What's behind distortion of reality
Our community, state and country are all coming apart at the seams. To what end?
Brent Regan of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee can tell you. It’s the chairman’s goal to seek power over all aspects of our local society. In the process, he’s:
• Endangered the accreditation of NIC by putting Todd Banducci and two others on the NIC board. Loss of accreditation would be devastating for our economy and the educational pursuits of our children.
• Encouraged an atmosphere that has led to death threats against healthcare workers. Our county is one of the worst in the country for vaccination rates. Have you noticed that the local death rate has been increasing?
• Encouraged an atmosphere that has led to demands that library books be banned and school courses be purged because of the so-called critical race theory, which doesn’t exist locally.
What Regan has wrought here, other GOP “leaders” have pursued nationwide. These adjectives apply to some in the Republican Party’s leadership and key followers: violent, radical, morally bankrupt, irrational, power mad, nihilistic, racist, unrestrained, hypocritical. And I ask again, to what end? Much of what the GOP stands for is based on lies.
Donald Trump and his minions invented the Big Lie. Everything he doesn’t like he labels Fake News, but it is the Republicans who are distorting reality to the point of endangering our very democracy. Trump claims the 2020 election was stolen. It wasn’t. But now he and state GOP leaders are using that claim to destroy our election system by rejecting voting rights so Republicans can seize power next year and keep it for decades to come.
And the United States will become a dictatorship.
And it will happen because of an embrace of corruption.
As all this plays out, many GOP members are showing that they reject the U.S. Constitution, that they accept the criminal behavior of some in their party, that they have no compassion for those in need, that they are using the Postal Service as a political weapon, that they are disseminating propaganda, that they are distorting what’s really going on with immigration, crime and the pandemic for political gain.
Many in the Republican Party don’t want to “look back” at the treasonous attempt to overthrow our government on Jan. 6. Some members in Congress and such Trump “advisers” as Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and Don Jr. aided and abetted in that insurrection. No, they want to “look forward” to changing the name of the Republican Party to the Authoritarian Party.
Should we go to Code Red because the GOP is rejecting what is happening to our climate? If you don’t like all those Californians coming to Idaho, just wait awhile for the environment to worsen.
Should we go to Code Red because Trump’s anger issues are endangering our country? Many of his followers want to know when they can turn our cold civil war into a hot shooting war. Just look at the Rittenhouse not-guilty verdict. Now millions have a license to kill.
Should we go to Code Red because Republican senators have put a hold on key nominations, especially for the State Department? Will Putin’s ambitions endanger our military assets while those senators sit on their thumbs?
Meanwhile, under President Biden, the unemployment rate is dropping, fewer people are filing jobless claims, the supply chain crisis has eased dramatically, and the inflation rate is starting to reverse.
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John Strobel is a Kootenai County resident.