The Trump Administration and the GOP Are Death Cults. Come November, We Can Reclaim Our Lives.

By THOM HARTMANN

The Trump administration is a death cult. nnThey revel in their efforts to end Obamacare and cut millions of Americans off healthcare.

They celebrate resumption of federal executions July 14.

They enthusiastically authorize the use of formerly banned pesticides that cause cancer and neurological damage to children.

Trump’s first official action was to allow coal and oil companies to dump more waste in our rivers, poisoning people downstream.

As children were being slaughtered in classrooms across America, Trump doubled down on supporting the NRA.

As Black people across America continue to be regularly murdered by police, Trump calls those asking for change “terrorists“ and “thugs.“ He refers to Nazis as “very fine people“ and retweets calls for “white power.“

Over international objections and in violation of US law, they’re selling weapons to Saudi Arabia to continue bombing civilians in Yemen.

Numerous children have died in their detention facilities, yet they continue to give millions of dollars to Trump’s contributor corporations to continue holding these children in deplorable, disgusting conditions.

They’re fighting all efforts to extend more unemployment relief to American families, further stressing out people in ways that inevitably, history tells us, lead to domestic violence and suicide.

The simple fact is that Donald Trump and the people he has surrounded himself with, like chief racist Steven Miller, appear to love causing other people pain.

Trump even encouraged police to rough up people who have not yet been convicted of a crime, and told his followers that if they injured protesters, he would pay their legal expenses.

But the coronavirus is their crowning achievement.

Simply by discouraging people from wearing masks or social distancing and raising doubts about science, Trump and his buddies have caused the deaths of over 100,00 Americans, with more dead bodies to come if they continue on this path.

Trump goes to states with massive Covid outbreaks and holds indoor rallies, knowing that it will lead to the death of many of the people attending. What is he thinking as he is looking out on his little crowds, knowing that some of those people will be dead in a matter of weeks because of his desperate need for adulation?

Trump refuses to use the Defense Production Act to build up our stockpiles of testing equipment and PPE, making the situation for people in states where the virus is exploding right now a death-dealing crisis.

Betsy DeVos, who has spent her lifetime trying to destroy public schooling, is joining with Trump in trying to punish public school teachers and families who send their kids to public school by bringing disease and death into their homes.

And none of this had to happen.

All over the world, country after country have responded to the coronavirus in ways that have defeated it.

New Zealand hasn’t had a new case in weeks, and normalcy has largely returned to that nation.

Taiwan, similarly, has mostly beat the virus and recently had a baseball game with over 10,000 people in attendance.

All over Europe, countries have kept their unemployment rates well below 10% by aggressive government actions, and have beaten the virus through extensive testing and contact tracing, and mandating masks and social distancing.

Over at the New York Times, Economist Paul Krugman asks a simple question:

“At its most severe, the lockdown seems to have reduced G.D.P. by a little over 10%. During World War II, America spent more than 30% of G.D.P. on defense, for more than three years. Why couldn’t we absorb a much smaller cost for a few months?”

The answer, of course, is that Donald Trump has no interest in saving American lives. He and his Republican buddies just want average Americans back at work to make their billionaire friends and donors even richer, no matter how many workers die in the process.

Trump appears to delight in knowing that because he and his Party have opposed expanding America’s social safety net for decades, there’s an almost endless supply of poor and low-income people desperate enough for a paycheck that they’ll take their lives in their hands to feed their families.

The Trump administration is a death cult. The Republican Party is a death cult.

And Americans and their children are, overwhelmingly, not enthusiastic about dying.

Will November bring the kind of change necessary to put an end to unnecessary death as a routine part of the American way of life?

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of “The Hidden History of the War on Voting” and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute. This appeared at BuzzFlash.com.

From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2020

Populist.com