To My Dear Republican Friends And Family
An open letter from a Democrat to the people I know and love
By John Moretta
I want to express some thoughts and historical perspective with some of my relatives and close friends who’ve been loyal Republicans and conservatives for decades. At our friendly get-togethers, we rarely, if ever, delve into current political affairs because you know me to be the outlier in Texas: the passionately devoted liberal Democrat. And yet, I know all of you to be individuals of quality and integrity, genuine “compassionate conservatives.” You have consciences and are intelligent, discerning, and patriotic — and because of this I hope you’re as wary, if not as fearful, for the future of the nation as I am regardless of our ideological differences.
You won’t like some of this, but hear me out.
For many of you this election posed a real lesser-of-two-evils dilemma, and in frustration, some of you, despite questioning Trump’s qualifications and general decency as a human being, either voted for him out of hatred for Hillary Clinton, did not vote at all, or voted for a third party — or maybe even made a wasted write-in vote. Some of you thought that the risks of Trump in the White House were worth taking in order to accomplish your conservative policy preferences.
I hope you don’t mind my saying that this was not the best of strategies, considering what we got: the election of an individual not only void of any semblance of governing experience, but equally intellectually vacuous, vengeful, petulant, and mercurial. Perhaps most alarming, we elected a man empty of any core beliefs other than an inclination toward whatever actions and fear-mongering will temporarily satisfy his insecure — and ultimately insatiable — self-aggrandizement, ego, and yearning for celebrity.
There is currently scandalous evidence that strongly suggests that Russia provided much of the “fake news” during the election campaign that tipped many voters on the fence to the Trump side. I am sanguine that most of you, my Republican friends, now know this and acknowledge it. But now, consequently, the burden is on you, conservatives of good conscience, to correct the disastrous course on which this country is presently headed with the Trump presidency, especially with a Congress that is out of balance and dominated by a majority of Republicans shamelessly throwing the baby out with the bath water, driven by intense partisanship to dismantle the last vestiges of the social welfare policies that have protected millions of Americans from economic despair for over 70 years.
Democrats can march, relentlessly protest, passionately oppose and criticize the Trump administration and his White House henchmen, run for office at all levels, recalibrate policies, and retain party loyalists while attracting new, young voters. We can engage in all manner of activism and perhaps even some soul-searching along the way. But in the end, it is you, Republicans of conscience, who must come out of the shadows and forcefully communicate to Donald Trump and his supporters, both inside the halls of Congress and in your local areas, that you, as conservatives, as Republicans, are not a rabid base blindly following his self-aggrandizing authoritarianism. Neither do you condone the betrayals, the lies, bullying, mean-spiritedness, bigotry, amorality, xenophobic nationalism, and sheer incompetence that stain his presidency. It is none too early to come forth and denounce adamantly the Trump administration’s mendacity, rages, petulant tweets, and manipulative distractions, all which are degrading to the office of the most powerful individual in the world. I hope you have also concluded that Donald Trump, much to your dismay, is not a conservative, and probably not even a Republican, but rather a fast and loose demagogue, a con artist whom the majority of moderate, mainstream Republicans, such as yourselves, reluctantly endorsed and now regret.
Trump has been in office for over 60 days now and it has become painfully obvious that he can neither lead nor govern this country, let alone unite an increasingly divided nation with even a modicum of decorum and effectiveness. You must call upon him to stop the disparaging remarks about minorities, Muslims, and women. Demand he stop making idle threats toward those who grill him or take issue with his agenda. You must tell him he is an embarrassment to true conservatives such as Charlie Sykes and to party stalwarts such as Lindsay Graham and John McCain and that you refuse to let him and his alt-right manipulators continue to tear down the government and implement policies that will devastate the lives of millions of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens.
Most important, you must put unrelenting pressure on Republican House and Senate members to show some courage and challenge Trump’s callous and disastrous agenda before it destroys the last bulwarks of positive government. Trump’s policies, most of which are the handiwork of his alt-right White House cadre, are sadly supported by many Republicans both in Congress and outside it. Together they are creating a culture of cruelty in the United States that dismisses poor people as deserving of their fate while defending socioeconomic inequality as right and natural. (And to be fair, neoliberal economic policies have also contributed to this malaise.) We certainly do not want to leave the shameful legacy of having been a country known for its cruelty rather than for its munificence.
As a Democrat, I welcome with open arms at any time our Republican friends and relatives who have a conscience, who have a heart, and who realize that we are all citizens of the largest, most successful democratic republican experiment in world history. We are all determined to prevent Donald Trump from disgracing our hard-earned democratic principles and cherished liberties. We believe collectively that we have a moral obligation and responsibility to help provide for those who through no fault of their own cannot provide for themselves. I know that you, my Republican friends and relatives, believe this in your hearts and minds and hopefully you will join us in the work toward our common goal before irreparable damage has been done to our democracy and the governmental institutions and safety nets that protect and uplift all our citizens and not just the privileged few. We must come together, unite this country, and restore the values of community, inclusiveness, tolerance, equality, and justice for all citizens. We must simultaneously ensure that our elected officials, both Democrat and Republican, fulfill those expectations so all Americans can realize their fullest potential, aspirations, and pursuit of happiness.
I want to remind my conservative and Republican friends that liberal democracy in general is facing its most serious challenge since the 1930s. It is vulnerable to being overwhelmed by a predilection toward nationalist authoritarianism among the enraged and alienated in both the United States and Europe. Even in some of Europe’s most stable nations, far-right, neo-fascist movements have appeared as establishment parties. Traditional left, center, and right parties are losing ground to a new breed of parties that preach xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, and white nationalism as their base beliefs. They are, moreover, often pro-Putin, looking to the Russian authoritarian as the model of leadership. The appeal of Trumpism in the US and among many Europeans similar manifestations in their respective countries should not be too shocking then — but it should give you pause.
Wealthy nations have not been able to fulfill their duty to most of their citizens — and the US is no exception and the fault lies on both sides of the ideological divide. We had the best and most widely distributed economic and income growth in our history from 1948 to 1973, but expansion slowed considerably in subsequent decades. Globalization, automation, and the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs caused dramatic income decline and displacement among blue collar workers. Wages stagnated (and still do) as national wealth has climbed and large companies and corporations make record profits. As a result, it takes two household earners to provide what one once did. Our fellow citizens are forced to rely on increased borrowing and a dependence on government safety nets such as food stamps and Medicaid just to make ends meet.
And while minimum wage expansion and unionization did help to slow down middle class declension, those factors are being neutralized or eliminated by a government beholden more to the wealthy than the majority. We’re lagging behind other developed nations in terms of how well we provide opportunity and prosperity, all of our rhetoric aside. Because of more liberal political and economic policies, lower-income-earners in many European nations have done appreciably better than their US counterparts in the last 35 years. Nonetheless, even Western Europe is plagued by many similar inequities and social injustices, and so across the capitalist democracies people have not done as well as they had hoped, and this increasing despair has eroded their coping mechanisms as people believe their children will not be better off than they are. The results are ethnic scapegoating and spiteful nationalism — like Brexit.
In America, the result of our economic angst is the zero sum politics of the dispossessed. Financial security and stability, especially among the less educated working class, has tended to make for greater generosity and tolerance of others who don’t sound, look, or worship like them, according to economist Ben Friedman in his classic The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. However, when incomes don’t rise as fast as the cost of living or when unemployment occurs, people tend to search for reasons why this has happened and many conclude that their status is the result of newcomers taking what is rightfully theirs — even though this is wildly wrong. Immigrants become targets of a backlash regardless of the state of the economy but, according to Friedman, the exploitation of such fears or beliefs is precisely how far right authoritarians garner support among a wider, disenfranchised, alienated audience. Such was and is Trump’s appeal among many working class Americans whom he has promised, with his economic nationalist rhetoric and policies, to deliver up from their present financial despair and dislocation.
However, Trump and his congressional Republican allies have yet to deliver, and tragically, probably never will, as the administration remains mired in disarray, incompetence, and dissembling — and especially as they’re forced to deal with the further revelations of evidence regarding the Putin connection. Moreover, it appears that after being the party of obstruction for eight years, rather than the creative initiators of new ideas and policies, the Republicans have forgotten how to govern (as reflected in their internal division on the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act). The right-wing House Freedom Caucus wanted to obliterate the act completely, throwing millions of Americans upon the mercenary policies of private insurance companies, while wiser Senate Republicans realized that do so would result in millions of Americans — many of them white, working-class Trump supporters — being deprived of health care all together. No doubt we will also see divisive wrangling among Republicans as they approach debate on corporate and individual tax reform. In other words, for all the talk during the Obama years, the GOP never had a feasible alternative other than simply telling millions and millions Americans that they’re on their own.
Major Republican initiatives will be stymied in Congress, not because of Democratic obstruction — which now without the filibuster is more or less powerless — , but because of the president’s personality flaws and complete lack of policy-making knowledge. He has no interest in, nor does he have the stomach for, the negotiation, compromise, and strategizing necessary to the process of seeing an initiative carried through the ordeal of legislature. And Trump’s bountiful shortcomings are exacerbated by a polarized, equally incompetent White House staff. Add in the fundamental fecklessness of both Republican Party leadership and the rank and file — especially in the House — and you have the perfect recipe for policy disaster. At this juncture, it appears the Republicans will fail to deliver on any of their promises, proving in the process their inability to govern the nation, even with a Congressional majority and a supposed Republican in the White House. Policy impasse could result in the Republicans ramming through a half-baked health plan that causes mass suffering and then displacing the popular uprising that will surely ensue on President Obama. Principled fiscal reform could end up being nothing more than a typical Republican giveaway of a few more trillion dollars to rich folk. Empty sloganeering is no substitute for the hard thinking actual policymaking requires.
Surely, you, my concerned Republican friends, must see this. This isn’t empty partisan bile on my part. It is my hope that you will see through all of Trump’s authoritarian smoke and mirrors as well as the equally specious promises and policies of far right Republicans in Congress. Their claims that their agenda is designed to return “power to the people,” to create more jobs, to refurbish the infrastructure, to lower the cost of health care while guaranteeing that all Americans have medical coverage, to lower taxes so more middle and lower income citizens have more disposable income, and to safeguard the nation from terrorism and other foreign threats are a sham. It’s a ruse to further dismantle the government and the policies and agencies that have for decades protected citizens from the abuses of power and self-aggrandizing plutocratic excesses. And it isn’t even a clever sham. It’s transparent and obvious.
My Republican friends, it is imperative that you demand that your representatives sanction the formation of a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate not only Russia’s confirmed meddling in the 2016 election to ensure a Trump victory, but also to discern what degree any of Trump’s former and current advisors may have been complicit in such clandestine activities. A probe would also reveal to what extent Trump himself was or still is connected to Vladimir Putin. If Trump is indeed clean, as he continually declares, then he should get out in front of the accusations and fully support any investigations that would remove all doubt about his innocence. Release of his tax returns would go far toward assuring Americans that he is not beholden to any foreign governments or individuals. The more Trumps evades, equivocates, and dissembles regarding this explosive issue, the more he sows doubts in the minds of all Americans. In the end, those Republicans who do not push for an independent investigation nor insist that Trump release his tax returns will be tainted forever as possible traitors for having supported a known rogue for president.
Finally, you, my Republican friends, must loudly denounce as not only morally reprehensible but as an antithetical insult to the American creed of inclusiveness and diversity, the current bigoted, ethno-cultural nativism spewing from the mouths of individuals such as Republican House member Steven King from Iowa and continually fomented from the White House by Stephen Bannon, whom Trump refuses to muzzle on this issue. As a proud Italian-American whose family came from Italy to the United States in the early 20th century, I regard such blatant ethnocentric and racist diatribes about WASP superiority to be demeaning and dangerous. Sadly, WASP nativism has a long and ugly history, first directed at Irish and German immigrants who migrated to the US in the late 1840s and 1850s — many of your own ancestors. WASP hostility toward the other intensified in the period from 1880 to 1910 as millions of southern and eastern Europeans poured into the US, providing the cheap labor for our infamous robber barons.
However, these folk, along with the Irish and Germans, all eventually “worked their way toward whiteness” as they became fully acculturated and assimilated by the end of the Second World War; they in essence became white in the eyes of Anglo-Americans after suffering decades of often vicious discrimination. Yet, to people like King and Bannon, assimilation was a mistake because it allowed for the eventual “mongrelization” of the US, as ethnic and race mixing created an American citizen who was no longer WASP, no longer of “pure” Anglo-Saxon or Western/Northern European pedigree. Their fear is that if present immigration is not stopped and miscegenation discouraged or even prevented by law, WASP Americans will become a dying breed and the US will no longer be the great white nation it never really was.
If my Republican friends do not help stop such an assault on government and the people, then they will be personally responsible for tarnishing or even destroying the image of the United States as a beacon of hope and inspiration for the rest of the world in the current global struggle against the rise of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. You hoped when you voted for Trump that he wouldn’t be all that bad. And yet, he is. And here we are. History will not look kindly on him and the GOP in 2017. If you don’t see that and aren’t willing to reign in your own party, it will judge you too.
The time is thus fast approaching for all of us, but especially for you, my Republican friends, to rise to the occasion and challenge the direction of your party and your president. The next two or three national election cycles will define the United States for us and for our children, for the Twenty-first Century and maybe onward. Hopefully you will help make it for the better for all of us.
John Moretta is based in Houston. He is a professor of history at Houston Community College and University of Houston’s Honors College. His books include The Hippies: A 1960s History, William Penn and the Quaker Legacy, and William Pitt: Texas Lawyer, Southern Statesman, 1825–1888.
