Once Upon a Time in America

[NanceGreggs]

There was a time when Republicans were truly “our friends on the other side of the aisle”. For the most part, we agreed on where our nation should be headed and what we could – through mutual respect and a willingness to engage in give-and-take - accomplish. The biggest difference between the parties was the best way to get where we mutually agreed we should be, the best way to achieve commonly-held goals aimed at the betterment of all citizens, regardless of party affiliation.

That time now seems very, very long ago.

I now see the GOP as an enemy of We, the People – a party set on diminishing our individual rights, a party far more interested in the destruction of our union than the strengthening of it, a party more beholding to itself than to the citizens it claims to be representing and working for.

Our goals are no longer mutual goals; our ideals are no longer common ideals. Our “friends across the aisle” are no longer friends, but enemies we have to fight on a daily basis in order to not only move forward towards a “more perfect union”, but to keep from slipping back into our darkest days – days when the rights of women were only those rights deemed appropriate by men, days when the rights of people of colour were only those rights white men were willing to grudgingly grant, days when the rights of immigrants were only those rights that men in power could be coerced into recognizing.

Over the past several decades, Republicans have gone from being the party who sees things differently to being the party bent on the destruction of everything all Americans once held sacrosanct and in keeping with what was long ago defined as our inalienable rights. They have invariably chosen party-over-people instead of power-to-the-people. They have, at every opportunity, chosen to take away our inherent rights rather than support them; they have fought tirelessly to ensure that only those who agree with their skewed version of democracy have a voice.

It is the Republican Party that has gerrymandered districts, that has made casting a vote all but impossible for those citizens who oppose their views, that has ignored the separation of Church and State, that has dismissed the rights of every citizen who disagrees with them, that have relegated minorities, women, the disabled, our veterans, our homeless, our sick and our dying to the status of being citizens who have no right to demand the rights our Constitution was crafted to ensure.

The installation of Donald Trump in the Oval Office – a man devoid of morals, character, intelligence and competence – is the end product of what Republicans have sought for decades: the ultimate buffoon who will do the bidding of our sworn enemies – so long as he is willing to further the agenda of a party equally devoid of any conscience when it comes to advancing the destruction of our fellow citizens, or the well-being of our country.

We are no longer a nation of differing ideas or divergent opinions. We are now a nation of warring factions, vehemently opposed to each others views and those who propagate them. We are longer a country at war with foreign enemies who seek to weaken us; we are at war with the enemies among us who are equally anxious to destroy us from within.

There is nothing – I repeat nothing – that our foreign adversaries seek to achieve that the Republican Party has not aided and abetted. There is nothing that our sworn enemies have sought to accomplish from without that the GOP has not sought to accomplish from within our own borders, under the guise of being patriots interested in our ultimate well-being.

We are now engaged in the American Civil War – Part II. It is not a war between north and south, between industrialized states and states that cling to a glorious past that is well past its glory days. It is not a war between people of differing visions; it is a war between good and evil, a war between those of moral rectitude and those without morals. It is a war between people who disguise themselves as Christians and those who uphold the true tenets of Christianity. It is a war between those who would uphold the Constitution and those who would twist its meaning into something abhorrent.

Resist. Fight back. Let the enemy know at every turn that We the People will never surrender to those who oppose us and everything we stand for. Make it clear that WE will determine our own destiny as a nation, and that our foes will be vanquished.

The time is now, the moment of truth has arrived. And never forget that in the end, the truth ultimately outweighs all else.

The battles will be many, and there will be blood. We will see our champions defeated; we will watch the brightest and the best among us struck down. We will witness the downfall of those who stand up for our principles; we will despair as those who represent our highest ideals are vilified.

But never lose faith that ultimately, when all is said and done, when the smoke of the battlefield clears, WE THE PEOPLE will emerge victorious.

We WILL PREVAIL.