By Labode Obanor
The entire world watched in astonishment, the last couple of years, as one political party in the United States of America gradually unfastened the threads that hold the fabric of the American democracy now for almost 250 years.
The American Democracy and its democratic process had always been the envy of the world, many throngs its shores from various parts of the world in order to experience real societal autonomy, absence of strongman style rulership. A nation that manifests true self-governance and a beacon for freedom; the beauty of american exceptionalism and the last best hope for mankind.
Little did the world know that the threads that hold this system of government together are only as sturdy as its citizens and leaders are willing to keep it. America’s founding father, Benjamin Franklin, when walking out of the constitutional convention in 1787 responded when someone shouted out, “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy? Franklin supposedly responded at once both wittingly and ominously: “A republic if you can keep it.” The Washington Post reported on the speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, as she opened the debate on the impeachment of Donald Trump. The founders of the system never envisaged a situation where a major political party will undermine and even actively seek to destroy the country’s democracy, hence no safeguards were installed.
The Republican Party, also known as the Grand Old Party (GOP), has not only contributed to the decline of the American democracy but has actively enabled a president who wants to wreck it.
When Donald Trump suggested, in 2019, that four Congresswomen of color, who are U.S. citizens, one of them, Ilhan Omar, born in Somalia, to leave the U.S. and “go back” to the “totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came,” the republican party said nothing. Just recently, in a campaign rally, Trump, again, attacked Ilhan Omar: “She’s telling us how to run our country. How did you do where you came from? How is your country doing?” Trump said to a cheering crowd.
Let us be reminded that congresswoman Omar is a lawmaker representing a district in the great state of Minnesota. Her primary responsibility as a lawmaker is to make laws that govern the country.
This doctrine of hate is not a Donald Trump creation, but a symptom of what the republican party has nurtured for the past decades.
Trump’s contemporary republicanism or conservatism or “neocon” as it was commonly called until the end of the 43rd president of the United States, and more latterly, the extreme right and right-wing evangelicals, and particularly in the Obama era and now more frequently, have become: extortionists, hostage-takers, despotic, arsonists, obstructionists, saboteurs, traitors, betrayers, squealing political pigs, hypocrites, etc. Whichever adjective you pick will adequately describe the current republican party. It is quite unlikely that a Lincoln or a Theodore Roosevelt, or an Eisenhower, or a Reagan for that matter will be given a platform in this current political sect.
It is immeasurable, the damage caused to the once highly esteemed party, but yet, the unfaltering and unyielding religious right who have ardently stuck to this dying philosophy have thrown many churchgoers to a civic imbroglio, subjecting them to a permanent state of confusion. Should they listen to their bombastic pastor who is very much an ideologue rather than a preacher? Or their endangered interest found in the country’s battered democracy?
Yet, many have taken to flight. Only 14% of black voters now identify themselves as evangelicals. See the Pew Research on the religious composition of blacks.
The republican party’s electorates continue to dissipate as it results in winning elections through gerrymandering, voters’ suppression, disinformation, and disenfranchisements, to outright bald face cheating. And now ignited is a new war between the republican party and America over the replacement of the 9th jurist of the Supreme Court following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Republican Party is hell-bent on jamming through the senate, Trump’s Supreme Court’s pick in the middle of an election even though they vowed never to do such a thing when they robbed ex-president Obama of his pick early in 2016 in an election year.
Should I mention again, dishonesty, duplicity, corruption? Enough already.
Soon enough, the republican party’s last generation of the electorate (the baby boomers), will soon change addresses, and this party will become a national party no more.
The GOP’s duplicity and malfeasance are deep-seated, reprobate minds incapable of redemption.
Thankfully, the United States of America is increasingly diversifying. In 20 years, the country will be a majority-minority country. Beginning from the election of Joe Biden, it will be almost impossible for a Republican to win the presidency if the party does not alter its current course. Hopefully, the restoring, repairing, and reattaching of the American fabric can begin, come January 2021.
We await.
You wrote like a typical unhinged, mindless, leftwing hypocrite.
Ike, thanks for your comment. The injury on American republic should not be a leftwing v. rightwing quarrel, But an issue that should keep America and world awake at night.
The democratic party is responsible for all that you are falsely attributing to the Republican party. Democratic party is the party of ANTIFA, communist, abortionists, women-libs, athiests, senseless African Americans, globalists, fanatical environmentalists, illegal immigrants and terrorists. A Biden win will spell doom for the USA.
Abubakar, It is okay to attack the democratic party for policies that you think threatens the Union, if there are any. However, none of what you attributed to the democratic party above, if true, threatens the Union. Contrast that to the Republican party who are currently inviting foreign power (Russia) to interfere in the most sacred process of of any country’s democracy, The Election.
Absolute nonsense. You prefer a crook, wife cheater, tax dodger an avid racist, immigrant hater , religious zealot that does not practice the love of Jesus to rule. This man lies every second and in love with dictators of the world. Be not deceived, I cannot support any one against me, my race and my advancement.
Hmmm. The GOP’s claws have remained withdrawn for long enough. The Party is at the verge of total exposure; meaning that there’s no need for binoculars to observe that the Republican Party rules with an iron fist and should this be allowed to continue after November, 2020, the US of A may find itself relocating to West Africa somewhere next to either Liberia or Sierra Leone and asking for ECOMOG’s intervention. I said this to some friends even during the Trump and Clinton Electioneering Campaigns because I was in the U.S then and I observed the undemocratic methodologies adopted by Trump in his campaigns, his language and the unemotional pursuit of Presidency-at-all-cost and said to myself, this guy can’t be good for this 200 years plus American Democracy.
Incidentally, my family was part of the Bi-Centennial Celebration of the USA’s in 1977. It was grand and colorful but today’s USA doesn’t mirror that time in the life of this great nation.
Tokunbo, I agree. If the USA doesn’t plug this bleed to its democracy, we may not recognize the country after another 4 years should DJT wins.
? It made a very interesting read. I doubt, though, if I am as optimistic about America as you are. When America readily forgot that Obama salvaged it from the brink of the worst economic and financial debacle in nearly a century, even in the face of a near 100% opposition from the majority Republicans and judiciary, by ultimately choosing to elect a narcissistic, bigoted, clueless, and immoral con-man, I have little faith in such people.
The democratic party is responsible for all that you are falsely attributing to the Republican party. Democratic party is the party of ANTIFA, communist, abortionists, women-libs, athiests, senseless African Americans, globalists, fanatical environmentalists, illegal immigrants and terrorists. A Biden win will spell doom for the USA.
Great write up LaBode.
You guys will not cease to amaze me. You keep talking about Russian collusion without any proof. But we have proof that the membership of the democratic party are anti America in everything they do and pursue as a policy. For instance they are against every Trump policies which are in every sense pro-USA and pro-American growth. Trump has tamed China through his successful trade with the predator country, leading higher employment figures in the US and resuscitation of the long dead great American manufacturing due to the misrule of his predecessors especially the inept Obama. Trump has pulled out of the Paris agreement which full of bias against the US industrial activities while deliberately ignoring China on the basis of a hoax of climate change. He is opposed to illegal immigration into the USA, which every patriotic president should do; thus he has succeeded in building a wall of more than 350 KMs long and still ongoing. The democrats are against this and many more of his America first policies because they hate the USA. They play identity politics by using minority groups such as the black community and pushing the race card through Marxist terrorists groups such as the BLM just to ignite a race war and pave way for socialism in the US. The democratic party wants to open up America to illegal immigrants in order to alter the country’s demography in the near future with the intent of making the majority white population a minority after they’ve built the greatest country on earth. The DNC aligns with China, globalists, and fanatical environmentalists, to bring the US economy down. Trump is a nationalist and refuses all this and he has become their enemy. Unlike others before him he put America first. Until the Covid-19 he succeeded in building the greatest US economy ever. Corona virus in an election year is their only hope and die is cast.
Abubakar,
You have been drinking right wing cool aid.
This concoction is making you spill baselsss claims. Nothing in what you said above has any semblance of truth. BLM a terrorist group!??! Trump built 350KM of wall!!? What tabloid did you get these from?
Na wa o!!
The post highlights a very small, quiet, and growing sentiment that they we’ve been hearing about. As the world get’s closer due to technology and connectivity, more freedoms and access to connectivity, we all really get to know each other and relationships still matter. Trump has, no question, put US relationships with Africa in question. You gave clear examples and comparisons to support your argument. It’s a good post. – That said, the US has been a very close partner with Nigeria in health, technology, and security and it’s my hope that the relationship will continue and we can build better ways forward 2021 and beyond …