I find myself to be in an uncomfortable position.
If you are concerned and worried and fearful and scared of the secret right wing conspiracy to one day abolish all of the federal government social programs (including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and college student loans) that help people — then you have to worry about who the president will be now and in the future. If s/he agrees with these extreme conservatives, then the lower and middle classes will be at-risk and in danger.
As much as I dislike him, President Trump is really not one of them. He has no political beliefs or theory or philosophy or ideology that he believes in. But they (including the Kochs) do. Vice-President Pence does. Pence is an extreme conservative, and, in my opinion, he is a Social Darwinist. He is part of a group that is known as “The Movement Conservatives” that includes Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan. It is actually safer for the lower and middle classes to have Trump remain in office and to be the Republican nominee in 2020 than for a real Social Darwinist like Pence who these extreme conservatives would love to see become president.
It bothers me that the national Democrats are not warning, informing and educating the American people about this extreme conservative conspiracy. If a politcal nobody like me knows about it, surely most of them most know about it.
Yet, Trump has already ruined our country with his hateful talk, and I believe that it is probably too late for it to ever be repaired. The war between the Republicans and the Democrats will probably never soften. We are likely to always view and treat each other as “the enemy.” Our alienation and estrangement from each other will probably never lessen.
The book that does an excellent job of detailing all of the parts of this secret conservative conspiracy was written by Jane Mayer. Its title is “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.”
It looks like we will likely never achieve what Robert Kennedy hoped for and wished for, and what many of us today also hope for and wish for, when he said that “Our goal and task must be to tame the savageness of humankind and make gentle the life of this world.”
This is all very troubling, but there is always hope.
At this point, we need a hero.
Stewart B. Epstein is a retired college professor of sociology, social work and psychology who is very proud to have taught at West Virginia University, Slippery Rock University, and SUNY-Brockport. He is a former resident of Franklin County who now lives in Rochester, NY.