HYPOCRISY ON STEROIDS

Yes, I know, there has always been some hypocrisy exhibited by politicians of all parties, but the current times are beyond belief. The Republican party, once known as the GOP, is dead. Republican Liz Cheney announced that when she said, “I think that we have no chance at winning elections if we are in a position where our party has abandoned principle and abandoned value and abandoned fundamental fidelity of the Constitution in order to embrace a cult of personality. And I think that’s really dangerous…I’m going to be very focused on working to ensure that we’re doing everything we can not to elect election deniers. I’m going to work against those people, I’m going to work to support their opponents. I think it matters that much.”  [abcn.ws/3pCoIZD]

Passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included aye votes by 19 Republican Senators and 13 Republican Representatives. Trump called those Republicans RINOs (Republicans in name only). Interestingly, the anger of Trump followers in the House of Representatives linked the bill to socialism; which, apparently, they clearly do not understand, but that is part of the Republicans fear mongering going into the 2022 mid-terms.

Minnesota representative Tom Emmer: “[The bill] lays the groundwork for passage of President Biden’s multi-trillion dollar socialist wish list.” Yet, here’s what he said in a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in support of a grant application [for use of the Bill’s funding] from Anoka County for construction on the Minnesota Highway 65 corridor: “This project is important to Minnesota as it serves as a critical corridor of commerce, not just for Anoka County, but all the counties along the MN65 corridor…. It also strives to serve as a social justice measure….The completion of this project means improved economic opportunities for ethnically underserved communities.”

Iowa Representative Ashley Hinson in a Nov. 8, 2021 press release : “The need to make meaningful investments in our nation’s real infrastructure—roads and bridges, locks and dams, and broadband—was sacrificed to advance a partisan, socialist spending spree.” In a later Tweet she wrote: “We secured $829 million in federal funding to upgrade locks & dams along the Upper Mississippi River. This is game-changing for Iowa’s agriculture industry & our Mississippi River communities!” What she doesn’t say is that money came from the ‘socialist spending spree’ she opposed.

Arizona Representative Paul Gosar: “[T]his bill only serves to advance the America Last’s socialist agenda, while completely lacking fiscal responsibility.” Yet, he wrote 3 letters asking for funds for his district, statin they would “They’d enhance quality of life. They’d ease congestion and boost the economy. They’d alleviate bottlenecks and improve rural living conditions.

Kentucky Representative Andy Barr: “In the dead of the night on a Friday evening, Democrats rushed to pass their big government socialist agenda,” In the Northern Kentucky Tribune, Nov 12th, 2021 under the headline, Bill Straub: Roads, bridges are socialism? Only one House member from KY votes for infrastructure bill [and it wasn’t Barr] wrote: “The GOP lawmakers have plenty of phony baloney excuses for opposing a bill set on improving the nation’s vital infrastructure needs. But you can bet on one thing – when it comes time to cut the ribbon on a brand spanking new project funded by the measure, they’ll all attend the event with a smile and a pair of scissors to act like it was their idea in the first place.” This was a delightful, yet pointed article in a Mid-west voice. While all my research for these Representatives came from their offices and papers from their state, this one I’ll cite specifically and encourage you to read for the fun of it as well as the information it contains. [https://www.nkytribune.com/2021/11/bill-straub-roads-bridges-are-socialism-not-one-house-member-from-ky-votes-for-infrastructure-bill/

Representative Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma: “I will not support funding for policies that drive our country into socialism.” Oklahoma will receive more than $5 billion for roads, bridges, electric vehicle charging stations and rural broadband internet expansion, among other things, nut I have no evidence that Mullin supported any of these projects.

Reportedly, per a source at the NRCC [The National Republican Congressional Committee] dinner with Trump as primary speaker on November 8, 2021: “He railed on 13 Rs who voted for infrastructure with Nicole Malliotakis [R, NY] there. She was visibly shaken by it.” Even before Trump instigated reactions to the Republicans who voted for the Infrastructure Bill, colleagues started in on them. Madison Cawthorn [R, NC]: in a Tweet on November 5 “Vote for this infrastructure bill and I will primary the hell out of you.” Lauren Boebert [R, CO] tweeted: “RINOS just passed this wasteful $1.2 trillion dollar ‘infrastructure’ bill. Pelosi did not have the votes in her party to pass this garbage. Time to name names and hold these fake republicans accountable.” Matt Gaetz [R, FL] tweeted: “I can’t believe Republicans just gave the Democrats their socialism bill.”

Those Republicans voting for America, as one responder who didn’t agree with the Cawthorne tweet called them, have received death threats to themselves and their families and their staffs have received threatening and obscene phone calls.

There are examples of this hypocrisy for other issues as well, but what concerns me even more is the socialism theme. It harks back to the days of McCarthyism. Interestingly, McCarthyism is actually a word listed in the Oxford Dictionary with 2 meanings, the first is what created the word in the first place: “a vociferous campaign against alleged communists in the US government and other institutions carried out under Senator Joseph McCarthy in the period 1950–54. Many of the accused were blacklisted or lost their jobs, although most did not in fact belong to the Communist Party.”

The second definition is what we have now: a campaign or practice that endorses the use of unfair allegations and investigations. Historically, I think we can trace it back further than the Big Lie, but it is that election denying and lack of a clean transfer of power against all judicial and electoral evidence that is pushing us over the edge today. The politicians, newscasters, and political hacks all know the truth; many have even been on record acknowledging it, yet they kowtow to the bully. Bullying was McCarthy’s main tactic, as is Trump’s.

In McCarthy’s era it was fear of communism and Russia during the Cold War, a legitimate concern, which he turned into cultural paranoia. Today, with the use of the word socialism, there is a linking the present with the past. For the average American, I bet there isn’t much difference between communism and socialism. Remember the USSR was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Turning the Democrats, their ideals, their platform, their legislation, themselves as individuals into a danger to our country and creating a paranoid fear of socialism should be of paramount concern to all of us. It obviously isn’t only Democrats this bully is after, but anyone who opposes him.

I was 10 to 14 years old during the hearings, and I can remember coming home from school, and my mother would be watching the McCarthy hearings on TV, clearly upset by what was going on. She would explain to me what was happening and why she felt it so wrong. I think that’s when my political activism started to take hold.