By Frank Schaeffer
Trump is abusing his office. Show him a law and he will break it. If America’s election laws are to be reestablished and respected Trump will have to face the legal consequences of the election laws he’s trashed.
People of goodwill across the USA want a roadmap to oppose Trump’s cold-blooded attack on the Constitution, but none exists. That’s because the Founders didn’t know that people like Ted Cruz could ever be elected.
No amount of rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the Republican Party is advocating for the overthrow of an American election. And it is not a coincidence that this is happening after White evangelicals took over the party.
Today, the “sedition caucus” includes at least 140 members of the House—that is, some two-thirds of the House GOP membership—and at least 12 members of the Senate.
Mike Pence “welcomes” the attempted coup. Pence could have stood for the Constitution but no mask was thick enough to protect Pence from the pathogen of cowardice.
Engaging in sedition for insincere reasons does not make it less hideous. Arguing that you betrayed the Constitution only as theater performed to collect the future votes of deluded sad, scared White evangelical traitors to reason-is no defense.
The GOP is now the party of craven opportunists the kind of people who will try to tell us later they were “just asking questions,” or were “defending the process.”
The sedition caucus is worse than treasonous. Real traitors believe in something. These people believe only in their own fortunes. Ted Cruz and Co., will serve any master that gives them a shot at power, money and fame. They are termites eating away at the structure of our democracy.
To White evangelical Trump supporters, the Declaration of Independence’s pronouncement that “All men are created equal” and the constitution’s guaranty of equal protection under law are mere inconveniences to be discarded when confronted by an election result you don’t like.
There must be a response to a president who exploits his office for the purpose of overthrowing an election. Unless Republicans join Democrats in finding a way to rebuke Trump by legal action that sends a never-again message to the future–you can kiss our American democracy goodbye.
How do we make our way back into love, beauty and creation? Discover my book Letter to Lucy: A Manifesto of Creative Redemption—In the Age of Trump, Fascism and Lies, a multi-touch book about art, love and parenting, from the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the prophetic music of Green Day and everything in between. Read the first chapter for free on your kindle fire or iOS device. Available now on Apple Books and Amazon Kindle Fire.
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Caught between the beauty of his grandchildren and grief over a friend’s death, Frank Schaeffer finds himself simultaneously believing and not believing in God—an atheist who prays. Schaeffer wrestles with faith and disbelief, sharing his innermost thoughts with a lyricism that only great writers of literary nonfiction achieve. Schaeffer writes as an imperfect son, husband and grandfather whose love for his family, art and life trumps the ugly theologies of an angry God and the atheist vision of a cold, meaningless universe. Schaeffer writes that only when we abandon our hunt for certainty do we become free to create beauty, give love and find peace. Available now at Amazon.
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In 1998, Frank Schaeffer was a bohemian novelist living in “Volvo driving, higher-education worshipping” Massachusetts with two children graduated from top universities. Then his youngest child, straight out of high school, joined the United States Marine Corps. Written in alternating voices by eighteen-year-old John and his father, Frank, Keeping Faith takes readers in riveting fashion through a family’s experience of the Marine Corps: from being broken down and built back up on Parris Island (and being the parent of a child undergoing that experience), to the growth of both father and son and their separate reevaluations of what it means to serve. Available now at Amazon.
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