Lawlessness of the G.O.P.
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Once again, another highly disturbing article in The New Yorker that shows how far Republican State Legislators are prepared to go in order to ensure that they never lose elections.[i] While Democrats have engaged in Gerrymandering, Republicans in Ohio and other States have taken it to new lows. Even though a wide majority of voters, both Republicans and Democrats, are opposed to it, Republican State Legislators have pushed it through despite strong opposition.
The same frame of mind extends to other key issues as well. Thus, “…polls consistently show that a majority of Ohio voters support legal access to abortion, particularly for victims of rape and incest. Yet, as the recent ordeal of a pregnant ten-year-old rape victim has illustrated [who was forced to travel to another State], Ohio’s state legislature has become radically out of sync with its constituents.”
One of the worst aspects of the entire matter is the sheer outlandishness if not outright dumbness of the arguments of one of the key sponsors of the State Bill requiring a young girl who was raped to carry the fetus to term. “If a baby is created, it is a human life…It is a shame that it happens. But there is an opportunity [italics in original] for that woman, no matter how young or old she is, to make a determination about what she’s going to do to help that life be a productive human being.” After all, the rapist’s offspring could grow up to cure cancer! Needless to say, the remarks were denounced widely.
The key point of the article is that having recognized that they are in trouble gaining Congressional offices so that they can enact their radical agenda nationally, Republicans have turned to State offices where they can assume control by Hyper Gerrymandering thus putting Democracy at extreme risk.
As if their “victories” weren’t enough, Republicans taunted Democrats saying, “Too bad you lost. Game over!” As Joseph Nye Welch said in reponse to Senator Joseph McCarthy, “Have you left no sense of decency?”
On related matter, writing in The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg[ii] makes the important point that just because Trump’s base makes repeated Threats of violence if they don’t get their way of letting him get off for his multiple transgressions, it shouldn’t stop the wheels of Justice of punishing him if he’s in fact committed crimes.
The point is that the Republican Party that has traditionally stood for “Law and Order” has become the Party of Lawlessness.
[i] Jane Mayer, Goodbye, “Columbus: How an extreme minority has upended democracy in Ohio, “ The New Yorker, August 15, 2022, PP 22–28.
[ii] Michelle Goldberg, “Don’t Give In to Trump’s Inflamed Fans,” The New York Times, Friday, August 12, 2022. P. A21.
Ian I. Mitroff is credited as being one of the principal founders of the modern field of Crisis Management. He has a BS, MS, and a PhD in Engineering and the Philosophy of Social Systems Science from UC Berkeley. He Is Professor Emeritus from the Marshall School of Business and the Annenberg School of Communication at USC. Currently, he is a Senior Research Affiliate in the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, UC Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Management. He has published 41 books. His latest is: The Socially Responsible Organization: Lessons from Covid, Springer, New York, 2022.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
