Friday 6 May 2016

The Snake Sheds Its Skin

So the last of the Republican hopefuls finally threw in the towel to leave the ravaged party grandees to put the pieces together again. Now I didn't mind Mr Cruz admitting defeat: I thought he was potentially even more dangerous than Mr Trump. But that is all relative.

I despise evangelists regardless of affiliation. They are all fundamentalists who have yet to recognise that one of the most powerful, dare I say sacred tenets of the Age of Enlightenment was the separation of Church and State. The Evangelicals thrown together, be they Christian, fundamentalist Jewish or the extreme Muslim groups are all adamant that the earth is 6000 years old and the bible is god's word spoken directly to whomever.

This headlong flight from the Age of Reason back to the Dark Ages of the Age of Superstition is being led by the Republican Party, be it Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. It is an all-out assault on the political freedoms won over the centuries. And now the ringmaster-in-chief Mr Trump has the baton firmly in his hand as he rushes into the past giving the crowd panem et circenses while stripping them of their civil liberties and tries to recapture an America that never really existed.

One only has to think back six weeks ago when the Republican Party heavyweights were circling their wagons to try and stop Trump. Now they are circling their wagons around him, to make him one of their own.

How quickly they are willing to forget every racist, misogynist, fascist and ignorant bit of drivel he spat out back when he was the evil entertainer. Suddenly he is being shaped into a presidential, measured almost house trained caricature around whose banner they look like they will all now flock. This reversion to type- any Republican- even a brain-dead Republican rather than an intelligent, experienced presidential being like Hillary Clinton is not surprising, even if it is revolting.

This is not going to be a pretty election.