This Memorial Weekend, I ask a question America may not like.
Is the republican party a terrorist organization?
Being a veteran, I don’t ask this question lightly.
Seeing what republicans have done and are doing across America in the States they control and at the Federal level, and how they have whipped their voters into a fanatical army, and the way they use religion to justify many of the laws they pass, the parallels are astonishing to the terrorist regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan.
2016 to January 6, 2021, was a turning point for me on what Republicans were willing to do for power and what they believe in.
It opened my eyes so wide, the blinding flare of what the republican party refused to do when it came to upholding their oaths and the law, the mockery they made of our democratic system, what they encourage, support and have become damned near burned out my retinas.
But I did not turn away, and I continue to stare.
I think many pundits, news anchors and reporters still believe we operate in a normal political environment, and treat both major political parties in America the same, when they are not anymore.
The media, politicos and law enforcement do not like using words such as terrorist, or terrorism, when it comes to those inside the U.S., and in seats of power. Is that because they don’t see it, or because if we did use those words, it would mean we have failed as a country and a people?
They use phrases like Domestic Violent Extremism and Far-Right. Call it what it is and what one party has become: Terrorism, and a Terrorist Organization.
I have seen too many things now for me to not believe in the likeness of the republican party to terrorist regimes who rule their countries. Republicans continue to remove freedoms and human rights within the states they control. They are also doing it at the national level by co-opting the very judicial system we have prided ourselves on for centuries.
Republicans have not denounced the coup plot or the insurrection to help it succeed. This is how many tyrants, dictators and terrorist governments have come into power. Through violence; bending the laws and very system they were sworn to protect to their will, and the people let them. They make “laws” that for certain classes, and races, restrict them from participating in processes designed for all the people to engage in. They make laws against companies that force them to comply, and to make agencies report on them favorably.
Republicans are on record as supporting and defending the coup plot; insurrection and laws they have passed removing, or limiting, the freedoms and liberties of many American citizens, while other republican law makers support these with their silence.
Too many are afraid to speak out, or, are they keeping their sympathies quiet to give them deniability.
Republican politicians continue to encourage their supporters and voters to violence over what they deem are political issues, and to intimidate their own neighbors and local population. I have not heard one republican in power denounce those things. Republicans have used their state and federal power to insidiously, and drastically, upset the balance of democracy, while making it impossible for some of them to ever lose an election.
It is clear many republican voters are on board with their republican leaders bringing women to heel and labeling LBGTQ+ abominations through policy and law, and that religion is governing. Sound familiar?
What do the other republican voters think and how can they be so goddamned blind?
I don’t know for sure. Maybe they still think the party they vote for is a democratic one even after all they have seen them do, are currently doing, support and encourage.
Perhaps they do not really want to believe their party has turned into a heavily funded terrorist group, because what would that mean for what they have become. May be, they are so clueless that they felt it could never happen in America, because they are stalwart defenders of democracy and they wouldn’t let it happen.
Yet, they still vote for republicans who implement terrorist policies that put women in their place, push LBGTQ+ out of society, use fear to control them and use religion as governing policy.
It isn’t clear to the republican voter that they have been radicalized. That those republican voters, those who would never let it happen here, have not realized that their beloved republican party has become a national security threat to the United States of America. Not through intense indoctrination, but gradually, through decades of non-threatening phrases like “Pro-Life” and “Law and Order,” the fear of the other with words like “Invaders.” You get the idea.
They don’t see that the republican party has become the American al-Qaeda. They are so blind, and their wiring so faulty they can’t associate that those vying for the lead of the republican party are Bin Laden wannabes in a suit, and those they vote for are the lieutenants who have made them abandon the idea of freedom and liberty for all.
We must wise up and begin using the proper terminology when it comes to what republicans are doing, and start making the connections. We have to ask the hard questions to what the republican party has become. Reporters, while they still can, must get in their faces and call them on what they do, be relentless. It is up to everyone to force them to look in the mirror.
We need to face a hard reality.
That the republicans who fund the party, those now in power, and their voters are the #1 national security threat to our freedoms, liberty and democracy, otherwise, America will fall to the republican terrorism and its leaders. Then, the world will see us as we see Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan, if they don’t already.
I understand the weight these words have, that they are dangerous. You don’t have to take this post as gospel. You don’t have to believe me. All you have to do is look for yourself. Look at what republicans and their voters are doing in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Virginia, Missouri, Nebraska, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Idaho and others where republicans have majorities that allow them to remove our civil rights and freedoms.
If we keep believing the republican party stands for democracy, and is not a terrorist coalition with domestic terrorists and a threat to our national security, we will wake up to see that we have given away what so many have died for, and then what?
So please, I implore you, as you gather with family at the BBQ and eat, laugh, play horse shoes, or go to the beach enjoying the sun and waves this Memorial weekend, actually think of those who gave their full measure of devotion for the rights, freedoms and liberties that are now gone for you, or those you love that were taken by republicans and ask yourself:
Is the republican party a terrorist organization?
Respectfully,
Mr. Nobody