The Party of Fear

By David Glenn Cox

You might ask just how bored was I? I was so bored that I watched the House Republicans committee on China, and it was pretty amazing. They had their panel of experts, and the House members each had five minutes to ask prearranged questions of the panel. (Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?) Part of my interest was captured by the flock back benchers participating. No Marge Greene or Loren Boebert or Matt Gaetz.

It was like a trip through a time machine. All of sudden there I was back at the turn of the Century. China doesn’t play fair. China uses trade rules to her advantage. China manipulates her currency. China is stealing American jobs. All the same issues I wrote about fifteen years ago as a leftist have now found a new home in the Republican Party. Their Republican fathers first put this crap into place and now, their Republican sons want to tear it all down.

But according to this House Committee, China can do no right. From pork bellies to high tech, China is bad. It was as boring as watching paint dry because this was just straight up anti-China rhetoric. Republicans worried and concerned that workers in China weren’t being treated properly. Concerned that Chinese workers weren’t getting paid a fair wage. It was sort of like the Klan celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday. I get a little skeptical when Republicans start worrying about labor rights.

Then the story morphed to the greedy auto parts industry using Chinese made parts in automobiles that might not be up to snuff. But the Republicans are a day late and a dollar short. You go into to your favorite Auto Parts store and tell them you want an American made brake rotor and watch the confused look come across their face. There ain’t none.

Each in their turn they ran through the litany of Chinese crimes. Fentanyl, China was producing fentanyl and sending it to the United States, but Trump stopped that. (praise be his holy name) And now the Chinese are sending fentanyl to Mexico and it’s coming across the border. You just knew the border was going to come up sooner or later.

This was a laundry list of everything supported by Republicans twenty-five years ago that aggrieves them today. Tell us General McMaster, do we have anything to fear from the Chinese Military?

“You bet we do! The Chinese are building this and building that and our only hope is in arming ourselves and our partners to the teeth, before it’s too late!

One of the ways the Republicans tipped their hand was by repeatedly referring to the Chinese Government as the Chinese Communist Party. In case you’ve forgotten somehow that China is a Communist country. Chinese Communist this and Chinese Communist that. The hearing was a stage show to vent Republican xenophobic rantings. You know like the way we say, United States Democratic Republic of America.

Their own fathers put it all into place and told us free trade was going to be wonderful. Now here are their sons are wanting to tear it all down but in name only. I listened carefully waiting for someone to suggest how to positively alter these agreements. Maybe that’s in the next meeting. The Party of big business attacking not big business but the suppliers to big business. Attacking China while exempting her American partners for their part in the situation brought about by their own Republican policies.

Ironically, if it hadn’t been for the global pandemic none of this would have been newsworthy. Because that’s where we were going. The Republicans pushing the same tired meme’s day after day. China created Covid 19 in a laboratory. The Republican belief that Covid was a manufactured bioweapon.

Except there are bioweapons on the shelf now that could kill everybody in ten minutes flat. If this was supposed to be a bioweapon, it was a failure. But it feeds the paranoid Republican belief that everyone is out to get us. Not one word was wasted on the problems that Covid has brought to China. Or how Covid has damaged the Chinese economy and how the Chinese are still recovering. The Chinese are out to get us with that bioweapon of theirs!

A Chinese industrial worker earns in a week what an American worker earns in a couple of hours. There are no labor unions in China. There are no environmental regulations just dump it in the river or burn it. That’s why American business partners with China. To save money and avoid costs and wages and to put those profits in their pockets.

To me, it illustrated all that’s wrong with the Republican Party. Twenty years behind the times dealing issues a decade or two too late. Showboating without any serious designs on fixing anything. Just fodder for the Congressional newsletters. A hearing to vent their spleens look tough and get their pictures taken. With plans to rant and rage, without plans to change anything.

In another fiery Florida fiasco, a new bill is brought forth in the Rubber Stamp legislature. To outlaw the Democratic Party. “Fascism! Get your nice Fascism! Get it while it’s hot!” Entitled, The Ultimate Cancel Act!

“For years now, leftist activists have been trying to “cancel” people and companies for things they have said or done in the past. This includes the removal of statues and memorials, and the renaming of buildings. Using this standard, it would be hypocritical not to cancel the Democrat Party itself for the same reason,” explained Sen. Ingoglia the bill’s author.

Whaa!! We’re being picked on! Every time we say or do something racist, sexist, or Homophobic the media cancels us! Like the Dilbert who wrote Dilbert, make one little racist rant and they cancel you! It’s petty and childish and if rubber stamped will be thrown out by the first court that hears it. Holding modern Democrats responsible for the actions of others a 160 years ago.

This is the level of Republican politics, “We’ll get you! You wait and see!” But the bill seeks to censor Democrats who have done nothing wrong or illegal. Dilbert was cancelled because he made offensive remarks hurtful towards a minority group. Cause an effect, a self-inflicted wound. The Democrats alive today had nothing to do with the Civil War.

Another Floriduh Bill seeks to limit the gender pronouns legally allowed to be used in Floriduh schools. “a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait.”  A Floriduh law arguing against medicine. You can hardly tell that Ronnie Reich’s fuhrer is running for President, can you? Ronnie has started a new book tour for his book “My Struggle.”

Gays and Transgenders are the new Jews in Florida and Ronnie is out to pass laws to limit their right to exist. A holy fascist war against minority groups with hopes of using racism sexism and bigotry to achieve the highest office in the land. This is what the Republican Party has become. The Party of Fear, the Party of Repression, and the Party of Fascism!

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” – Harry Truman