Mr. Speaker, It’s time to recognize Trumpism for what it really Is… “Radical Conservatism”
Mr. Speaker, today the man you have endorsed to be the next President of the United States and the standard bearer of the party you have…
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Mr. Speaker, today the man you have endorsed to be the next President of the United States and the standard bearer of the party you have devoted your life to jokingly advocated the assassination of a political opponent or an armed insurrection.
Your response?
A joke gone bad…
For your sake, Mr. Speaker, I hope you were referring to the candidate and not the comments. Otherwise, this is just another example of the perilous game you have been playing in order to curry favor with a dangerously ignorant portion of your electorate.
I recognize that you have been taken by surprise by the wave of Trumpism that overcame your party this year. It’s not an enviable position to be in. For the better part of a year you have been perched on your lifeguard stand at Capitol Hill ready to blow the whistle whenever the Grand Old Party has been at risk of drowning in a sea of Trumpism. But you have done so at your own peril Mr. Speaker. The crashing waves of Trumpism have eroded what little honor and nobility the Republican Party had left.
By endorsing Trump and refusing to rescind that endorsement after each despicable and dangerous statement he makes you own those statements. Your endorsement is an endorsement for everything he espouses. What Donald Trump espouses is not the conservatism you believe in… Let’s call it for what it really is: Radical Conservatism.
As a country we have been driven by fear of ISIS and its attempts to radicalize people within our borders and abroad. Meanwhile, we have watched the standard bearer of your party radicalize far more Americans in the span of a year than ISIS has in several. But we have failed to recognize it as such because men like you, Mr. Speaker, have sought to shield it from criticism. But its time to recognize it for what it is…
Trump, in his reckless pursuit to win the election, stoked the flames of racial animus in order to ride the wave of pent up white nationalism to victory in the Republican primaries. Along the way, from one incendiary statement to another, (statements you half-heartedly tried to distance yourself from at times) Trump began to normalize hatred, crudity and ignorance.
Just as ISIS grew out of the dark hearts of self-perceived aggrieved authoritarians with a propensity for magical thinking, so too have the seeds of Trumpism begun to bear dark fruit in our shining city upon a hill.
ISIS hates America. ISIS hates America for our freedom, for our diversity, for our acceptance. I’d argue Trumpism hates America for the same reasons.
When Trump argues that we need to “make American great again” he is saying to millions of Americans that he hates what America currently is. His supporters are drawn to this message because they hate the America of today too. They hate its freedom to be with the person you love regardless of gender. They hate its diversity. They hate the way we accept people of all ethnicities, genders, sexual preference and creeds.
They long for an America where melanin deficiency was the ticket to higher status and higher wages. They long for a time that has been lost in the great wake of human and societal progress. But they can’t ever get that America back, no matter what the brash, orange-tinged snake oil salesman says. They can’t because progress and human decency stand in the way.
ISIS longs for a caliphate to rule over the land with their hateful ideology. They can’t have that either because progress and human decency stand in the way. Because they can’t get their way, they turn to violence to get our attention, but still we reject it at every turn.
Because the ideology is so ultimately vacant, they seek out the broken and empty souls in the world to radicalize for their ends. Trump takes a similar approach.
Mr. Speaker, its time to fight against the pervasive darkness of Radical Conservatism.
With increasingly hostile rhetoric, Donald Trump continues to sow the seeds of violent insurrection and democratic turmoil. In the past few weeks alone he has invited foreign adversaries to hack our government, called into question the legitimacy of our democracy and called for the assassination of a political opponent under the cover of jest. But the paranoid masses who have fallen under his spell hear his words. Can we claim to be surprised when a confused soul puts these words into action?
Your words still carry weight, at least for the time being. That is why I ask:
Mr. Speaker, do you disavow Radical Conservatism and reject Donald Trump as the standard bearer of the Republican Party?