Republicans flee from truth like rats jumping from a burning ship

Echo opinion essay published in the Austin American-Statesman in Texas (serving the community, since 1871): 

Republicans don’t have a trust gap. What they have is a truth gap.

Trust? Republicans have it aplenty -- even on the most complex scientific matters. They just award it to barbershop (fake!) oracles like Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Kid Rock.

This has resulted in two nations: one that relies on those who actually understand science and one that, in the words of University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd, relies on “fear, lack of critical thinking, confirmation bias and political tribalism”— in so many words.

Hence, according to the 2021, General Social Survey, while 64 percent of Democrats express a “great deal” of confidence in medical science, only 34 percent of Republicans share that confidence.

This discrepancy translates directly to the abominable disparity in vaccination – and death – among Republicans and Democrats during this pandemic.

Those who would change the subject by pointing to vaccine hesitancy among Blacks should know that after balking early, Black Americans embraced the vaccine to the point where by October, Kaiser Family Foundation reported roughly equal rates of vaccination for Blacks, Hispanics and white Americans.

But of course, the truth gap – the rate by which Republicans flee from truth about vaccines’ and masks’ safety and effectiveness – far exceeds their aversion to scientific consensus.

We’ve seen it in embracing a huckster for president who called climate change a “Chinese hoax.” We’ve seen it in efforts to undercut the teaching of evolution.

And since truth is the enemy for the majority of today’s Republicans, no more frightening foe exists than that schoolchildren learn how human exploitation and institutional racism underlie the American experience.

Since truth is the enemy, the secret of success in the Republican Party today is to genuflect at Donald Trump’s knee and take as sacrament his cavalcade of lies, particularly the Big One about the 2020, election.

The race for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in Ohio has demonstrated that any candidate who won’t lie the Trump way won’t win.


Ohio state treasurer Josh Mandel, Republican seeking nomination to the U.S. Senate, has declared not only “the election was stolen” from Trump but that the pandemic is the result of “a bio weapon manufactured by the Chinese Communist Party,” indeed, constructed in China’s labs to punish Trump.

His rival for the GOP nomination, author J.D. Vance, was highly critical of Trump – before entering the race and getting a whiff of the winds. Now he, too, claims the election was “stolen.”

To make points with people whose eyes weren’t burned irrevocably by what their TV screens showed them January 6, 2021, Vance now calls the terrorists who tried to stop the electoral count (fake!) “political prisoners.”

Truth is the enemy, people. Your eyes are what lie.

A recent poll of Republicans finds Trump comfortably atop the field of GOP pretenders for 2024, despite the Big Lie, despite his attempted coup, despite criminal and civil probes, despite a covey of crooks who owe their freedom to his pardoning pen.
(By the way, neither the greenhouse effect nor evolution is a theory, as in an untested hunch. It’s simple science.)

Republicans must jump from the evil tRumpzi sinking ship.

No, the Republicans don’t have a “trust gap.” They simply, irrevocably, refuse to acknowledge truth.

The US $ dollar says “In God we trust.” The majority of Republicans have a whole other dogma in 2022, which is to trust in The Donald.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado.

Trumpism is cultism- #GQP

Editorial: Fed by Trump's lies, the mob laid siege to our democracy!
Echo editorial opinion published in the Corpus Christi Caller Times and the Austin American-Statesman, Texas.

During the gathering of Congress on Wednesday January 6th, to confirm the presidential election results soon became one of the darkest days for American democracy, since the Civil War.

Bloodshed. Shattered windows. Tear gas. Elected officials and their staffers huddled in locked offices while (dangerous!)pro-Trump (crazy!)rioters stormed the halls of Congress.

Donald Trump on Wednesday January 6th, delivered his American carnage. (Maine Writer- in a delusional self fulling prophesy, the former guy orated the conspiracy theories and the big lie to a crazed cult of domestic terrorists- QAnon, etc. )

It was a vile and seditious spectacle, and a wholly predictable one. Trump has spent the past two months refusing to concede to President-elect Joe Biden (The President!). He continued spewing (the big lie!) conspiracies about a “rigged” and “stolen” election and urging his followers to fight back. The protest, Wednesday, January 6th, Trump tweeted weeks ago, “will be wild!”

All of the Republican officials who echoed that rhetoric, who amplified bogus claims of voter fraud, who took extraordinary steps to try to overturn the election — all of them emboldened and legitimized the lawless mob that stopped our country in its tracks on Wednesday. Historians will record — and Texas voters should remember — the disgraceful acts of Sen. Ted Cruz, U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud and others who came to the Capitol, on Wednesday, January 6th, seeking to delegitimize votes from key states, while Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton plied the Trump rally (GQP) crowd with more falsehoods about a stolen election.

Maybe this was a political game to them?

But, the mob that poured into the Capitol wasn’t playing. 

They were fed a steady diet of lies that their country is being stolen from them and that their votes don't matter, they turned to violence to be heard.

The sickening events Wednesday, January 6th, underscored the value of our democratic norms and the weight of presidential rhetoric. In both his 2016, and 2020, campaigns, Trump sowed doubt about the legitimacy of American election results. 

Incredulously, the former guy refused to commit to accepting the outcome of the 2020 election. And, during his (failed!) reelection bid, he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

These are not optional features in a democracy. They are essential to its survival.

Even at the bitter end of his term — even after a person had been shot and killed on Wednesday, January 6th, inside our seat of the U.S. government, and the National Guard had been dispatched to quell violence at the Capitol — Trump couldn’t see past his ego to act for the good of the nation. Instead, the former guy took to Twitter to urge peace, yes, but also to regurgitate election grievances and tell the insurrectionists: “We love you, you’re very special." His message was deemed so reckless that Twitter took it down.

This is not an America most of us recognize. The Republican Party, indeed the nation, has been poisoned (!) by Trumpism. The country, which voted to purge Trump, can recover. But, will the GOP? #GQP

Maine Writer postscript: #Trupmism is cultism!