The Founding Fathers Created Donald Trump And The Republican Party by Robert Covington Jr.
“If this country is ever demoralized, it will come from trying to live without work.” ― Abraham Lincoln
The idea and meaning of suffering have been debated and reflected upon by some of our greatest leaders, thinkers and religious icons throughout history. The best interpretations of suffering often remind us of our capacity to overcome, sacrifice, and become more human amid the varying degrees of tragedy and pain that we have endured as a human species. Also, the worst interpretations of suffering within the context of world history have come from evil regimes and leaders inflicting human beings with unbearable pain and chronic exposure to famine, death, poverty, slave labor and environmental dangers that has made God weep time and time again.
The horrifying histories of leaders such as Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler and Idi Amin have rightfully been vilified and unquestionably earned their reputations as some of the worst human beings ever produced given the scale of death, cruelty and destruction resulting from their malignant narcissistic psychopathic lives. But there are other countries that grapple with their own histories of sanctioned suffering.
Here in America, the level of treachery, brutality and violence that is the hallmark of the nation’s founding, has been the dark cloud that has put the American project on the brink of collapse on numerous occasions. Reprehensibly, the founding fathers provided intellectual, psychological, and emotional justification to construct a society centered on human suffering.
The Declaration of Independence was really a declaration of perverse audacity. A public service announcement of the founding fathers own narcissism, sense of entitlement and delusional thoughts of grandeur of wanting so desperately to believe that they were special, the chosen ones and the paradigm of righteousness — while simultaneously creating a national character of cruelty and hypocrisy. The founding fathers fundamentally believed that it was within their right to maintain their advantage, privilege and the suffering of others on their own terms. They prioritized profit, property and white supremacy, not democracy.
The founding fathers were so thoroughly heartless and inhumane, the function of suffering within the American project has been able to modify, adjust and evolve with the endurance of a marathon runner for over 400 years. The wide array of necessary propaganda manufactured through books, religion, state and government sponsored violence, lies within education, media, entertainment, hypocrisy, laws, fluid capital discrimination and the construction of whiteness and anti-blackness to divide human beings fueled the American project of acceptable suffering in their name.
This is the character of the nation that lives with us today. We cannot get sidetracked by a narrative that asks us to look to the founding fathers for guidance out of this situation. As previously stated, the intellectual heft, the aspirational rhetoric and the mechanical brilliance in the development of the constitution and the three branches of government by the founding fathers was an organized venture into another form of self-indulgence. The founding fathers failed us all in the name of selfishness.
As Americans, when we see Donald Trump and the current Republican Party and their selfishness, narcissism resulting in widespread suffering and death, blame the founding fathers for showing them the way. It is the retention of white male domination and power that they seek to uphold. It is the freedom to determine other people’s life chances just like the founding fathers tried to do.
The founding fathers showed people like Donald Trump and the Republican Party that it is utterly incomprehensible to imagine racial equality with non-white Americans. This is the tradition that informs Trump and the Republican Party to stack the courts with unqualified white men and conveniently destroy the basic tenets of the constitution, checks and balances and the rule of law just to hold on to power. They know what they are fighting for and it is not in the best interest of a healthy multiracial democracy, but only themselves. They cannot imagine a different reality without them controlling the outcome.
As a nation, the economic and coronavirus carnage that Americans have endured and continue to endure, serves as a reminder that America will only survive and be made anew only if we confront the uncomfortable truth that the founding fathers gave us Donald Trump and the modern version of the Republican Party. By admitting this reality, we begin the process of creating a new model, new leaders, a new democracy and a new possibility of what we can be, not what we are now. The institutionalized sins of American suffering supplanted by a collective practice of empathy, compassion and shared prosperity that is reflected in our words, deeds and actions. It is possible, but only if we make it so.
Follow me on twitter: @robcovingtonjr
