If you’ve seen the movie Patton (and who hasn’t?), you well remember the scene in the Army hospital where Gen. George S. Patton is comforting the wounded until he encounters the soldier suffering from “nerves.”
“Why, you’re nothing but a g-d–n coward,” he says as he begins slapping the soldier with his gloves and ordering doctors to send the soldier to the front lines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrtS2_TfbeY
It was an event that got Patton into a lot of hot water and he was forced to issue a public apology for his outburst.
Well, fast-forward some seven decades and we find a lot of cowards in the Republican Party, including some representing Louisiana in the U.S. Congress.
These are the “leaders,” in case you need reminding, who champion family values above all else as they court the so-called religious right, the evangelicals. Accordingly, woe be unto all who dare cross that substantial voting bloc by standing up for labor, choice, the environment, a sane approach to gun control (that one’s gonna get me in hot water but that’s okay; I’ve been there before) equal pay, equal rights, gay rights, women’s rights or rights for any other group that’s not in lock-step with Tony Perkins and Gene Mills.
(Tony Perkins, you may remember, blamed gays for Hurricanes Joaquin and Katrina, saying the storms were God’s punishment for such debauchery. The flood of 2016, which destroyed his home as well as those of most of his church members, on the other hand, represented “a great opportunity for the Church to minister.”) http://religionnews.com/2016/08/18/tony-perkins-eschews-theodicy-after-home-destroyed/
Oooohkay…That seems to be the same line of thinking adopted by Perkins and all those Republicans who once screamed for the head of Bill Clinton for his foolish and despicable trysts with Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, and others.
Their position, then as now, reflected perfectly the sentiments of their core base. And now, as then, they merely mirror the hysteria of the electorate who have deluded themselves into believing he is our savior. Donald Trump, who is just about as sorry a spectacle as ever graced the political landscape in this country, is still their boy. Those Republican congressmen, like Steve Scalise, who refuse to budge in their support of Trump, are spineless invertebrates who share a common cowardly fear of that same electorate.
Their jellyfish-like fortitude is a character trait worthy of Rush Limbaugh’s revulsion—were it possible for him to be repulsed by anything Republican.
With no courage of their own convictions and in true political tradition, they waffle with the breeze. Do you seriously believe these guys were born Republicans? They were all originally Democrats who only changed when their constituency changed—not because of some great epiphany or some great social awakening. Can you really trust a chameleon?
I like to call them Trumpettes. Like some adolescent cheerleader, they continue to do their mindless “two-bits, four-bits…” screaming on the sidelines as their team, even as it commits inexplicable personal fouls in the process, is being pummeled only a few feet away.
This is by no means an endorsement of Hillary Clinton. God knows, the controversies swirling around her emails is enough to make Jack Abramoff blush. Her direct involvement in steering contracts to Friends of Bill in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake makes Warren Harding’s Teapot-Dome-Scandal pale by comparison. http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/11/emails-hillarys-state-dept-gave-special-access-to-vips-and-friends-of-bill-clinton-after-haiti-earthquake/
But the Republicans’ self-righteous rejection of Trump after release of that “locker room banter” recording has now been followed by their contrite and nauseating re-endorsement after he gave them a vintage Trump tongue lashing as if they were childish miscreants.
So, the bottom line is we likely are now faced with the worst choice for leader of the Free World in the history of this nation.
One the one hand, we have a complete and total buffoon with no grasp of what the presidency is all about. All the rationalization by supporters that “He says things I like to hear” is a pitiful excuse for voting for the man (I can say what you like to hear; so would you vote for me? Lord, I hope not.).
We have a man who has not paid income taxes for 18 years because, he says, he is “smart.” That must mean those of us who do not have a lineup of all-star tax accountants and lawyers to exploit all those hidden tax breaks—those of us who pay our taxes—are “stupid.”
We have a candidate who says he will release his tax returns after an ongoing audit is complete even though there is no prohibition against his doing so during the audit.
On the other, we have substantial evidence that the Clintons established their foundation for their own financial gain.
We have Hillary who deleted thousands of emails.
We have a candidate who conspired with the chairman of the National Democratic Party to undermine her chief opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders.
We have a candidate who has been shown by the latest release of emails to have put her husband’s friends’ financial welfare above the welfare of poverty-stricken victims of that 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
And we have Hillary who, just as Trump refuses to release his tax returns, refuses to release the content of her speeches (given at top-dollar prices, by the way) to her Wall Street friends. (The latest email leaks reveal that she told bankers she had their backs while she tells us she is going to close tax loopholes that benefit them.)
What to do, what to do.
Where are Kiefer Sutherland or Martin Sheen when we need them?
Louisiana Voice 