Law and Order and the Great American Farce

The Republican Party has a long history of being the political institution that Americans turn to when crime rates are soaring and fear of lawlessness hangs near the top of voter concerns. Republicans have been considered the “law and order” party since the days of Richard Nixon's "southern strategy." in the late 1960s. Republicans are perceived to be reliably strong, committed administrative crime fighters who can effectively keep America safe from all real – and imagined – threats.

Largely, this crime fighting messaging has been successful because poll after poll has shown that Americans believe the Republican Party is much stronger on crime than the Democrats.

But is this true? Like so many of the assumptions Americans make about the Republicans, it is, in statistical fact, dead wrong. (see: Homicide Rate. Crime in the United States, Uniform Crime Reports, FBI) Over the last fifty plus years, the rate of homicide has been HIGHER under 28 years of Republican administrations—the “law and order” folks -- than it has been under the Democrats -- a full 1.2 percent higher. For every one hundred thousand Americans, there have been 7.9 homicides under Republicans and 6.7 under Democrats. 

The crime wave that swept across America during the seventies and eighties was presided over by several Republican presidents. Richard Nixon came to office, promising to be “the law and order president” but his administration saw a rapid increase in crime that peaked at the end of his years in the White House. When Nixon left office in disgrace, after having presided over perhaps the most corrupt administration in history, at that point, the crime rate was at an all-time high, 9.8 per 100,000 Americans, in 1974.

That crime rate soared until the nineties when Bill Clinton, a Democrat, became president. At the end of Clinton's last year in office, crime had fallen a full 42 per cent.

And who was the greatest crime fighting president of the past fifty years? That would be Barack Obama, under whose administration, crime fell to its lowest levels on record.

Why then, do Americans believe the lie that Republicans always protect them and Democrats always put them at risk? In a word or two, the answer is messaging. The Republicans have always expressed a solid and unified message when it comes to crime and criminals, and they are relentless in voicing that hard-as-nails, tough-on-crime image, even if it's just a fictional concoction of K Street public relations firms. It's the message Americans want to hear and focus groups don't lie, right? The Democrats have always tended to take a back seat when it came to the crime issue and they've pretty much allowed the Republicans to bluster their way through the Congress and the Presidency with phony, hyped-up (mostly impossible-to-deliver) promises about fighting various "wars" on crime.

The crime statistics seem to prove one thing: If you want to see your State and City crime numbers go down, don't elect Republicans to fight the battle. They're just not very good at it.

Lies Republicans Tell America

I am not a Democrat.

I am not a Republican.

I am an American.

In this age of tribalism and strut-thumping division, that sentiment sounds downright corny.

Well, here's the truth. I have never known a time when America was not divided—by race, ethnicity, class, educational opportunity and political belief. But this country has never been as divided as it is now. Not close.

The political, historical, and social fabric of our nation is ripping at the seams, our collective emotions have become raw and unhinged. A dizzying chasm of separation has replaced strived-for unity as the product of our American experiment. Which is saying a lot, when you consider that the last fifty years have included such periods as the Civil Rights Movement, the Woman's Movement, and the War in Vietnam.

We have witnessed the sad transformation of our country, over these years. It's easy to see the harm that corrosive, divisive politics has brought to the doorsteps of every American, “the little guy,” the “forgotten American” for whom Donald Trump's populist campaign pretended to hold out so much promise.

We have seen the Trump promises wither with pressing political expediency, as one after another of those commitments to the “forgotten Americans” have been tossed aside for more pressing concerns – those concerns that benefited the donors and corporations whose obscene financial contributions (thank you, “Citizens United”) have shaped the tawdry political landscape of this nation.

In the next few months, this blog is going to change a bit. On days when there isn't breaking news (when is that?) we will be focusing on the various lies that Republicans tell America. 

I can already hear the aggravated responses from Republican politicians and supporters: the Democrats lie, too!

Of course, the Democratic Party has not always held a higher ethical ground. The southern Democrats stood for a particularly noxious form of racism in the first half of the last century. They engineered, then perpetuated an ill-thought out and questionably motivated campaign of carnage in Southeast Asia – a war whose consequences continue to haunt and shape the daily national conversation. I am certainly not claiming that the Republican Party holds the patent on illicit sex scandals or criminal outrages.

But Democratic malfeasance is not the subject of these blog posts or of the book that will follow. The situation that America finds itself in is unprecedented in the three hundred year history of the nation. It is no exaggeration to say that while America sits at the precipice of a very dangerous moment in history, it is the Republicans who are shaping – perhaps, inexorably – the nation's future.

That seems as good a time as any to focus on the untruths, mistruths, fabrications, and flat-out falsehoods that have occupied such a prominent place in Republican thought. If you're interested, the next few weeks will be filled with such lies – the lies Republicans tell America...