Please read to the end, share within your networks and most importantly, vote Democratic in the November 2002 midterms!

Donald Trump is not a leader. He is a figurehead. He is the perfect figurehead for a Republican Party that has become increasingly radicalized and authoritarian over the past few decades. For those of us who have watched the Republican progression beginning around the time of the 2000 election of George W. Bush, the rise of Donald Trump came as no surprise.

As we approach the November 2022 midterm elections, it’s important to be aware of the dangers the Republican Party poses to our nation, with or without Trump. As more evidence about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is uncovered, the links between Trump and various party members who conspired to cause the events of that day have become clearer. The attempted cover-up of those connections has become more obvious. But there is much more. There is a 20-plus-year history about the Republican Party that led up to Jan. 6, to which the following seven sins – all of which cause death or harm to Americans – attest. Please read to the bottom, volunteer or contribute to Democratic candidates’ campaigns between now and the elections, and certainly vote Democratic in November. The prospects of Democrats are improving by the day, according to fivethirtyeight.com’s election forecast, but many House and Senate elections across the nation will be close. Still, there’s no reason we can’t achieve another Blue Wave like we did in 2018 if we turn out to vote at a higher rate than Republicans.

1. The Sin of Gun Violence. Over the past 50 years, more than 1.5 million Americans have died from gun violence – more than the number of service members lost in all of our foreign wars combined. America has been in denial over this war fought among its own citizens on our own soil. This graphic shows the volume of American gun violence in comparison to peer nations.

The genesis of this gun violence began when politicians, primarily from rural areas, began to align themselves with the interests of gun and ammunition manufacturers represented by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other gun marketing groups.

Over the past 25 years, as Republicans gradually became the predominant party representing rural America, they have continued to carry the NRA’s torch and have become more extreme in promoting pro-gun policies, including concealed-carry, open-carry and no license-required gun laws, and in refusing to support tougher background checks on gun buyers, limits on ammunition magazines, assault weapon bans, and other common-sense measures. The predominantly Republican-nominated Supreme Court has supported this pro-gun agenda, stripping away gun restrictions passed by municipalities and states.

As Democrats gradually became the predominant party representing urban America, they have steered clear of NRA campaign contributions. In the 2020 election, the NRA spent more than $35 million to help elect Republicans including Donald Trump, according to opensecrets.org. During the current 2022 campaigns, the NRA has had none of its money accepted by Democrats, according to the same source.

2. The Sin of Selfishness Over Community Best Interests. Republican support of an individual’s desire to bear arms that have been destructive to American communities is only one example of how the party caters to voters who put self-interests ahead of the public good. You can make a list of the many issues upon which Republicans have imprinted selfishness indelibly upon their brand – guns, COVID vaccination and mask precautions, health care, voter rights, workers’ wages, reproductive rights, and climate. On all of these issues, the preferences of an individual, industry, religion or political party take precedence over the good or consensus of the community. Is it any wonder that Donald Trump – an all-star in the annals of narcissism – would be chosen to be a figurehead for the Republican Party? This selfishness has broadened the gap between America’s haves and have-nots and has placed vulnerable populations including women, children, ethnic minorities, the elderly, the poor, the LGBTQ+ community, and individuals with chronic or disabling medications conditions at risk.

3. The Sin of Disinformation and Dishonesty. Fox News was invented by right-wing Republicans who realized they could not win honest debates with their opponents. The primary purpose of this network is to create and amplify specious political narratives based upon little or no evidence. Over the past 20 years, Fox News’ media personalities, whose stock in trade is creating counter-narratives to the truth, have increasingly added conspiracy theories to their cynicism and their merchandising of doubt. These personalities include Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Maria Bartiromo, and – the worst of all – Tucker Carlson, who recently spouted pro-Putin propaganda in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Today, Fox News is essentially the state media network of the Republican Party.

Knowing a good money-making scam when they see one, social media networks including Twitter and Facebook jumped into the hate speech and disinformation business, spreading Fox News and Republican lies among new audiences. Right-wing websites, radio shows and TV networks complete this media infrastructure of dishonesty. Unscrupulous Republican elected officials readily appears on these networks to communicate false or misleading narratives. If they don’t like the truth, they lie. They make stuff up. It’s as simple and as awful as that. They were doing it long before Trump became their leader.

4. The Sin of White Male Supremacy. Of the six current Supreme Court justices nominated by Republican presidents, five are male and five are white, with one black male and one white female. These unelected individuals decided to go against the court’s precedent and to deny national reproductive rights to women, throwing the matter to the states and creating unnecessary chaos, pain and suffering. The court’s act was sexist, cruel and arrogant; their act gave permission to states to become theocracies that can persecute individuals who do not accept the teachings of the state’s religion. What ever happened to the separation of church and state? But what else would you expect from a court majority whose extreme conservative and religious beliefs are out of sync with mainstream America?

In Congress, according to the Pew Foundation, 17% of racial minorities are Republicans vs. 83% being Democrats, with 86% of Republicans being men vs. 62% of Democrats. In state legislatures, 95% of Republicans are white vs. 66% of Democrats, and 83% of Republicans are men vs. 66% of Democrats, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

With white (and virtually all straight) men calling the shots in the Republican Party and in states governed by Republican majorities, is it any wonder women, children, ethnic minorities, and LGBTQ+ communities are living under increasingly hostile state governments?

5. The Sin of Supporting Donald Trump and Covering Up His Crimes. To any clear-minded person, it was so obviously something that wouldn’t go well. In 2015 and 2016, Donald Trump’s hateful, inflammatory rhetoric inaccurately described the Obama-era America as a dystopian nightmare. Trump’s lies appealed to Americans whose perception of reality was warped by consuming too much right-wing media. Republican leaders supported Trump throughout his campaign against Hillary Clinton, although they should have known better. Their hatred of Hillary, and of empowered women, was stronger than their moral fiber and love of country.

After Trump was elected, his lies continued. Wasting no time, he lied about the number of people attending his inauguration. He co-opted press secretaries ranging from Sean Spicer to Sarah Huckabee to Kayleigh McEnany to lie on his behalf. The Washington Post documented 30,573 false of misleading claims from Trump during his four-year presidency. Republicans did nothing in response.

His lies hit their first crescendo when he lied about trying to extort now-hero Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating Joe Biden in return for U.S. aid. Democrats impeached Trump for this action; Republicans acquitted him. After the horror of Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump’s incitement of violence led to five deaths and hundreds of injuries to Capitol police officers. Democrats impeached Trump for a second time; Republicans acquitted him again.

Today, after 19 months of investigations, what Trump did to overthrow the results of a fair election is becoming increasingly detailed. As more evidence is found, increasing numbers of individuals who were members of his administration are coming forward to expose the truth. With the next hearing of the House January 6 Select Committee scheduled for September and the Justice Department now conducting a criminal investigation of Trump, many more members of Trump’s circle reportedly can’t agree to testify fast enough. Yet, to this day, Trump continues to lie about the outcome of the election, and his supporters choose to believe him.

Republican Party leadership still remains too cowardly to denounce Trump and often refers to him as the frontrunner for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination. It’s now clear that the party has been operating a cover-up operation on Trump’s behalf that makes Watergate look like an Easter egg hunt.

6. The Sin of COVID Mismanagement. In our last issue of Stand Up, we wrote about the introduction to "The Premonition," a book by Michael Lewis about the Trump administration's failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lewis describes a critique of the United States pandemic performance in 2020 published by the scientific journal The Lancet in February 2021. At that point, 450,000 American had died from COVID. The journal points out that if the U.S. death rate had simply tracked the average of the other six G7 nations, 180,000 of those people would still be alive. "Missing Americans," The Lancet called them.

Since February 2021, the death toll has risen to more than one million. The book and many other media reports have detailed how Trump and Republican allies downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic and undermined efforts to slow the spread through mask wearing and social distancing. In the face of disinformation disseminated by right-wing media networks and personalities about COVID-19 precautions and later about vaccines, Trump and Republican elected officials did next to nothing to counter this disinformation, choosing instead to politicize the pandemic by supporting measures to ban mask and vaccine mandates in schools and public places and by refusing in many cases to wear masks and get vaccinated. Republicans also in many cases chose to vilify Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health officials who encouraged Americans to do their part to stop the spread. Right-wing media continues to spread disinformation about vaccines and other aspects of preventing COVID spread to this day.

Amidst all the other Trump and Republican crimes, their horrible management of the pandemic gets forgotten. But we can’t forget it this November when we go to vote.

7. The Sin of Cruelty, Wrath and Abuse of Power. It’s completely acceptable, virtually all people agree, to have a strong belief in the right of a fetus to be carried to term and to accept the personal consequences that go along with that belief. But it’s an entirely different thing to be cruel to women who do not share that belief and are forced by state laws to give birth. What’s particularly cruel are state laws that prohibit abortion in cases of rape or incest or when a woman’s life may be in danger and that penalize healthcare providers and other supporters who try to assist women to fulfill their desire for an abortion by traveling to a different state or by taking medication to induce abortion.

This cruelty and wrath also surfaces after mass shootings. We’re always appalled when, after a mass shooting, the first thing Republicans say is "guns and gun laws aren't the problem." The first thing. Not "I'm sorry for the victims and families." Not any display of open mindedness about the causes of gun violence. Not how the violence affects first responders, bystanders, family members, medical personnel, etc. In Highland Park, Illinois, seven people shot dead and dozens wounded with a high-powered rifle at a July 4 parade and the first thing they say is "it's not guns or gun laws." What is wrong with Republicans where they go directly into this defense of guns? Probably the same reason why many of these same people believe the Big Lie about the election. They have been indoctrinated, brainwashed. Adam Kinzinger, another of the few Republicans who have retained their integrity, said it best the other day -- it's like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's like Republicans have been swooped up and replaced with pod people. The honorable Republicans of yesteryear have been replaced by abusers and super-predators.

This wrath and abuse of power is especially apparently on the Twitter feeds of so many Republican elected officials such as Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy and others – the list is depressingly long, with virtually every Republican elected official bearing some degree of complicity in our national tragedy. Mimicking their idol, so many have become mini-Trumps, using bullying tactics and lies to disparage their political enemies. Their hate speech is an abuse of power unbefitting of their oaths of office. They fail in every way imaginable to serve their fellow Americans. They are hateful, selfish, cowardly abusers, nothing more.

Summary

So if you have problems with Biden and the Democrats, I challenge you to compare your list of problems with the list of Republican sins above. We’re hoping that after you make this comparison, you’ll be motivated to vote Democratic up and down the ballot in November 2022.

Here's what we ask of you:

1. Feel free to share this email with others who are likely to share our point of view but not with those who are likely to be argumentative. The email will work best if it comes from you, personally. You are also welcomed to post the content of this email under your own name. We are happy to add individuals to our email list as well, upon your referral and their request. Others can opt-in to receiving our emails by clicking the link below.

2. Learn about your current elected representatives for the Senate, House of Representatives, state senate and house, and more. Here's a good resource for that: ballotpedia.org, as well as your local League of Women Voters. School board elections are also important right now, with right-wing forces advocating for armed teachers in schools, blocking vaccine requirements, undermining efforts to make schools more welcoming of diversity, and sabotaging efforts to teach the truth about our nation's history.

3. If you've moved or haven't yet registered, register to vote ASAP. You can start this process at vote.gov. 

4. Start making plans to get involved by volunteering to door knock, phone bank, or send postcards or letters for candidates. In addition to the websites of current officials and candidates, a few other good resources include indivisible.org, mobilize.us, votefwd.org and turnoutpac.org/postcards. Here's a good website for donating to campaigns: actblue.com.

Both of us have decided to dedicate our time to this work, and it's important to us that we know others will go with us on this journey.

There's an ongoing narrative in the media about Republicans having the edge in the 2022 elections. Don't believe it. Not for a second. Because to win, they're going to have to overcome the tremendous turnout we're going to create together with others on our side in the next months. We were part of big victories in 2018 and 2020. 2022 will be no different. Have faith, and let's get to work.

Sincerely,

Ray Valek and Jeanette Quirk