Written by Ron Clinton Smith   

Who Loves Power More Than America?


The irony of Rudy Giuliani declaring President Obama doesn’t love America a week ago, is that by making such an unquantifiable and bizarre pronouncement against our twice elected President, he revealed a disdain for his own countrymen and the America they envision. Giuliani and his Republican cohorts, by words and actions in recent years, have displayed a characteristic abandonment of America’s truest principles: Fairness. Decency. Honesty. Justice. Truth. And that is not a place most of us love.

No President has patriotically worked harder, endured more indignities, many racial, nor achieved more positive results, in the face of opposition and treacherous adversity, than this one for the ailing middle class, and for America in general, since Roosevelt. Giuliani’s party has proudly and shamelessly stood in the way of America’s progress and recovery over the past six years, and any measure of success this President could muster.

In spite of themselves, after trying every ruse and trick in the book, the GOP haven’t been able to stand in his way enough to suit them. And the last ditch effort of the failure is to accuse the one who’s beating him, the one who’s still succeeding, of outrageous slander, by making absurd insinuations and blanket garbage accusations. Cheap shots require no real effort, no self reflection or self awareness, no new ideas, and no basis in truth. You just sling them out there to see if they’ll stick, if anyone will buy them. And the shots taken at President Obama have been carefully coded to suggest he wasn’t born in America, is secretly a Muslim, and has a black agenda to work against white Christian Americans.

We’ll just fall back on the same old tired trick and obfuscation, and say the President hates America.

If President Obama doesn’t love America, and this is the Republicans showing love for it, I certainly don’t want to live there. It’s the same cheap slamming talk we hear every day on right wing radio and Fox News from Hannity and O’Reilly. Doesn’t this ever get old or embarrassing? Is there really no shame in these tactics? When their ideas, prejudices and stratagems don’t work, isn’t it time to join the rest of the human race and realize their cheap car salesman gimmicks aren’t serving the people at all, and even if they worked for a minute, have no lasting power?

The real truth is, the opposite of what Giuliani said is true: the Republican party loves power far more than it does America. It has displayed this repeatedly in recent years by blocking every legislation from health care to immigration, women’s and gay rights, voting rights, raising of the minimum wage. The Republican party itself since Richard Nixon has had a history of sinking to any depth of deception, misdirection, diversion, theft, character assassination, prevarication and scheming, to hold onto and regain power, for the sole purpose of keeping the power away from the people.

It’s as if Richard Nixon rebirthed a party which will stop at nothing and justify anything to get their hands on the controls of power, from Watergate, to Reagan’s clandestine arms deal with Iran releasing the hostages behind President Carter’s back, the Clinton crucifixion over Monica Lewinsky, the manipulation of the 2000 election with a right wing Supreme Court appointing Bush, to the childish obstructions, fits and road blocks thrown up in fruitless attempts to keep President Obama from succeeding for the American people. Generally speaking, the Affordable Care Act is working for the American people, which drives the Republicans crazy. They don’t want it to work. They don’t want this President to succeed. They want to abolish his accomplishments. They love power far more than they love their country.

In point of fact, their country is about power, not service. They could care less what the issues are, how much America suffers with them, or how silly and petty they appear putting on their stunts, from shutting down the government over the debt ceiling, not funding the Department of Homeland Security at a time we need it most, to inviting an Israeli leader to speak to Congress in defiance of the President. There is a traitorous lethalness to it, a no holes barred, scorched earth, say and do anything policy that rules the current Republican party. They mislead the naive and uninformed who are looking to them for honest leadership, and who need it most.

And so we barrel into another presidential election cycle, where the right is heating up its characteristic personal rock throwing campaign, poisoning the pond, perpetuating tired myths and lies about the current leadership, and trying to lay a groundwork of mistrust against Democratic candidates by suggesting “they don’t love America.”

But it won’t succeed. Those who honestly do love this country don’t bottom feed with comments like Giuliani’s. Americans who love their country know better than to speak that way of other Americans, because not only is it cheap talk, a lie and silly and without class, but toxic words always come back on those who speak them eventually, even in American politics.

Ron Clinton Smith is a film actor and writer of stories, songs, poetry, screenplays, and the novel Creature Storms.