We live in a time when one of our two major Political Parties is totally at peace with rejecting the citizens they allegedly serve when those citizens have the audacity to disagree with them. The most glaring example of this tendency was following the 2020 Presidential Election. President Biden handily won this election but his opponent, Donald Trump, has never had the strength or integrity to admit this defeat. He initiated sixty legal cases to challenge the result and received absolutely no confirmation. Regardless he continues to lie about the outcome to this day.
Of greater concern has been the virtually automatic complicity of furthering this lie by all levels of elected Republican officials. A current Bowling Green city council member angrily asserted to me that only the legal votes should be counted on the Saturday after the election as the legal votes were still being counted. This was as the outcome of the election was becoming clear and the systems in place were ensuring that all votes were legal and properly counted.
The disregard of conclusions of American citizens has continued after Donald Trump was convicted on 34 (of 34) criminal indictments. He was found guilty, by a jury of twelve ordinary citizens in this State case. He has fabricated that President Biden and the Federal government were involved in this application of justice and, as they invariably do, virtually all elected Republican officials, at every level, have repeated his lies. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and countless other Republican leaders have condemned these verdicts. In the name of space limitations I will not re-state their groveling replies but it does appear that many elected officials in the Republican Party are now abandoning their interest in the rule of law.
Locally, Republican State Senator and Bowling Green resident Theresa Gavarone basically repeated verbatim Trump’s response to being convicted. She posted on X that she is ‘confident that the American people will see right through this bogus, politicized trial and will overwhelmingly elect President Trump this November to return to the White House.’ Just because Trump says something and Senator Gavarone repeats it, doesn’t make it true. She is using a Trump manipulation tactic. She declares this was a bogus politicized trial with no evidence to back this view or even an attempt to support her assertion. It also appears that she has learned that she is not allowed to call Trump a “former” President.
Donald Trump is increasingly open about his authoritarianism. We should be extremely concerned about the mounting evidence that a significant majority of elected Republicans either share his vision or will pretend to in the name of their careers. We are seeing local and National elected Republicans abandon the result of (more than one) free and fair election and to condemn the rule of law when it’s inconvenient. We need to remember these grim realities when we vote this Fall. We haven’t lost America yet but we will almost certainly lose it if Donald Trump and his elected cult members are returned to power.
John Zanfardino
Bowling Green
