Statue of Liberty in Tears

The Statue of Liberty must be wincing. I suspect she'd cover her ears if she could, to stop hearing Boombox Trump's loud calls to block Mexicans and Muslims from the U.S. Do you think she's crying because she feels like a hypocrite?

Emma Lazarus wrote her famous sonnet to raise money for the Statue's pedestal. Now the Statue's cringing with fear people won't keep her on that pedestal once Boombox gets elected President.

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

It's not only "M"igration that Boombox wants stopped. He bolsters threats to cut education and cut protection for the environment by decimating the EPA; then he claims he'll save $300 billion from Medicare. That's interesting, since Medicare only spends about $78 billion.

Hating black people is what I believe fuels a lot of Boombox's supporters, though few would say so outright. A friend (no longer) emailed this to his whole address list, warning of a potential Obama presidency:

"Imagine black pickaninnies playing in the Rose Garden!" he wrote. Today even racists know saying that's no longer PC. So they hide their bigotry under Boombox's (not-too) veiled cries to "make America great again!"

I'm a gardener. Ask any gardener: First you plant; later you sow.

What you plant gets wholly affected by what you did in years past. Soil enriched or depleted? Pesticide or organic systems in place?

Quality seeds, or cheap bargains, cosmetically okay but with no future qualities brought to the garden mix for future years?

Not all petunia seeds are alike, Toto.

What the Republican Party planted over recent election seasons did get them their current majority in Congress. Yet it cost as they cossetted the growing tea partiers and their progeny. Something about winning the battle but losing the war? Not lost yet, it's theirs to lose. What's happening to the Republican Party?

Have you ever watched a building implode? Not James Bond-style in Venice, I mean. It's mesmerizing; it's quick and it's tactile. The Republican Party will be hugely lucky to leave this election cycle with just bruises.

Did it start with Karl Rove's agenda to groom colleges and think tanks? Was the 2000 ambush in Florida's pregnant chad-filled vote count gormless or just Gore-less?

Was it the advent of real-time bullying when Congress let the Iraq invasion stand? And W's brother Jeb! even defended him this time round!

How about when Darth Vader Cheny planted a "So?" when caught, and Republicans let it stand? Cheney, then Vice-President, was asked how he could claim the Republican President was successful when polls showed two-thirds of Americans say the fight in Iraq was not worth it.

Cheney's answer? "So?"

So how much damage could a little "So" do?

The politics of "So" are the dark politics of obstruction, of Pledges (and not to the flag) to derail a sitting President, of allegiances of a different sort with vows to obstruct every single act an elected President does. And currently, Republicans want to even deny the actual Constitution, America's rulebook (while giving it a full-body hug when it suits, as in embracing the Second Amendment right to bear arms).

Maybe it's just that kind of when-it-suits-them plasticity that makes Americans reject the establishment pablum after years of being force-fed?

I tell friends in other countries this never happened here before; they don't believe it. Where they come from, wherever it is, there usually are no protections of the kind our Constitution puts a protective arm around. Corrupt elections are the rule, no big deal. Slandering candidates? Same old same old.

When the leading candidates for President use debate time to openly debate penis size, the party loses.

Republicans with short-term memories forget how they gave back the lease... If it were a real lease, they'd have lost their entire security deposit.

An idea: How about if new administrations had to make huge deposits equal to the amount they spent on TV ads during the campaign? If they met the goals they told voters during the campaign, they'd get it their deposit back. If not...

If the party of Lincoln implodes, what will happen to a generation of disillusioned, disappointed soon-to-be older-than-their-years millennials? Would they form an alternate new Republican party? Would they turn off forever, removing large numbers of potential future voters from Republican reach?

Millennial are young Americans born between 1982 and 2000. There are now more Millennials than Baby Boomers (83.1 million Millennials; 75.4 million Boomers, according to the U.S. Census). That's more than one-fourth of the U.S. population. 44.2% are minority or ethnic groups. That means these people are not Hispanic, not single-race white.

Other themes to consider are the simply not-accurate Democratic delegate counts being pushed on Americans by some news outlets, which include the votes of Superdelegates who can change their mind right up till the last minute at the Convention; and what the current climate of no-civility teaches impressionistic children about acceptable behavior for adults.

I was out late walking by the Lincoln Memorial a few nights ago and saw Abraham Lincoln sitting there on the steps, in tears, head buried in his hands.

Me: "Not you too. Why are you in tears?

Abe: "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to."

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©Carole Bell 2016 Carole Bell is a writer interested in everything.

You can write to her at: [email protected]