Hypocrisy, thy name is MAGA!
When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser. Socrates
The Death of Socrates painting by Jacques Louis David.
The above quote captures perfectly the current situation regarding Donald J. Trump vis a vis Kamala Harris. Trump is in a state of panic. He is absolutely terrified of Kamala Harris, for he cannot deal with strong women in general and strong women of color in particular.
Knowing he has lost the battle of ideas, Trump tried every which way to avoid debating Kamala Harris. He knows she will kick his butt nine ways to Sunday. So, Trump falls back on his go-to playbook – insults and slanders. [I won’t give them currency by repeating them here.]
The Trump cultists’ tactic of choice is to demonize Harris, hurling at her all manner of slanders, including what to them is the ultimate, nastiest epithet – “liberal.”
Even as they eat at liberalism’s table…
The fact is that many (most … all?) of the Trump cultists are eating at liberalism’s table and enjoying the meal immensely. Compounding the hypocrisy is ignorance of the history of the country the Trump cultists purport to love and of the theology of the religion many of them profess to practice. Let’s take a stroll down Reality Lane:
Conservative-Republican-right wing women (aka MAGA cultists) can vote and be involved in politics thanks to the liberal Susan B. Anthony.
* Conservative-Republican-right wing women (aka MAGA cultists) can vote and be involved in politics thanks to the liberal Susan B. Anthony and the liberal movement she led. Anthony and her suffrage movement took on the conservative establishment of their time, maintaining that women were contributing, valuable members of society and should have the same rights, re: voting, as men.
After much grass-roots organizing involving gathering petition signatures, marches, pickets, arrests, lobbying of legislators, etc., Anthony – and her colleague Elizabeth Cady Stanton – arranged for a constitutional amendment conferring voting rights to women to be introduced in Congress in 1878. The amendment, popularly known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, was eventually ratified as the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.
* It was liberals and liberal activism which challenged the conservative status quo, re: the status and treatment of workers, and brought about the worker benefits workers today – including MAGA cultists, some of whom are union members – take for granted.
Since the 1800s workers sought better working conditions. The National Labor Union (NLU), the first national labor federation in the United States, was founded in 1866. In 1867 the regional Order of the Knights of St. Crispin was founded and by 1870 had 50,000 members. A closely associated union of women, the Daughters of St. Crispin, was founded in 1870. [St. Crispin is the patron saint of workers.]
In the early 1900s, laws such as the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Adamson Act, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the Wagner Act, laid the foundation for the institutionalization of worker rights and basic principles such as the eight-hour work day; minimum wage standards, and the prohibition of child labor. In 1935 the National Labor Relations Board was established to address labor complaints. In 1938 Congress, aiming to eliminate labor conditions detrimental to the health and well-being of workers passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which codified the maximum work week of 40 hours and established a federal minimum wage.
Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Social Security Bill.
* A large chunk of MAGA cultists enjoy the very liberal initiatives Social Security and Medicare, which were instigated by liberal activism and codified into law by liberal Democratic Presidents. The Social Security Act, which addressed issues such as old age, poverty, unemployment, and the burdens of widows and fatherless children, was enacted in 1935 as part of the New Deal during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term.
Since the late 1950s and early 1960s, liberals agitated for federal action to address the high cost of health care for the country’s elderly. President John F. Kennedy sought to extend health coverage to the elderly through Social Security. After Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, President Johnson continued pushing the elderly health-care agenda and on July 30, 1965 codified Medicare into law.
* The Black and Latino Trump cultists enjoy the rights won for them by liberal activism. These Trump cultists conveniently ignore the reality that during the reign of “states’ rights” Blacks in the South—and Mexican Americans and Indigenous peoples elsewhere in the country—were not allowed to vote and/or were subjected to discriminatory criteria to keep them from voting (e.g., literacy tests, poll taxes).
It was only due to liberal activism that government intervened and conferred and protected the rights that “states’ rights” denied these groups—e.g., the laws, policies, and educational culture change that flowed from the 1947 Mendez, et al. v. Westminster School District case that established that segregated “Mexican” schools were unconstitutional and the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case that established that “separate but equal” schools for Black children were unconstitutional.
And it was liberal activism that laid the groundwork for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965Voting Rights Act.
About that religion thing…
The Jesus the Trump-cultist evangelicals claim to believe in was a refugee whose family trekked miles to escape persecution and who advocated for the poor.
Jesus Christ was a liberal who took on the conservative social establishment of his time. About 80% of the white evangelicals in the U.S. support Trump. Favorite targets of Trump’s hate campaign are immigrants and programs and initiatives that help children, the poor, etc. Yet, the Jesus the Trump-cultist evangelicals claim to believe in was a refugee whose family trekked miles to escape persecution, hung out with, and advocated for, the commoners, the poor, the abused and downtrodden.
There are tons of references in the Old and New Testaments that mandate that those who claim to love God should welcome “sojourners” and “strangers,” i.e., immigrants, and stand up for the poor. Some examples:
“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Leviticus 19:33-34 (See also Exodus 22: 21)
“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Mathew 25:35
“Thus says the Lord of hosts … show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.” Zechariah 7: 9-10
“For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Galatians 5:14
These are bedrock liberal notions. In religious terms, in addressing others, in word or deed, you are addressing God. The religious Golden Rule, then, is a zero-sum matter: Either God is in all of his creation, or he is in none of it. (I use “he” and “his” as a convention.)
Hypocrisy is MAGA’s first name, Ungratefulness is its last name. Plain, common decency dictates that people should not insult the person at whose table they are eating. Nor should they go around preaching love while practicing hate. c/s
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