~American Politics 2023-24 ~ Facts, History, Media and Opinion

 

~American Politics 2023-24 ~ 

Facts, History, Media and Opinion

First Let's Deal with Facts

     On December 17, 2023 while sparking new backlash from critics that his anti-immigrant sentiment echoes Adolf Hitler.

"They're poisoning the blood of our country. That's what they've done," Trump said Saturday in Durham, New Hampshire. "They're coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, over the world. They're pouring into our country."

    The former president, again, praised authoritarian leaders including Hungary's Viktor Orban, China's Xi Jinping and North Korea's Kim Jong Un -- and called President Joe Biden a "threat to democracy," reversing a frequent attack of Biden on him. Trump went on to quote Russia's president when calling the criminal cases pending against him "politically motivated." Prosecutors have rejected that accusation and defended their work. see (ABC NEWS report by Lalee Ibssa , Soo Rin Kim, Libby Cathey, and Gabriella Abdul-Hakim December 18, 2023, 4:54 am).

     When Senator Lendsy Graham was asked about the language that the current front runner on Meet the Press his response was "I could care less about what language people use as long as we get it right". 

 When Dealing with History let's Deal with History

    When we revisit history we could go back to the 1800 and early 1900s on the ideology of fascism and racism in America and around the world. However, lets just look at history from early March.-1933 as Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and ultimately Führer of Germany on August 2, 1934.  It was Hitler who wrote in his book "All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning". Throughout the book, Jews are equated with "germs'' and presented as the "international poisoners" of society. According to Hitler's ideology, the only solution was their extermination. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.

    During the time of Hitler's rise to power, there was a sense of apathy and ignorance by those who ignored the words that were coming from a mad man. Hitler continued to face some opposition within the Nazi Party. Opponents of Hitler in the leadership had Hermann Esser expelled from the party, and they printed 3,000 copies of a pamphlet attacking Hitler as a traitor to the party. In the following days, Hitler spoke to several large audiences and defended himself and Esser, to thunderous applause. His strategy proved successful, and at a special party congress he was granted absolute power as party chairman, succeeding Drexler, by a vote of 533 to 1.

    In the United States in 1932, America was a nation living in fear. A global depression - the worst in history - had thrown millions out of work. Unemployment was approaching 25 percent. Factories were silent. During the 1930s, the combination of the Great Depression and the memory of tragic losses in World War I contributed to pushing American public opinion and policy toward isolationism. Isolationists advocated non-involvement in European and Asian conflicts and non-entanglement in international politics.

    In an article authored by Lily Rothman fr Time Magazine on October 4, 2028, she points out that the threat of Nazism in the United States before World War II was greater than we generally remember today, and that those forces offer valuable lessons decades later — and not just because part of that story is the history of the “America First” idea, born of pre-WWII isolationism and later reborn as a slogan for now-former President Donald Trump.

The Media:

     What is the role of a news reporter? Reporters gather news and information through multiple sources, verify the source for reliability and the information for accuracy, create a report and submit it to an editor or producer. They obtain information from their contacts, through personal interviews, press conferences and from other news agencies. A reporter is a journalist who uses investigation and research to gather the details of a story or event, and deliver the facts to the public through a medium or platform. The topics reporters could research include local and global events and often involve field investigation. The role of a reporter is responsible for delivering updates and analysis on current events with the main goal to keep the public updated. They create stories and breaking news through different channels such as radio, television, online news sites, and printed newspapers and magazines.

The Opinion:

    My mother taught us many truths. If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything, never be a follower, be a leader and if you fail to know where you come from, your history, you are doomed to repeat it, when you see injustice speak up against it no matter how unpopular it may be. 

    America is not standing up and we're falling for the biggest con since the rise of Hitler and Benito Mussolini because we are failing to remember where we come from, our history, we are doomed because we are repeating it, Our press, politicians and yes, the American voter are all guilty. 

    In knowing our American history, how can 58% fifty-eight percent of likely Republican caucus voters say they support the former president. That's not a con being perpetrated or a cult, that is standing for something, that is being exactly who their grandparents were in America in 1932 as a nation living in fear. Fear of becoming the new minority, fear of seeing America becoming what it was meant to be in the purest form of our Declaration of Independence, and principle, central claim that “all men are created equal” is becoming a reality for all of its citizens because inherently they believed that those words only applied to white men and not South Americans, Asians, Jewish and African descendants. This fear is a top-down philosophy starting with the 1% of the wealthiest white American men  and women in power carrying down to the 99% percent of poorest white American men and women who carry the same fear and grievance, especially men. You can call it White Nationalism but it translates to 58% fifty-eight percent of likely Republican caucus voters who support Donald Trump, not over looking that if you had Reagan Democrats and Reagan Independent voters it's a safe bet that you also have Democratic and Independent voters who support Doanld Trump and with an Electoral College, third party candidates it's not a given that Joe Biden will win the 2024 election.

    That opinion would explain the need for old white men's need to control women's healthcare decisions, what is taught in schools and what is not; on the redrawing of districts and all the tings that they believe would give them control. That opinion is a better understanding of why like Madison Avenue, the Constitution of the United States only applies when the issues involve money or the money that controls the narrative. As long as there is a buying power within a block of an issue being the law or a particular section of people can usurp the status quo or the law. This is the reason why both the Supreme Court and the American people are willing to ignore  Section 3 of the Civil War-era 14th Amendment saying “No person shall ... hold any office, civil or military, under the United States ... who, having previously taken an oath ... as an officer of the United States ... to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion. So is America now a country that will uphold Democracy or have we become a Cult to Autocrats?

Let's Be Honest about the Republican Party

 Let’s be honest. The Republican Party as we know it is dead. It’s time for conservitives to stop saying they want their party back. It’s done, over and has been brought to its end by the same people who are the decendant’s of the Dixicrates, the Jim Crow era loaylist.

The United States Constitution is silent on the subject of political parties. The Founding Fathers did not originally intend for American politics to be partisan. In Federalist Papers No. 9 and No. 10, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, respectively, wrote specifically about the dangers of domestic political factions. In addition, the first President of the United States, George Washington, was not a member of any political party at the time of his election or throughout his tenure as president. Furthermore, he hoped that political parties would not be formed, fearing conflict and stagnation, as outlined in his Farewell Address. The Founders “did not believe in parties as such, scorned those that they were conscious of as historical models, had a keen terror of party spirit and its evil consequences," but, Richard Hofstadter wrote, "almost as soon as their national government was in operation, [they] found it necessary to establish parties.”

The aftermath

First Party System: 1792–1824

• The network of followers of Alexander Hamilton, the Hamiltonian faction, took up the name "Federalist"; they favored a strong central government that would support the interests of commerce and industry and close ties to Britain.
• The followers of Madison and Thomas Jefferson, the Jeffersonians and then the "Anti-Federalists", took up the name "Democratic-Republicans"; they preferred a decentralized agrarian republic in which the federal government had limited power.

The Jeffersonians came to power in 1800 and the Federalists were too elitist to compete effectively. The Federalists survived in the Northeast, but their refusal to support the War of 1812 verged on secession and was a devastating blow when the war ended well. The Era of Good Feelings under President James Monroe (1816–1824) marked the end of the First Party System and a brief period in which partisanship was minimal. (Sounds like what we have now).

Second Party System: 1828–1854

By 1828, the Federalists had disappeared as an organization. Jackson's presidency split the Democratic-Republican Party — "Jacksonians" became the Democratic Party; those following the leadership of John Quincy Adams became the "National Republicans", (no connection to the later Republican Party that exists today). After the 1832 election, opponents of Jackson coalesced into the Whig Party. National Republicans, Anti-Masons and others joined the new party led by Henry Clay. The two party political system continued but with two different parties.

The early Democratic Party stood for individual rights and state rights, supported the primacy of the Presidency over the other branches of government, opposed banks (namely the Bank of the United States), high tariffs, as well as modernizing programs that they felt would build up industry at the expense of the farmers. It styled itself as the party of the "common man". Presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren and James K. Polk, were all Democrats who defeated Whig candidates, but by narrow margins.

The Whigs, on the other hand, advocated the supremacy of Congress over the executive branch as well as policies of modernization and economic protectionism. Central political battles of this era were the Bank War and the Spoils system of federal patronage.

Jackson introduced the practice of "hosting barbecues and cultivating a national network of affiliates" and with his campaigns began the tradition of not just voting for a Democrat but identifying as a Democrat. "Parties were becoming a fixture not just in America’s politics but also in its social life."

In the 1850s, the issue of slavery took center stage, with disagreement in particular over the question of whether slavery should be permitted in the country's new territories in the West. The Whig Party attempted to straddle the issue with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, where the status of slavery would be decided based on "popular sovereignty", (i.e. the citizens of each territory, rather than Congress, would determine whether slavery would be allowed). Whigs sank to their death after the overwhelming electoral defeat by Franklin Pierce in the 1852 presidential election. Ex-Whigs joined the Know Nothings or the newly formed anti-slavery Republican Party. While the Know Nothing party was short-lived, Republicans would survive the intense politics leading up to the Civil War. The primary Republican policy was that slavery be excluded from all the territories. Just six years later, this new party captured the presidency when Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860, the election that established the Democratic and Republican parties as the major parties of America.

Fast forward to five (5) party systems later and we have now entered the

Seventh Party System (2016–Present)

While not everyone will agrees that a seventh party system has begun and it’s the MAGA Party or The Donald Trump Party.

In the Republican Party, "Reagan Revolution" rhetoric and policy has been replaced by new themes. Not only has conservative blue collar workers migrated to what used to be the Republican Party, but a business class that had been part of the Republican Party since the post-Civil War Gilded Age began moving left as well as the post Civil War Christian Nationanlist, White Supremist and White Nationalist. "Today’s MAGA is most clearly now the party of local capitalism—the small-business gentry, the family firms", while "much of corporate America has swung culturally into liberalism’s camp. ... the party’s base regards corporate institutions—especially in Silicon Valley, but extending to more traditional capitalist powers—as cultural enemies". There is more emphasis on cultural/attitudinal conservatism (opposition not just to abortion but to gay marriage, transgender rights limited education and freedom of expression; support for free trade and liberal immigration was replaced by opposition to economic globalization and immigration from non-European countries to empower voting and the limitation of minorities abaility to vote or voter restreictions. Distrust of institutions (refusal to accept the results of 2020 presidential election) and loyalty for Donald Trump even after he had lost his second run for election in 2020, started an insurrection, has been indicted on criminal charges became common among Republicans during this time. President Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives twice. Both times when the charges were brought to the U.S. Senate, the Republican majority U.S. Senate acquitted President Trump.

Those who have truly left the Republican Party, need to come to terms with the fact that there is no more Republican Party and they need to create a new Conservitive or the “True Conservitive Party” because the Republican Pary that once exsisted; died with Ronald Regan.

The next strongest chance for a third party to take control of conservitism needs to prepare for the 2028 Election and those true conservitives that want to have a chance at winning needs to abandon this MAGA/Trump party and rebrand the new true Conservitive Party.

Me; I hope it all comes to an end. The two party system in beyond repair or hope and I hope that more parties come into existance so that a smarter democracy can survive.