You may wonder what happened to that party today if you are old enough to eremember when Republicans wrapped themselves in the stars and stripes.
Republicans gushed about patriotism, which they tied to adherence to the rule of law; they gave total fealty to the police even when officers commit murder, and they blamed the victims.
They treated military service as a right of passage, and anyone who did not serve in the military was considered an un-American outsider.
Service in the military was seen as the number one characteristic that a presidential candidate must have to be considered for the highest executive office and commander in chief of the nation’s military.
Until, of course, their people who did not serve came up to be considered.
People like Ronald Reagan, but when it was Bill Clinton’s turn, it was a major deal, and he was considered a draft-dodger.
The absurdity of that position obviously dawned on them as the all-volunteer military is pulled from less than 10% of the US population.
According to the Pew Research Center, there were around 19 million U.S. veterans as of 2021, according to data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, representing less than 10% of the total U.S. adult population.
Using their logic, well over 297 million people who did not serve in the military would have been considered un-American.
That is not a winning strategy for them, so they no longer use it.
On the issue of policing, they projected an image of being more law-abiding than everyone else, people who dared burn an American flag were worthy of the guillotine. Still, it was perfectly fine for police to desecrate the American flag by changing its color to suit their twisted agenda.
I mean, the rank hypocrisy is stunning. Their hatred of Black Lives Matter (BLM) righteous protesters is stunning. Calls to defund the police wave were met with vicious outrage.’ How dare anyone think of defunding the police? The lunacy of their outrage extended to many in the Democrat party as well. To add insult to injury, the rising crime rate across the country after a twenty-year low added fuel to the fire of their arguments, even though they have zero data that the rise in crime has anything to do with defunding the police.
The reality is that there has been little or no change to police budgets across the country, and in most cases, police budgets have gotten more bloated than before, the calls for defunding.
The important takeaway is that if money, size of police departments, equipment, and the sheer number of police departments had anything to do with keeping crime low, America would be virtually crime-free.
With over 18,000 police departments across the country and a whopping 123 billion dollars spent last year, one would think the hyped-up aggressors who roam the streets to steal, kill and destroy would have crime under control. Maybe they are the ones committing the crimes.
In case you have never heard about REPLACEMENT THEORY, now you have!!!
We want it the way we have been used to having it.
Former Iowa Representative Steve King; ‘we cannot maintain our civilization with other people’s babies.
Lindsay Graham; ” The US will never again elect a Republican president unless lawmakers “do something” about mail-in voting.
Mail-in voting tends to favor Democrats as many Democratic voters prefer to stay at home and mail their ballots in. So their strategy is to cut off the mail-in vote pipeline.
At the height of the 2020 presidential vote count, Lindsay Graham said,“If Republicans don’t challenge and change the U.S. election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again,” Graham said on Fox News. “President Trump should not concede
“I believe without a shadow of a doubt this is the last election,” former Rep. Michele Bachmann, who failed to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, told the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody three months before the 2016 presidential election. “This is it. This is the last election, and the reason why I say that, David, is because it’s a math problem. It’s a math problem of demographics and a changing United States.”
In case you have never heard about REPLACEMENT THEORY, now you have!!!
That’s right in line with“replacement” theory, and Trump — who made immigration the foundation of his 2016 presidential campaign and arguably catered to and weaponized white grievance unlike any candidate in U.S. history. NPR’s Domenico Montanaro wrote in May of this year.
Whether it is the Mother Emanuel Church In Charleston, South Carolina, Buffalo, New York, the Pittsburg Synagogue shooting in Pennsylvania, or others, what we are witnessing is what the political right has created and nurtured as a response to the browning of America.
Donald Trump ran on immigration as the centerpiece of his campaign; during his term, he castigated immigrants and did all in his power to limit and punish immigrants of all stripes except white, who he lamented he needed more of.
After he lost, he blamed immigrants for voting illegally and lied that he won the election, but illegal immigrants voted illegally.
This further turned his demented followers against people who did not look like them and generated more hatred and violence against people of color.
Whites are heading toward minority status in the United States, even if all immigration was shut down today. In 2018, U.S. Census estimates showed for the first time that whites dropped to below 50% of the under-15 population. That change is largely due to migration of Latinos and Asian Americans. Latinos are the largest-growing group, while Asian Americans are the fastest growing. (Writes NPR’s Domenico Montanaro).
As I have written repeatedly, not only are the mass shootings across the county a direct result of white grievance, the Republican strategies against immigration and abortion are directly tied to their morbid fear entrenched in what they characterize as replacement theory.
It is exactly for those reasons that Republicans’ departure from democracy means they are saying we do not care how many of ‘those people are on the other side; we do not care that we are outnumbered; this is our country.
If it means to hell with Democracy, so be it!
They are willing to shred this 246-year experiment now that the specter of a pluralistic society based on merit does not guarantee white entitlement.
In this context, color is the overriding consideration, not Roe Vs. Wade, not the consideration that women are being marched back into being subservient to their husbands even with wealth inherited from their fathers, much less on ordinary policy differences.
Race [trumps] all considerations for white voters who vote republican; that’s the bottom line.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.