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| President Biden bashing MAGA Republicans last week (CBS) |
Giving Americans huge sums of money will come at a price. It will increase demand and exacerbate inflation. That’s what giving away free money does. Increased demand raises prices. Inflation has the potential to impoverish all of us. It could in theory spiral into making the dollar all but worthless. That is what happened to Germany of the 1920s. Inflation was so bad that Germans had to push wheelbarrows full of worthless paper to their local bakery just buy a loaf of bread.
That may not happen here. But the President isn’t helping matters. In times of inflation requiring students to pay back government loans is the right thing to do. Back in the 70s, I had to pay back all of my student loans. The government never gave me any free money.
But that isn’t the only reason I am not a fan. It turns out that Biden is not much better than Trump when it comes to vilifying his political opponents. Which he did last week at a political rally. (Even though the media billed it as an address to the nation.) He called MAGA Republicans semi fascists! ...urging people to vote for Democrats in order to literally save democracy… adding the following:
"You have to choose," Mr. Biden added. "Will we be a country that moves forward or a country that moves backward?"
What the President doesn’t seem to understand is that moving the country backward is exactly what MAGA Republicans want to do. But not in the way his comment was intended. MAGA Republicans want to go back to a time where their values reflected the values of the country. Values they consider far more moral that the liberal/left values of our day. Which as I keep saying – has turned morality on its head. What was moral back then is immoral now. What was immoral then is now the height of virtue.
Biden’s rhetoric at this rally is reflective of the new morality. But even if he has abandoned the values of his Catholic faith (to which I believe he professes to still be very devout) he should at least understand that people of faith (that characterizes many MAGA Republicans) disagree with these new upside down values.
What Biden should have done is differentiate between the truly abhorrent bigots and racists that comprise the extreme by very small number of MAGA Republicans and the much larger mainstream MAGA Republicans. The latter are what used to be called the moral majority. Although that majority has shrunken since that term was coined back in the 80s - and is probably a minority, they are nevertheless huge and consist of millions of people who support the former President because of his conservative polices. Policies that reflected their ‘old fashioned’ values.
This is not to say I agree with MAGA Republicans. As I keep saying, I do not. Not even the ones that are not racists and bigots. In my view they are completely wrong. Foolish, even. As I recently indicated by putting their values ahead of democracy they may end up losing both. It doesn’t take much for a dictator to arise and take away all our freedoms in the name of ‘saving the country’. That’s how Hitler managed to voted into power.
Deep down, the vast majority of MAGA Republicans are decent hard working people that simply do not like the direction in which this country has been going. They long to make America great again – as it was in the past. If that’s going ‘backward’. I’m all for it. As long as it doesn’t include the racism, bigotry, and the antisemitism that was a part of the culture at the time.
What we need instead is simple common sense combined with the moral values upon which this country was founded. Values that are much more in line with the past than they are with present. Even though vast the majority of MAGA Republicans mean well, they could not be more mistaken in their support for Trump. They should be looking at other conservative candidates that espouse their values. But deplorables (which fellow Democrat, Hillary Clinton once called them) and semi facists - they are not.
