2017
“I think Cleveland.com reporter Jeremy Pelzer has taken just one of those images: a photo of two men at a Trump rally in Ohio on Saturday night wearing shirts that say “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.”
The Gallup poll in July, 2018 showed a shocking change in the Republican party.
“40% of Republicans say Russia is an ally or friendly, up from 22% in 2014”
I was watching MTP Daily today. One of the favorites on Daily Kos — George Will was on the show. Don’t agree with George hardly at all. He did have a good point today. George showed the connection between the current Republican party and the US Communist Party in the 1930’s — 1940’s. You can watch MTP Daily (sorry no transcript) or review the following a Reason Magazine article:
“GOP leaders and conservative commentators have turned themselves inside out praising behavior they would have torched had it come from a Democratic administration.
This new outlook might be defensible if it were the product of a conscious, informed reassessment of our role in a changing world. But it's not. It's almost entirely the product of the takeover of the Republican Party by Trump. Anything he says immediately becomes its semiofficial policy—no matter how deeply it contradicts past doctrines.
The pattern is uncannily reminiscent of the Communist Party USA in the years leading up to World War II. First it opposed President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a capitalist lackey. Then, as fascist movements rose in Europe, it joined with noncommunists on the left in "popular front" organizations that aligned with FDR in opposing fascism.
An abrupt turnabout came in 1939, when Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Adolf Hitler. American Communists jumped to defend this cooperation with the Nazis—and condemned Roosevelt for providing aid to Britain, which was at war with Germany.
When Hitler and Stalin proceeded to divide up Poland by force—putting millions of Polish Jews under Nazi rule—the party defended the dismemberment. When Hitler shocked Stalin by invading the Soviet Union, American Communists shifted yet again, getting behind Roosevelt and calling to help the countries fighting Germany.
Many members of the Communist Party USA couldn't stomach these grotesque reversals and chose to leave. But many remained loyal, quickly changing their beliefs to fit whatever the Kremlin did.
"Both the CPUSA leaders and the rank and file absorbed Stalin's ideological hatreds as their own," wrote the peerless historians Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes. These Communists wore "special glasses that allowed them to see only what Moscow saw and that rendered all else invisible."
The Republican party has no fixed values just like the old US Communist Party.
- Republicans follow Trump.
- Old US Communist Party followed Stalin.
It’s not just a positive attitude for Russia and Putin. See the partial list of old Republican party vs. the Trump Republicans:
- Free Trade vs. protectionism.
- Tariffs vs. lower or no Tariffs.
- Balanced Budget vs. lower taxes — higher deficits.
- Balanced Budget vs. higher spending — higher deficits.
- North Korea Bad vs. North Korea's Kim Jon Un Good, in love.
There are too many Republican flip flops to list.
The only values the current Republican Party has are:
- Tax cuts.
- Increased Defense Spending.
- Being mean to poor people.
This strange place we are in reminds me of the Frank Zappa song "It Can't Happen Here". Because of ignorance I didn’t know there was a novel by Sinclair Lewis was first published in 1935 named It Can't Happen Here and again in “A New Version" in 1938. Both books were about “the rise and the frightening success of an American fascist coup”.
It never entered my mind before the 2016 election, America had a possibility of becoming a dictatorship. I always thought objectively that America was not going to last forever (Rome), but this change would happen long after I died.
Now I am not so sure ...