Joy-Ann Reid: Dont Let the Trump Circus Distract From the Real GOP Menace

[babylonsister]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dont-let-the-trump-circus-distract-from-the-real-gop-menace

Don’t Let the Trump Circus Distract From the Real GOP Menace
The trouble with the White House freak show is that it often horrifies us into missing the larger, pernicious Republican project at hand.
Joy-Ann Reid
11.23.17 5:00 AM ET


Donald Trump is many things—a tantrum-throwing man-child and a wannabe strongman pining for his very own banana republic among them—but perhaps most of all he is a giant, melon-colored distraction from what is happening to our country under his watch.

To be sure, the Trump administration is shot through with corruption. The president, his family and Cabinet’s money-grubbing, his public toadying to foreign dictators and autocrats; his former campaign claque’s constant lying about their ties to Russia and its apparatchiks like WikiLeaks, and the never-ending tidal wave of revelations about the international schemes and plots that brought this nefarious band of kakistocrats to power are exhausting to keep up with.

Yet we in the media and ordinary citizens alike are duty bound to keep up, not least of which because Trump, for all his incompetence and shallowness, maintains the power to incinerate the planet by invoking the nuclear codes.

In fundamental ways, the daily Trump freak show is corrupting us all—eroding not just the political and social discourse, but also the very idea that this is a country that is fundamentally decent and capable of honor. Trump’s quisling endorsement of serial pederast Roy Moore for the United States Senate seat in Alabama felt like the coda at the end of a very long passage about the downfall of conservatism, and perhaps, of America itself.

But the trouble with Trumpism is that often horrifies us into missing the larger, pernicious Republican project at hand. While we’re busy watching Trump, Republicans in Washington, led by House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, are working diligently to dismantle the social safety net and scoop out the contents of the Treasury to hand them over to the super rich, while paying off the Pharisees of the Christian right by stacking the judiciary with a load of hacks, kooks, and unqualified zealots.

Trump may be challenging your mental health, but his party is coming for your health care, your mom’s nursing home fees, your right to vote, and your access to the internet.

more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dont-let-the-trump-circus-distract-from-the-real-gop-menace