Until a couple of years ago I was very proud to be a citizen of what I believed was a respected and revered nation. Although I am a septuagenarian, I still remember what it felt like to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of each day I attended St. Gerard Majella Elementary School. My chest swelled, and on a few occasions I felt a tear running down my cheek.

The people of my country were compassionate, and cared about much more than material possessions. We respected each other and issues such as religion were considered private. The fact that we were a nation of immigrants, more diverse than any other nation in the world, was not only taught in school, but a source of pride.

By the time I was in high school I had friends from multiple ethnicities, races, and religious beliefs. I remember those days as the most satisfying of my entire life.

After I graduated in 1964, I enlisted in the United States Air Force. I had multiple reasons for this decision, including securing an education, serving my country, and refusing to allow the military draft to make decisions for me. The civil rights movement had begun to influence our government and our people. I was stationed in Texas and Mississippi. As a boy raised in the liberal city of Los Angeles, what I witnessed was very upsetting. I was seeing the real America; all of it.

Long story short, I was medically discharged in 1965. I arrived home realizing that my country had changed. The Vietnam War had divided our nation. WWII veterans supported the war, but the young men who were sent to fight that war, along with their families, had many questions; the most important being ‘what were they fighting for?’

Although the war ended in 1975, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 guaranteed equal rights for all Americans, nothing much has actually changed today. In some ways it’s far worse.

In 2001, and 2003 we became engaged in two additional unwinnable wars. The young men and women who fought those wars, and are still fighting in Afghanistan today, are asking the same questions as my friends and family did in the 1960’s; ‘what the hell were we fighting for?’

Fast forward to 2016. Millions of ignorant Americans elected the worst man in the world as our illegitimate president. Almost immediately he revealed himself as the leader of the white supremacy movement. Not only did these anti-American groups come out of the shadows, his entire party stopped pretending that they were not racists, xenophobes, misogynists, and homophobes.

Minorities immediately faced a war waged by the Republican Party. Their war on women, the working class, low-income Americans, and more than 49 million Americans living in poverty escalated.

As Trump began deporting undocumented workers who had established lives in our nation, the media ignored the truth. Republicans are now offering a pretense to the American people that they seek a solution to possible deportation facing 800,000 ‘dreamers,’ or DACA recipients. Because Republicans are obeying their fascist leader, they will allow these young men and women who know no other nation but America to be forced to return to the nation of their birth.

Tonight Trump will stand in front of the nation and tell more lies. The ‘State of the Union Address’ is normally a revelation of a current administration’s plan for our nation’s future. The event tonight will be a scripted speech which will be nothing more than falsehoods. I will not be watching this farce.

Some Democrats are planning to bring ‘dreamers’ to the speech. Republican Representative Paul Gosar, a man who comes from the bright red state of Arizona, is demanding a stipulation to tonight’s event.

“Of all the places where the rule of law needs to be enforced, it should be in the hallowed halls of Congress. Any illegal aliens attempting to go through security, under any pretext of invitation or otherwise, should be arrested and deported,” Gosar tweeted.

Our government is under Republican rule. Congress has become a puppet for Trump, and is no longer a separate but equal branch of our government. When Trump makes a demand, Ryan, McConnell and every other Republican accepts his word as law. Fascism has arrived in America and it’s waving the flag and wearing a cross.

I can no longer claim to be a patriotic American. My country does not exist under the rule of GOP politicians. They have become a party of traitors and haters of our Constitution.

Gosar is a perfect example of why the Republican Party must be removed from power. He is not an American. He is a white supremacist and a traitor to the Constitution.

It is time for revolution. The Republican Party must be destroyed. They have become the enemy of 320 million Americans. They ignore the polls which reveal the wishes of those they were elected to represent while supporting the demands of special interests.

85 percent of the American people believe that the ‘dreamers’ should be given a clear path to citizenship. Republicans don’t care what we want and believe. If the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Steve Wynn, and other haters of my America have demands opposed to the majority, they become the priority.

Once more for those of you who have never read my favorite political quote of all time, here is what Abraham Lincoln said in the 1860’s and would say today.

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”

The time is November 6, 2018

Op-ed by James Turnage

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