Trump, the Republicans, and their followers hit rock bottom after betraying democracy

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Illustration by Pepe Angonoa
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By Maribel Hastings and David Torres, America’s Voice

As if it was just the most recent episode of his tawdry reality show, Donald Trump’s cult followers broke into the U.S. Capitol to try to impede the Electoral College confirmation of President-Elect Joe Biden’s win in a clean, legitimate, and democratic election.

The hand—and the voice—of the master could be seen in the faces and the movements of the violence-lovers in the group, in a type of collective hypnosis, while their leader, grinning from ear to ear, surely watched via a monitor, well-protected, the performance of his good and obedient boys and girls.

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The founding fathers of this republic, or at least some of them, must be turning over in their graves upon seeing Trump trample on the Constitution, sustained by a horde of fanatics and 150 Republican legislators who put their political interests ahead of democracy and the wellbeing of the nation.

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Welcome to the crazy new U.S. politics. Unfortunately, this is not a movie. It is, in any case, the real face of a divided country, whether we accept it or not. It’s about the two Americas that were born separately, the remnants of a country that never was truly united after the Civil War. Perhaps the union was just a myth, justified by political discourse over the years and centuries. But as we have seen this week in Washington, there has always been a real division in the realm of facts.

That such a spectacle occurred was not entirely unimaginable, but the arrival of Trump’s fanatics at the federal capital augured nothing good, especially because their violence has been promoted and condoned by Trump with his weak and false idea that the election was “stolen.” What’s strange is that they were able to break into the building with such ease, despite the layers of security. A smart person who comes from a place where the dirty jobs are done on the inside would wonder if the Republican legislators, loyal to Trump and led by the shameful Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, didn’t have some role in facilitating access to the Capitol grounds.

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The images of violence speak volumes about the reckless reality of an even greater division. This ominous spectacle doesn’t surprise us, of course, because we have seen this movie 1,001 times in other parts of the world, especially our places of origin, in even darker days and worse situations.

But while it is very interesting to witness this new chapter in U.S. history–this new American moment– at the same time we are conscious of the possibility that the violence against minorities will grow, now from different fronts in society.

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We must accept that “Trumpism” has not died.

Because it was truly nauseating to see how, upon initiating the Constitutional process, Cruz was applauded as if he were a hero for spitting on the Constitution and opposing the traditional, democratic, and peaceful transfer of power, based on lies and false claims of electoral fraud.

The 150 Republicans who backed this move to avoid the confirmation of Biden’s legitimate win must be treated as they are: traitors to democracy. And the Republican Party that created the out of control monster that is Trump, will pass into history with the enormous stain of having permitted the false refrain of a “stolen” election to get out of control.

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And Trump, on Twitter, only deigned to say “stay calm,” when he has been the primary promotor of the fraud lie, with the only goal of getting money from his followers, as the principal promoter of the violence that characterizes his fanatics.

And in the middle of this mess, you see the imperious desire of a president who does not want to leave power, not to defend his followers, much less his country, but rather the terror of leaving constitutional jurisdiction and being, therefore, brought to justice by multiple courts as an ordinary citizen. It’s already known that he uses everyone to his own benefit.

With this stifling and violent spectacle, the Trump presidency has hit rock bottom, and with it a good part of the democratic tradition in the United States, which was considered the fairest and most sophisticated democratic experiment on the planet.

With everything, no matter what they do, at noon on January 20th, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the next president of the United States. And he will have a Democratic Congress.

Trump, his followers, and the mob of Republican legislators who years ago pawned away their decency to serve a rogue leader will pass into history as what they are: bad losers capable of turning on democracy if the results do not favor them. If democracy disgusts them so much, they should consider moving to one of the dictatorships that their leader, Trump, so often defends.

Russia wouldn’t be a bad start.

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