It would be easy to say that the Republicans are "disloyal" to America, but I think the truth is much more complicated than that. Because the very meaning of loyalty has changed.
I remember back when the movement against the Vietnam war was in full swing, NIxon called on the "silent majority" to strike back and indeed there was a period when the majority did support the war, including some Democrats who later became "Reagan" Democrats. The silent majority regarded themselves as the patriots and many of them regarded the protesters as traitors outside the pale.
What has changed today is that the grassroots Republicans have a new definition of what it means to be an American, and hence of what patriotism, as well as loyalty, involves.
Many whites--not just the white working class but many who are college educated and in middle class jobs, as well as many small business people and farmers--have come to see THEIR America, white America, as under siege by hostile invaders: blacks, Hispanics, other nonwhite people, immigrants either undocumented or documented, the LGBT community, and women who refuse to be dominated and mistreated.
Over the eight years of Obama the lurking bigotry in the minds of Republicans turned hard and cruel--Obama became the symbolic focus of their hate, which was cynically brought to a pitch by skilled racist operatives. Now Trump's Republican followers deeply feel that THEIR America is being taken away from them. This is far more important to them than any cerebral issue of national security, the Atlantic alliance and NATO as defined by the Washington "elite." They want THEIR America back--the America they delude themselves into thinking they once controlled, as if the banks and the billionaires never had, or don't still have, the upper hand.
The Christian Right feels the same way but they have a pop-theological overlay to it: They believe that not only is America being taken away from whites but it is being taken away from them AS Christians. They too want America back, they want THEIR Christian white America back, and many of them want Dominion over believers and nonbelievers alike.
So when they are told by the media "elite" that Trump is collaborating with Putin, that is not a negative thing to them. Trump is giving them what they want. And Putin is helping Trump to do it. Putin is supporting their patriotism (as they define it) by helping Republican candidates win elections. Putin is helping them keep their guns and he's helping them outlaw abortion and gays, and he's helping Trump stay in power. Thus many Republicans will say openly that Putin's a great guy and others will think it privately.
Most of them are not going to change on this point. Supporting Trump and defending Trump's collaboration with Putin is "patriotic" and "Christian." It is the immigrants, the blacks, the gays, and the liberal women who support Planned Parenthood who are the REAL enemies of white America and of the Bible. Not some guy thousands of miles away in Moscow.
The Trump base has upended the traditional meaning of patriotism so that the Democrats and progressives, not Putin, are the true enemies of America.
Expect no help from the Republicans in taking steps to stop Russian interference in the November elections. Trump's base will not allow it; indeed his base will regard doing so as the very OPPOSITE of protecting America.
Dan Rather said after Trump's election that some day there will be better news. He didn't say "soon," he said "some day," like we had entered an extended period of travail. But there is a window of opportunity to lessen that period. All Americans alarmed about the future of our country under Trump and his far right allies need to turn out this November (and make sure their friends and family turn out and get the ID they need not to be turned away at the polls) to help take back Congress. Likewise we should all donate to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and to groups such as the NAACP, Planned Parenthood and the labor movement that are rallying the public in support of the issues and values traditionally defended by the Democrats. And if you know people who are unable to get to the polls, either because of illness or because their boss won't let them take time off to vote, make sure they send in a ballot by mail.
If we take advantage of this brief window of opportunity, we will have a fighting chance to take back at least the House. But this will require a turnout like never before, because the Russians and the Mercer family's newest tech crew will be cherry picking districts for ballot deletion and the Christian Right will be mobilizing on a huge scale to kill Roe v. Wade.
If we do win back the House and make big gains on the state level, the other side will still have the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the millions of assault rifle owners and the money of billionaires such as the Kochs, Mercers and Murdochs. But we'll be able to start limiting Trump's damage, in some policy areas, thanks to the Democrats gaining this toehold of power.
And toeholds, if they are held tenaciously (as in a rather obvious example from 1944), have a tendency to eventually burst the doors wide open.
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