wrong side of history and tremendously proud of it.
This is a party that flies the flag of conflict of interest. It confirms nominees like Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, the billionaire who was Vice Chairman of Bank of Cyprus, a well-known money laundering operation, and who is now implicated in the Russia probe. It is the party that confirmed Betsy DeVoss, a wealthy Republican donor and current Secretary of Education, whose brother, Eric Prince, head of Blackwater, is also implicated in the Russian probe. Its confirmed nominees make up a literal rogues’ gallery of corruption.
But even if we remove Trump and his toadies, his cult remains. And his cult now owns the Republican Party - a party that is all fringe and no center. And this cult is fertile ground for any demagogue with the means to manipulate those who never ask questions – those who believe in belief. We cannot afford to merely throw Trump and his cronies in jail; we must peel back the onion and see the rot that resides within the Republican Party… within America’s Grand Old Party.
Deborah Long is a Principal at Development Management Group, Inc. and founder of several non-profit charitable organizations. If you find her perspectives interesting, controversial, or provocative, follow her at: https://www.facebook.com/debby.long.98499?ref=br_rs
