By Andy Brack
When did it become cool to cozy up to the Russians?
Answer: Never – since the time Russia pointed thousands of nuclear weapons at the good old U.S. of A.
But President Donald Trump seems hellbent on rekindling his bromance with Russian thug leader Vladimir Putin, putting the world order at risk and making America less great.
Americans didn’t vote for this kind of nonsense. They didn’t vote in November to make us less secure militarily or economically.
Yes, they may have voted for Trump to lower the price of eggs (how’s that going?) or to change how immigration is handled or to take a different approach on some spectrum of wokeism and the culture wars. But Americans didn’t vote to cozy up to Nazism, Putin or make the country weaker. They didn’t vote against Ukraine.
What’s more, Americans didn’t vote to put national parks at risk. They didn’t vote for Social Security to be threatened. They didn’t vote for injustice and the pardoning of people who attacked police officers at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They didn’t vote to wreck the economy by making American crops and goods less desired around the world.
They didn’t vote to end medical research. They didn’t vote against vaccines, worse health care and more poverty.
And the good Lord knows, they didn’t vote for Elon Musk to fiddle around with the inner-workings of government and your private information while continuing to win billions of dollars of federal contracts.
And yet, here we are, one month into Trump’s second presidential term. And as Trump is leading America away from greatness, too many Americans continue to drink the Kool-Aid, shout slogans and wear cultish red hats saying America is great when, in fact, they’re collaborating to rot it from the inside.
Liberals aren’t the only ones complaining. Conservative columnist Mona Charen, who worked in the Reagan White House in the 1980s, wrote this week in The Bulwark: “It has been only four weeks since Trump took the oath of office, and I wonder whether casual voters or even those who truly despised Biden have taken onboard what they’ve done.
“The American republic is undergoing a constitutional crisis as the president attempts to rule as an autocrat (“He who saves his country violates no law,” he claimed), a heedless billionaire smashes through people’s lives and complex systems he doesn’t understand with sadistic glee, the Justice Department descends into corrupt bargains antithetical to the ethical standards upheld for two centuries, a Putin/Assad apologist sits atop our intelligence agencies, a conspiracy theorist/anti-vaccine fool directs our health agencies, and the United States is attempting to reverse 80 years of world leadership.”
What must happen now to save and strengthen the republic is that Republican congressional leaders need to wake from a slumber and start defending the Constitution. The Supreme Court needs to exercise its muscle to support the Constitution, instead of serving as a rubber stamp to conservative think tanks.
All of the sloganeering in the world isn’t going to keep America strong.
Republican senators like South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott need to stop fiddling on the sidelines and take active steps to secure the country – just like uber-conservative GOP U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona did in 1974 when he told Republican President Richard Nixon it was time to resign after the Watergate fiasco. That was leadership that focused on country, not party.
Congressmen like Joe Wilson of South Carolina, long a defender of Ukraine, need to lead the Congress away from anything that empowers Putin and weakens Ukraine. They can start with calling out Trump for lying that Ukraine started the war that threatens Europe’s security.
Folks, what’s happening in Washington now is no way to run a country. Wake up, America. Wake up, Washington. Get off this anti-democratic path before the country becomes unrecognizable.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of the Charleston City Paper and Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send it to feedback@statehousereport.com.
