We are all just sheep watching Trump's rise

We walk hand-in-hand with him.

We can conclude that something profound has happened to America. Odds appear good that Donald Trump will rumble back into the White House. This will make our congressperson Michelle Fischbach giddy with happiness. She voted against certifying the 2020 election results. 

One can assume that Torrey Westrom will click his heels together. Jeff Backer is still in the legislature, though he no longer represents us. He is the most extreme type of Republican now. He voted against condemning the violence of Jan. 6. 

The Morris area has a state representative whose name sometimes escapes me. It's common to hear talk about how this representative is a more traditional, normal and tasteful type of Republican. If that's the word on the guy, why do area Republicans choose to elect the other kind? But they do. 

Our rep is Paul Anderson. Couldn't get a more typical name than that for out here. Would Anderson click his heels together if Trump gets back in the White House? I think he'd be more low-key about it. But in the end he'd be approving. I think he'd have to. 

So what has happened in America for this weird spell to have taken over? I have reminded about the quaint times of Ronald Reagan, when there was concern about his electability because he had been divorced. How to explain the massive cultural shift, the shift in our collective values leading up to today? Now we have this brazen and dangerous Trump leading the way for Republicans, the party which once stood for temperate behavior. Our behavior should be kept within guardrails, the Republicans of old proclaimed. 

The younger generation tended "liberal" and pushed the boundaries for culturally edgy stuff. The younger people wouldn't give a rip about who had been divorced. We didn't give a rip about who used marijuana. High school kids tried to get dress codes tossed out. 

Republicans and conservatives believed in the conventional values and norms: boys should have their shirts tucked in. Girls should wear dresses and be happy in their home ec. classes. You'd be sent to the counselor if you were caught using a profanity or obscenity. Trump has caused our values to plunge right to the bottom. His quotes underscore how America cannot get dragged any lower. 

But this is the conservative Republican leader of today. A depraved individual who has been found responsible by a jury of sexual assault. We agonize over how slow some of the investigations are proceeding vs. him. Our legal system might need some overhauling. I might add "when this is over." Yes, some overhauling "when this is over," but that presupposes it will end, and that a more conventional set of values will return to America. America as we've known it could end.

 

Would be so easy

Republicans could change horses right now and adopt Asa Hutchinson as their banner-carrier for president. Should be a lead pipe for them. A happy, optimistic and positive person by nature who would realize that Democrats are at least human beings. That's how Ronald Reagan was. He was a mature individual who had experience with a union. He and Tip O'Neill could break bread.

The conservatives who I knew when I was growing up would say of Donald Trump that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. They'd have some other choice words. They'd be flummoxed by Trump's sheer crudity. The crudity flows at us literally daily. It sure happened over the July 4 holiday. Trump's rally in South Carolina showed that if anything, his momentum is picking up. 

I'll remind you that we here in the Midwest should not aspire to be like South Carolina. We have more proper standards here. I wonder what the private thoughts of Mike Rounds and John Thune are. Yet they probably have to stay zippered on that. The Trump wave is building among a considerable portion of America. It must have been like this in Germany during Hitler's rise. Are we prepared to be accountable for ourselves if the same outcome happens? 

History shows vividly that when the masses of people get pushed down long enough, autocracy cannot hold them down anymore. This is just history: an oppressed people will turn to violence. The communists caught up with Mussolini, had him executed and then had his body hung up on meat hooks to be mutilated. 

We need to pray that the proper venting of political sentiment would be through our democratic voting process. All bets are off in America now. How could we reconcile celebrating July 4 with wanting an unstable person like Trump to make his rise again? 

What if Fischbach had gotten her way?

 

Obvious alternatives

It's plain as the nose on your face that there are still decent people seeking the Republican nomination for president. Take Trump out of the picture and we'd get considerably more media attention for the likes of Tim Scott. Trump sucks all the oxygen out of the room. He is an attention-grabbing machine. The media takes to his outrageous quotes like a bear to honey. The sheer outrageousness ought not build up his political stock. And if it does, it speaks volumes about us. 

Most people still have good sense inside of them. I still cannot get Congressperson Fischbach to respond on whether she still stands by her public statements of Jan. 6. She alleged "voting irregularities too voluminous to ignore." Really? If true, that's very concerning. We have a legal system that is tasked with looking over this sort of thing. Is Fischbach saying we can no longer trust our legal system, that is if Democrats are still able to win some elections? Republicans are veering in that direction now. Tear down the FBI and DOJ, for example. 

Jim Jordan

In favor of what? In favor of a system that would get the blessing of Jim Jordan? OK then, we'd have an autocracy. And what does history teach us about that? 

Republicans have effectively contaminated the Supreme Court. They cry out for book-banning which I think is just a ploy to take funding from all publicly supported libraries like in our schools. Conservatives show up at school board meetings with a scary demeanor. Then if legal authorities decide that such behavior is too threatening and needs to be watched, the Jim Jordans of the world will erupt in a tantrum of rage against a "politicized legal apparatus." 

So the political apparatus just needs to step aside and let the most maniacal conservative people run roughshod? De-fund our schools and libraries etc.? 

The striking down of affirmative action by the Supreme Court was just a way of making life miserable for our institutions of higher education. Republicans have long felt that such institutions tend to be left-oriented. Unleash the pit bulls. The headlines suggested yesterday that Republicans are so emboldened by the current direction, they are going after scholarship programs for minority young people. 

 

Fallout felt here in Motown?

I have raised the question about free tuition for Native Americans at our University in Morris. I have said that unless this is based on an actual old treaty - a literal treaty - it could easily be on the chopping block. Because absolutely nothing is restraining the Republicans now. People who should know better like our local Apostolic Christians should insist on conservatism with a higher set of standards and ideals. 

It won't happen. Some of us are just going to have to hunker down. And then God help us, if we deserve it. 

Reminds me of the lyrics of the well-known Greg Lake Christmas song "I Believe in Father Christmas." He wrote that "we get the Christmas we deserve." A subtle hint there that maybe we in America did not deserve such unbounded joy. It was the time of the Vietnam war. So many dead in that war, a war that America lost. 

Sad aspect of so much anti-war messaging then: it had to be subtle. Even the original "Star Trek" TV series had subtle messages in this vein. When the Smothers Brothers came along with a less-subtle approach, they became targets of the John Wayne crowd. Very different times. The World War II generation was at its peak of influence. When they thought of war, they thought of the "good war" of WWII. A myth that any war could be "good."

Greg Lake was part of the famous group "Emerson, Lake and Palmer." The group popularized so-called "progressive rock." It was really just great, refined music. Some critics called it "pretentious." They could go sit under a cow.

Many of us learned the term "synthesizer" from "ELP."

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com