(ThyBlackMan.com) It’s always a bad idea for a writer to overstate his or her case or deal in hyperbole. It causes readers not to take the writer seriously, so let me choose my words carefully. The Republican Party has morped into a fascist, bigoted, un-American, and completely inept and irresponsible threat to wolrd peace, with a pronounced tendency toward treason even as they wrap themselves in the American flag. I could go on, but I want to be careful to remain “fair and balanced.”
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The GOP’s thoughtless, greedy and uncaring policies toward the American people has been troubling since before the Great Depression. The only thing that keeps the GOP viable is once they’re voted out the public tends to forget their previous atrocities during the four to eight years they’re out of office. But our grandparent’s generation, the generation we refer to as the “Greatest Generation” – those who suffered through the Great Depression and fought WWII – didn’t forget. They wouldn’t let Republicans even go NEAR the White House. There were two reasons for that. First, back then they had a functional educational system, and secondly, they suffered so horrifically at the hands of the Republicans that they couldn’t forget.
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In 1921 — eight years before the great depression — Republicans took over the helm of this nation for 12 years. During that time there were three Republican administrations, the first of which was the administration of Warren G. Harding. History remembers Harding’s administration for one thing more than anything other — scandal. It was during Harding’s presidency that the Teapot Dome Scandal erupted. His administration was considered the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States — until Nixon’s, then Reagan’s, and finally Bush’s.
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Next, in 1923, came Calvin Coolidge, the president that Ronald Reagan is said to have most admired. Coolidge’s policies of large tax cuts, allowing business a free-rein, and his encouragement of stock speculation contributed greatly to the impending stock market crash and the great depression that was to come.
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Then in 1929 Herbert Hoover came to power. During his administration the stock market crashed, starting the great depression. In spite of the fact that by 1933 the unemployment rate was at 33.3% with 16 million people out of work, the Republican, Hoover, just sat, thinking that the economy would eventually rejuvenate itself. During Hoover’s administration 15,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding that they be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property.
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Finally in 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a liberal democrat, was elected overwhelmingly. He immediately surrounded himself with a group of the finest minds in the country, including Columbia professors Adolph A. Berle, Jr., Rexford G. Tugwell, and Raymond Moley, known at the time as the “Brain Trust.” After assembling these men and others he went about the business of developing a” New Deal” for the working class people of this country.
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The New Deal had two components — one to help the economy to recover from the effects of the great depression, and a second component to give relief to the American people and to insure that they would never be placed in a position of total destitution again. To help heal the economy Roosevelt created programs that regulated business, controlled inflation, and brought about price stabilization; 
to bring relief to the people he signed The National Labor Relations Act which guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining, and he created the Social Security Administration to guarantee workers some sort of income once they became too old to work. He also signed the Fair Labor Standards Act which protected workers rights and set a minimum wage for workers, and the Republican Party’s reason for being has been to abolish every one of these programs every since.
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During the Great Depression there was no such thing as Social Security, so when a person became too old or weak to work they had no income so they had to depend on their children for support. That meant instead of a husband and wife only having to support themselves and their children, which was tough enough during those times, they also had to support their parents. So there was often three generations of a family in one household – and in many cases, the parents of both the husband, and wife, lived with the family.
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In addition, there was no such thing as Medicare or Medicaid, so when one of the grandparents became ill the medical costs would devastate the entire family. These conditions kept lower and middle-class families in such dire need of funds that they had to accept whatever crumbs the business community chose to throw at them – and remember, at that time there was no Fair Labor Standards Act or unions to protect a worker’s rights or a minimum wage, so businesses could treat the worker anyway they wanted, and pay them whatever they wanted.
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They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime, and no paid vacation. In addition, since there was no child labor laws, if your boss didn’t think you were being productive enough, he could insist that you bring your children in (as young as 9 years old) to assist you if you wanted to keep your job. Then if you protested, he could fire you on the spot, in which case, your entire family – sick grandparents and all – would be thrown out on the street, because there was no such thing as unemployment insurance.
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As a result, in many cases the entire family, including the children, had to work long, hard hours under sweatshop-like conditions in coal minds and the like, which in many cases led to the death and/or maiming of young children. So in a very real sense, Great Depression era workers lived under a form of slavery – the one difference was, they had to go out and find their own housing.
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Think back to the “Little Rascals” we use to watch as kids, and how ragged they were, or the cartoons we use to watch, where a landlord would come to the door (always portrayed in a black suit) and would tell a begging and crying mother that she had one more day to come up with the rent or she and her family would be thrown out in the snow. That was an accurate portrayal of the way people lived in those days, and those are the conditions that the conservative Republican agenda would restore in America today. Those are the conditions that they’re fighting to restore today.
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But by putting his “New Deal for the American people” in place, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this “bleeding heart liberal”, not only led this country out of the worst, Republican generated, crisis that this country has ever faced, but went on to lead the free world in victory over Hitler in WWII. He then ushered in the most sustained prosperity that the world has ever known.
So the people of the “Greatest Generation” elected Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt into office an unprecedented four terms, from 1932 until he died in office in 1945. Thereafter, Republican nominee, Thomas E. Dewey, had to push for the Twenty-Second Amendment creating presidential term limits for A Republican to even get a whiff of the White House, and even then, a Republican wasn’t elected until Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 – and he was only elected because he was the allied commander credited with winning WWII, and he was a Republican in name only. He signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act, and sent troops into Little Rock Arkansas to integrate the schools.
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In addition, as President Eisenhower’s very last act of office he warned the American people of the military/industrial complex, or people like Dick Cheney and the kind of Republicans we have in office today. Ike would have summarily shot Dick Cheney had he been in office when Cheney allegedly outed CIA operative, Valarie Plame.
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The “Greatest Generation” understood what we’re only now finding out the hard way about the Republican Party due to the GOP’s systematic dismantling of our information and educational systems – their pronounced greed and lust for power has rendered them prone to being reckless, irresponsible, without limits, and a danger to our democracy. We’ve had the opportunity to see all of these malevolent characteristics in graphic detail recently in both the GOP’s invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu, a foreign leader, to come thumb his nose at our President before a joint session of the United States Congress – and never once did one of them tell Netanyahu, “You lie.”
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The GOP also demonstrated reckless irresponsibility with the unprecedented act of DIRECTLY intervening in the President’s nuclear arms negotiations with Iran when 47 Republican senators signed a letter to the government of Iran essentially saying, “Don’t pay this guy [THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!!!] any attention.” That’s the reckless, petty, and immature behavior of irate children who cannot be trusted with any sort of power. They’re either too dumb to realize, or too reckless to care that this nation has ALWAYS lived by the axiom that “Politics end at the water’s edge.”
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So again, because it can’t be repeated often enough, the GOP has clearly demonstrated that they are much too petty and dangerously irresponsible to be trusted with power. When they’re in the minority they pout, throw tantrums, and leave no stone unturned to obstruct democracy when they can’t get their way, and when they’re in power they act with the reckless abandon of ravenously deprived children turned loose in an all-you-can-eat chocolate factory. But unfortunately, it’s always America who ends up with the belly ache.
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GOP politicians just tend to lack common sense. Republican President Richard M. Nixon lacked the common sense to recognize that the President of the United States should not become an accessory to a common, street-level burglary, or place American citizens on an “Enemies List.” Republican President Ronald Reagan lacked the common sense to realize that it was inappropriate to commit the treasonous act of going behind President Jimmy Carter’s back and making a deal with a foreign enemy that was holding American citizens hostage to continue to hold those citizens hostage for political gain. Reagan also lacked the common sense to realize that it was inappropriate to flood America’s inner cities with crack cocaine in order to finance his illegal war in Nicarauga. Republican President George W. Bush lacked the common sense to recognize that it was inappropriate to lie the nation into a multi-trillion dollar war with Iraq, killing over a million Iraqi citizens, and killing or wounding thousands of American troops for political gain and the enrichment of Dick Cheney’s Halliburton Corp. And Dick Cheney lacked the common sense to recognize that it was an act of treason to reveal the identity of an American CIA agent for spite, and that Americans don’t engage in torture. They’re turning America into an ugly place. They’re making America itself, un-American.
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So yes, Republican politicians have a long history of pettiness, greed, poor judgment, and a tendency to continually drag America down a rat hole to satisfy their selfish lust for power. Thus, America needs to wake up and see these people for who they are, because 2016 is going to be a pivotal election. If the Republicans win, they know that the demographics against them, so they’re never going to give up power again – regardless to WHAT they have to do – so America will never be the same again.
