OPINION:
The Most Dangerous Group in Human History
OPINION:
The Most Dangerous Group in Human History
By Karen Tate
Not Since Eisenhower Has There Been an Ethical Republican President
I’ve often written in my published books and essays that knowledge is power. Of course, I didn’t know that growing up in the South where our public school books barely scratched the surface on the evils of the Civil War, patriarchy, sexism, racism, or social justice. Neither were we encouraged to be good citizens with a firm handle on civics and how the government worked. Men and religious institutions were in charge and vital subjects like sex, power, religion and money were not talked about. Taking a back seat and having babies was a woman’s role in life. I had to move to California to begin to get an education and discover how stunted so many of our educations actually are depending on where we grow up and what our socio-economic background might be. Then I had to care enough to educate myself and leave my racist culture behind and become a feminist, or I think the more accurate word today is a womanist.
I’m reminded of all that in these last few years as I rub shoulders with those who would rather not know anything, critically think or choose instead to be apolitical and take a back seat and let someone else do their thinking for them. I have to remember we don’t know what we don’t know. Had I not left the South I doubt I’d ever have discovered the eminent scholar Noam Chomsky nor would I have taken the rare opportunity to interview him on my podcast. I wouldn’t have known he considered the Republican Party the most dangerous organization in human history and though he was primarily talking about climate change at the time, he also said, “Has there ever been an organization in human history that is dedicated, with such commitment, to the destruction of organized human life on Earth?” And he had not yet experienced Donald Trump’s presidency, nor was Project 2025 fully fleshed out as we understand it today.
I believe Prof. Chomsky assessed the GOP as he does for more than their position on climate change by reminding readers we have not had a lawful and ethical Republican president since Dwight D. Eisenhower. Knowledge is power and it’s important to be armed with truthful information. How many of us don’t know or were never taught the following facts about past Republican presidents and their administrations? As my historical account below will attest, Republican Presidents have been guilty of war crimes, election interference, committing treason, sometimes by conspiring with foreign governments, and much more, to acquire or hold power for decades since Eisenhower. Yes, there have been Republican traitors in the White House before Donald Trump even if you didn’t learn about it in school, discover it buried in the news or followed the headlines.
37th President Richard Nixon and VP Spiro Agnew
In 1968 Nixon contacted the Vietnamese to blow up the peace deal that Democratic President Lyndon Johnson had negotiated between North and South Vietnam, promising a better deal if he beat LBJ. His presidency resulted in the war lasting another 7 years, costing 20,000 more American and 2 million Vietnamese lives. President Johnson famously called out Nixon’s act of treason when he confronted Republican leadership on the deal.
WATERGATE…need I say more? Nixon was forced out of office by his own party for his crimes.
Spiro Agnew, VP under Nixon resigned his office because of corruption charges. He bartered his office to stay out of prison.
Check out other casualties and convictions related to corruption in Nixon’s administration here: https://watergate.info/analysis/casualties-and-convictions/
38th President Gerald Ford
Ford pardoned Nixon for his crimes thereby helped cover up Watergate denying The People justice. Many say had Nixon been held accountable, future treasonous acts that Reagan, the Bush family and Trump were involved in might not have happened or certainly wouldn’t have been so easily attempted and swept beneath the rug and normalized by so many.
40th President Ronald Reagan & VP for Reagan & 41st President George H. W. Bush
Reagan’s FCC was responsible for the Fairness Doctrine swirling down the drain and the spawning of Fake News. Before Reagan’s veto to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine proposed by a Democratic Congress, news organizations had to present both sides of an issue or opinion. The result is the polarization and misinformation we suffer today where the press regularly spews lies.
IRAN-CONTRA – The Reagan Administration’s October Surprise…like Nixon before them, Reagan/Bush arranged a treasonous back-door deal with Iran to keep Democratic President Jimmy Carter from re-election when Iran was holding the US Embassy hostages. The deal: in return for the Khomeini government keeping its U.S. hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran until after the election, and thereby damaging Carter’s candidacy, Reagan would reward Iran with armaments. Quietly released in 2020, documents proved this suspicion true.
Bush refused to cooperate with a Special Counsel Lawrence Walsh investigating Iran Contra resulting in Walsh accusing Bush of misconduct and a cover-up aka obstruction of justice. As President, George “Poppy” Bush issued pardons to those involved with Iran Contra.
41st President George H. W. Bush (continued)
George H.W. Bush ran a racist campaign with Willie Horton ads and escalated a racist war on drugs.
Made a dishonest case for war by lying to the U.S. public, saying Iraq invaded Kuwait “without provocation or warning,” including the fabrication of intelligence. According to investigative journalist, Mehdi Hasan, then of The Intercept, the elder Bush made false claims to justify the aerial bombardment of Iraq. Top of Form Hasan continues…Bush the elder, committed war crimes as he ordered the U.S. to drop 88,500 tons of bombs on Iraq and Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, many of which resulted in horrific civilian casualties. In February 1991, a U.S. airstrike on a civil defense air-raid shelter in the Amiriyah neighborhood of Baghdad killed 408 Iraqi civilians which was considered a violation of the laws of war.
U.S. bombs also destroyed Iraqi civilian infrastructure — from electricity-generating and water-treatment facilities to food-processing plants and flour mills. This was no accident. As Barton Gellman of the Washington Post reported in June 1991: “Some targets, especially late in the war, were bombed primarily to create postwar leverage over Iraq, not to influence the course of the conflict itself. Got that? The Bush administration deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure for “leverage” over Saddam Hussein. How is this not terrorism? As a Harvard public health team concluded in June 1991, less than four months after the end of the war, the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure had resulted in acute malnutrition and “epidemic” levels of cholera and typhoid.
43rd President George W. Bush & Vice President Dick Cheney
More than a year after George Bush was elected, a consortium of newspapers including the Washington Post, the New York Times and USA Today manually counted every vote cast in Florida for Bush and Gore in a process that took almost a year. Their conclusion was that Al Gore most likely did win the presidency. The New York Times slipped that tidbit onto page 17 in a November 12, 2001 article. How many people know? Not only did Gore win Florida but won the national popular vote by half-million but 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court and a crime committed by Jeb Bush (then the Governor of Florida) and his Secretary of State, Kathryn Harris (purging African American voter rolls/inventing a new category of ballots/not counting 45,599 votes for Gore) denied Gore the presidency. And guess who was the deciding vote on the Supreme Court stopping the vote recount? Clarence Thomas. Guess who were on Bush’s legal team ? John Roberts, Bret Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett. Oh what a tangled web they weave!
Anyone wonder how 9/11 and the aftermath might have been different with Democrat Al Gore at the helm? Would the U.S. have been lied into unnecessary war, committed torture and murder against thousands of innocent people and destabilized the Middle East? We know Gore would not have lied about climate change to keep oil industry profits soaring.
And to paraphrase journalist and historian, Thom Hartman, had Bush not been elected, had Trump not solicited help from Russia, the only Republican on the Supreme Court right now would be Clarence Thomas – and this would be a very different nation for voter, worker, immigrants, and women’s rights.
And let’s not forget the conflict of interest: According to the Washington Post, Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and made hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents.
45th and 47th President Donald J. Trump
Corruption, fraud, soliciting Russian interference in our elections, treason against the U.S. as he rallied domestic terrorists to mob the Capitol on January 6th to stop the certification of the 2020election, the sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll, obstruction of justice, theft of classified documents, tax evasion, election interference. This doesn’t even include the tens of thousands of lives lost because of his politicization and mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic or his potential violations of the Emoluments Clause and Hatch Acts. Since when do we sell cars on the White House lawn? Or Trump’s failure to uphold his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution and uphold free and fair elections. Cancelling USAID. And what about gifts like the 747 aircraft from Qatar?
