President Donald Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, our own Gov. Patrick Morrisey and others are well known for their efforts to undo American democracy. But what about the lesser knowns? The unsung villains in the march to evangelical authoritarianism?
Consider former Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis, who ended up jailed for refusing to issue a marriage license to a gay couple. Now Davis is appealing her case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Interestingly, the mercurial Davis had two daughters with her first husband and, while still married, conceived twins by another man whom she married following her divorce from number one. She then divorced number two and married number three, only to divorce him and get married for the fourth time, again wedding number two. I have been unable to dismiss the lines, “Who’s on first?†“I don’t know.†“Third base.†(Kids, look it up.) So, we must not overlook Kim Davis, on her way to the Supreme Court, doing her part to preserve the sanctity of marriage.
Candace Owens is a YouTuber whom The Washington Post termed the “New face of Black conservatism.†She has more than 4 million followers. Although a relatively new darling of the hard right, she already has received kudos from the president himself. Among her intellectual musings, she has said the moon landing was faked, that African Americans were better off during the first hundred years after the Civil War than they are now, that the CDC should establish “camps†for individuals at high-risk for diseases, that "me too" is “stupid,†science is a “pagan faith,†Bill Gates is a “vaccine criminal,†and that the 2020 election was “clearly rigged†for Joe Biden. Take a bow Ms. Owens, for helping lead the gullible ever closer to the great dictatorial oblivion.
Rep. Eric Burlison is coming on strong among those who gnaw away at the foundations of America. The Missouri Republican serves on the House Government Oversight Committee. He believes it was the FBI, rather than Trump, who caused tens of thousands of malleable innocents to attack cops and the Constitution on Jan. 6, 2021. All abortion should be banned, Burlison has said. He has endorsed the belief that a species of semi-human giants, the offspring of angels and human women, once walked the earth and that the Smithsonian museums are hiding their bones. Museum officials deny the claim, which is exactly what Burlison would expect, thereby proving his case. Burlison is an odds-on favorite to find fraud in government, even if he must manufacture it himself.
Certainly, various media outlets and their nearly anonymous (to most of us) executives are doing their share to ensure that a hobnail boot eventually finds the neck of every citizen. I rate CBS television’s bosses at the top of that media heap, given that they fired late-night ratings topper Stephen Colbert because he is critical of the president, who has often demanded the comic’s ouster. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, was engineering a big merger deal and feared that Trump might stall it, if Colbert remained. Thus, in spectacular furtherance of Trump’s dream of enjoying a North Korean-like grip on all media, CBS agreed not only to kick Colbert out the door, but also to establish a “bias monitor†(an Orwellian Big Brother) to report the company’s transgressions to Trump.
Also among the relative unknowns pouring gasoline on Old Glory are the enablers who abide Trump’s fantasy of a Washington, D.C., that is swarming with crime so rampant that, for the past two years, citizens have refused to go out to dinner. Thus, last week Trump felt compelled to send troops to quell the thuggish pandemonium. In a strange coincidence, not three months ago, Mrs. Wyatt and I spent several days there, casually strolling through tree-lined neighborhoods, completely unaware that all about us were roiling cauldrons of criminality, evils unknowable to all but our steely-eyed president.
Joseph Wyatt is a Gazette-Mail contributing columnist and emeritus professor at Marshall University. He may be reached at Wyatt844@hotmail.com.
