"Sorry"

“Sorry”, and a shrug of his shoulders.   That was Donald Trump’s pathetic apology to Megan Kelly when she confronted him with her anger about his sexist comments during her moderator debate duties.  She crossed him and he accused her of being on her period.

Trump is the ultimate result of the swing to the right wing that has been going on in the Republican Party for years; and this is fueled ultimately in the age old stimulus of hate and racism. 

You see America did a very bad thing, it elected an African American President.  And that was against the old guard, white supremacy standard  that have plagued this country for over three hundred years. 

I think President Obama and all of us underestimated this.  Certainly “Black Lives Matter” has not.  They see it everyday, as more people of color are gunned down, or jailed for having a broken tail light.

For years conservatives have patiently worked to create this climate of fear and racial hatred.  It has been toward one end, eliminating democracy behind a fascist dictator.

And in Trump, an unlikely candidate to be sure, they have found their man.  Violence and hatred personifies his campaign.  His rallies usually deteriorate into slugfests, with an outnumbered person of color (always outnumbered, white supremacists are too chicken shit to ever act without a huge numerical advantage) getting the crap beaten out of them.

But there is more.  I have a friend who works for a Tea Party Republican in the California legislature.  His Facebook posts are constantly laced with well “researched” attacks on Democrats, but more, on government itself.

For some idiotic reason, Tea Party Republicans think no government is best government:  Not local government, or smaller government, NO government. 

Just a passing understanding of the Weimar Republic failure in the 1920s in Germany will cause alarm here.  It is exactly the same technique Hitler used to destroy democracy in Germany, attacking government itself especially democratic institutions that were depicted as constantly failing.

That is echoed in Trump’s constant charges that America is in decline, that government doesn’t work anymore.

Government doesn’t work?  What political party has blocked every piece of legislation that the African American President has offered.  This always had as its aim, the destruction of the legitimacy of the President and more, the destruction of faith in the democratic process; especially when a person of color is involved.

And they succeeded.  A majority of Americans today feel the country is going in the wrong direction even with record job creation and a recovery from the worse conservative caused recession since the Great Depression.

By doing what the then minority leader of the Senate said right after Obama was elected, blocking everything the President tried to do, the public has been fooled into believing the non action of the government is the President’s fault, not the blockading Republican Party.

And a by-product of this, conveniently, is the destruction of faith in democracy itself,  opening the door for the election of an authoritarian dictator:  Donald Trump.

Conservatives have been working on this for over forty years: beginning with the Prop 13 “Revolution” and culminating in Donald Trump.  It all has been planned by super rich right wing fanatics (the Koch Brothers) and others who will do anything to protect their super rich status; including the destruction of our democracy.

And my friend, whose present cause is slyly using public pension funding woes (caused by the conservative recession of 2008) to defeat a tax measure in Redding that would fund police and fire protection.  He is using the same old bait and switch tactic that Prop 13 used, creating anger in the public at “spendthrift Democratic programs that actually help society” by cutting funding and dramatically reducing their effectiveness.

Prop 13 was so successful in doing this to public education; Prop 13 destroyed the K-16 free public education system in California so effectively that now Charter Schools, Corporate run in an undemocratic way, are wrongly seen as the salvation of public education.  What they are is a mean spirited form of re-segregating the schools, again white supremacy wins out.

So, the trick is, con the public into mis-trusting public institution’s by cutting funding through tax cuts, then inserting private alternatives (private prisons come to mind here) that are run by profit making corporations that use social need to make profits and greatly decline the public trust, safety and confidence in their government.

Conservatives depict themselves as “muckrakers” who are just trying to save public money.   They depict themselves as heroes, working for the betterment of all, saving the public’s money against greedy teacher’s unions and liberal fanatics. In truth, they are working toward a common goal, ending democracy and establishing a totalitarian fascist dictatorship.

If you think I am exaggerating, go to a Trump rally!  Watch and listen to the cues.  American is half an inch from fascism.