This column originally appeared in the Sun Chronicle on Monday, January 11, 2021.
AN INSIDE LOOK
By Bill Gouveia
After days of watching Republican
and conservative elected officials, commentators, columnists and citizens try
and distance themselves from the president they consistently supported, I want
to say something directly to them.
This is on you. You bear much responsibility for the
treasonous, seditious mistake that is Donald Trump. Maybe he fooled you the first time. That’s somewhat
understandable. But if you voted for him
twice, you have no excuse.
Don’t give us this
nonsense about how Trump suddenly went too far and undid “all
the good things” he accomplished. How this attack on the Capitol and his
complicity in it is new and different.
That’s a pathetic attempt to excuse your own
bad choices.
Administration officials resigned
saying they “hadn’t signed up for this”
and Trump “is not the same as he was eight months
ago”.
That’s pure, unadulterated
bullshit. Trump is exactly the same
person and president he was four years ago.
He is the same racist, lying, self-serving fraud he was when he came
down that escalator in 2015. You now “former
supporters” knew that when you “signed
up”.
Trump never pretended to be anything
but what he is. His character –
or lack of same – has always been clear. Now his politically motivated enablers suddenly
express shock after they milked this ignorant, narcissistic, mentally unstable
man-child for all they could before being forced to cast him aside.
You sold your souls to Donald Trump
in exchange for what you considered most important. You
traded your integrity for the promise of Supreme Court justices, tax breaks for
the wealthy, and advancing conservative agendas that could not pass without his
lying, bullying and manipulating.
And he delivered. You now have a conservative court. The tax code now favors the rich over what is
left of the middle class. Immigrants
have been put in their place and kept out of the country. He didn’t empty the “swamp”,
but filled it with creatures you like as opposed to ones you don’t.
All it cost was the honor of our
nation. The death of a police officer
defending the Capitol, a peaceful protestor in Charlottesville and maybe a
million dead Americans by the time a mishandled pandemic is over: the largest deficit in our history and the
incitement of a riot that endangered the lives of every member of Congress and
our entire democracy.
Hope it was worth it. And yes – I am talking to you,
whether a supporter on the national or local level.
Spare me your pious statements of
how Trump has disappointed you. Stop
pretending this comes as a shock. You
got what you paid for.
Yeah, I know. Hillary’s emails. Hunter Biden.
Radical liberal left. Riots in
the summer. BLM. Like any of that would excuse what happened
on Wednesday. Some of the more ignorant
of you actually say Antifa members – disguised as Trump
supporters – were the ones who attacked the
Capitol. Those claims are clearly a
mixture of gullibility and stupidity, and I won’t get into which
makes up the larger percentage.
You who elected and enabled this
president are more a threat to America than Donald Trump. Until you change, Democracy remains in peril.
It would be better to have you just
admit you sold out and move on.
Bill Gouveia is a local columnist and longtime
local official. He can be emailed at billsinsidelook@gmail.com and followed on Twitter at
@Billinsidelook.
