What to do? Contact lawmakers
Excellent suggestions for meaningful ways to beat pandemic boredom. (Re: “What to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do,” Events, Dec. 17.) I would add a suggestion to contact your members of Congress to continue the dialogue of creating a safer and more equitable America. The recently past pandemic relief package is a down payment on this work, created by a bipartisan group. Thanking your representative and senators for this relief and the bipartisan work, while reminding them it is only a beginning, and continuing to contact them as time goes on will help make our country an equitable place for all.
Willie Dickerson/via internet
GOP 2.0
Even though Trump has been defeated, there is still no home for Republicans committed to representative government, truth and the rule of law, nor is one likely to emerge anytime soon. So what’s next for Republicans who reject their party’s attempts to incinerate the Constitution and overthrow a free and fair election in the service of one man’s authoritarian power grabs?
I wish I could tell you that the future looks bright. I wish I could tell you that with Trump no longer in power that they will return to their roots as being the Party of Lincoln, Reagan or even John McCain. While Trump may be temporarily vanquished, rest assured that he is still a kingmaker actively plotting his metaphorical escape from Elba Island for one last crack at taking over the world.
For decades, Republicans rejected the science of climate change due to political inconvenience and now reject that their candidate lost the election. In each case, one of America’s two major parties simply refused to accept facts it didn’t like. What Republicans say they believe flows from what they want to do, whether it’s ignore a deadly disease or stay in power despite the voters’ verdict. Do you think these people are going to become more reasonable once Biden takes office? Not on your life.
Over the next four years the Republican Party will be a roiling cauldron of derangement, always skating the line that separates the merely clownish from the dangerous and even violent.
The Tea Party that formed in the early days of the Obama administration was unruly and potentially threatening to Republican officeholders, since it produced primary challenges from the right that ousted some established members of Congress. The reaction of just about every Republican was to try to ride the Tea Party tiger without getting eaten.
How will that process play out this time? Every force on the right will push it in the direction of being crazier. As extreme as the Tea Party was, it was nothing compared to the QAnon-inflected hysteria that now grips the GOP. Tea Partiers believed that Obama was born in Kenya; significant parts of today’s Republican Party believe that Obama and other Democrats are Satan-worshiping, child-sex-trafficking pedophilic cannibals.
While 2020 saw the party nominate a bunch of QAnon supporters, 2022 could see a wave of these nutballs elected to Congress. Once they get there, they’ll pull the party not just further to the right but to places that will make the burn-it-all-down philosophy of the Tea Party seem like the height of responsible governance. Just as establishment Republicans used to say, “I’m a Tea Partier, too! Please don’t hurt me!,” in the coming years they’ll keep trying to demonstrate that they’re as deranged as their party’s base, maintaining the fantasy that the election was stolen and indulging every new conspiracy theory that finds purchase in the fevered minds of 2024 primary voters. And of course, the biggest difference will be the continuing presence of Trump himself, who will ensure that the opposition won’t ever calm down.
The descent of the GOP did not begin with Trump’s ride down an escalator five years ago. It started with the party’s Faustian bargain with racism, along with its embrace of billionaire backers who fund elections, think tanks and media networks producing propaganda for extremists. All of this serves as a distraction from decades-long strategies to legalize voter suppression. As a result, the future of American democracy will not be resolved by Trump’s departure from the White House. It will require the party of Lincoln to again embrace democracy. The Republican Party must first hit bottom and burn to the ground, if only so that it can be born again. Like a phoenix that rises from its own ashes, so too can the Republican Party and grab the mantle of their original ideals and begin to take their first steps out of the wilderness.
Brian Litwin/Longmont
GOP herd mentality
Throughout 2020, the mainstream media — until now — has steadfastly avoided reporting the awful truth that has become increasingly obvious and apparent to the American public, as the months pass and the disastrous death toll climbs from COVID-19.
The failed far-right Trump regime’s unofficial policy all along in regards to the COVID-19 pandemic was the so-called public health strategy of herd immunity. This pathetic policy of complete surrender to the coronavirus is a direct result of the racist Republican Party’s malign neglect and “herd mentality,” as deranged Donald Trump himself put it in his now infamous and incredibly incriminating Freudian slip.
Traitor Trump has made it perfectly clear over the course of this conservative-caused catastrophe that he wants, in his own words, a “herd developed” solution to the crisis of his own making. How many times now has diabolical Donald insisted upon the efficacy and acted upon his apparent belief that purposefully increasing public infection rates (and consequently the death rate) is a laudable goal that Trump personally prefers? Videotape doesn’t lie; Donald Trump does.
Over 300,000 Americans are dead, most of whom didn’t have to die! Delusional Donald Trump is directly to blame for this genocidal crime against humanity (not to mention his countless crimes against the Constitution), and this mindless monster Trump must be held accountable — one way or another. It’s up to you, people of America. Do what must be done. If the courts won’t act, we must. History is what we make it.
Being voted out of office in a landslide is insufficient punishment for Vladimir Putin’s puppet Donald Trump. Traitor Trump deserves to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law upon the end of his pathological presidency on Jan. 20.
The American people have already spoken and Donald Trump is done, son! No presidential pardon is going to save the Trump crime family from state civil and criminal prosecutions, which is why the state of New York will have the final word on the fate of these farcical fascists and their bogus business empire.
Jacob Pickering/via internet
Lawmakers should weigh in on cultured meat
As the pandemic continues to tear through the country, now is the time for Senators Cory Gardner and Michael Bennet to support federal funding for cultured-meat research. For those who don’t know, this revolutionary protein is grown from cells, without slaughtering animals. Since nonhumans are removed from the process, the risk of another outbreak of zoonotic disease would be significantly reduced.
In addition to COVID-19, a number of other illnesses have made the jump from animals to humans in recent years. You might know some of them as bird flu or swine flu. We need a cultured meat which is cheaper and better-tasting than its slaughtered counterpart to prevent the next pandemic. This can be achieved with federal funding for open-access research. It’s simply too urgent to leave to the private sector.
Jon Hochschartner/via internet
