"A Perversion of Patriotism by Trump Republicans"
The writer is first vice chair of the Brunswick County Democratic Party
Opinion, NC Voices, Raleigh/Charlotte/Durham News&Observer, 01.05.22
We, the American majority, who freely and fairly elected President Joe Biden, cannot rest easy. The choice between parties is now a choice between authoritarianism and democracy. On the anniversary of the attempted coup at the Capitol we must resolve to vote in the 2022 midterms to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Republican politicians call themselves patriots while trying to rig future elections. At the state level, they’re passing voter suppression laws and manipulating election procedures so that results can be decided by partisans. At the federal level, they repeatedly reject bills designed to protect Americans’ right to vote.
Some GOP leaders and candidates are perpetuating the myth of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Despite a complete lack of evidence, they persist with the lie to maintain favor with former-President Trump’s supporters. They are too craven to tell the truth: Trump lost because he was a divisive, incompetent president who cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives by tragically mishandling the pandemic.
The culmination of the Trump GOP’s perversion of patriotism was last year’s attempted coup. Insurrectionists, incited by Trump, attacked our Capitol and law enforcement, believing they were fighting for their country. In reality, they were fighting for a lie.
They were conned by an ex-president who cares only about lining his pockets and feeding his monstrous ego. Following the assault, Trump’s Republican cabal in Congress, including seven members from North Carolina, voted to overturn the election results. Later, all the N.C. Republicans in the U.S. House unanimously opposed legislation establishing a Jan. 6 commission.
Attacking the seat of our government and voting against the certification of legitimate electoral votes are not pedestrian — nor patriotic — acts.
They’re acts of treason. Jan. 6, 2021 was not an aberration; it was a dress rehearsal. Americans must vote in overwhelming numbers in every election to reject the perversion of patriotism embraced by Trump Republicans who prefer authoritarianism to democracy.
Shelley Allen
Holden Beach