By GEORGE BALL

“Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

So said Winston Churchill in October 1938 about the British government after that nation and France served up Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany under the Munich Agreement in the forlorn hope that Hitler’s ambitions for empire would then be satisfied.  By choosing fiction over fact to justify an action both countries knew to be wrong, Britain walked away from being what it had long aspired to be.

We are, of course, neither Britain nor France, and have entered into no such agreement.  Yet our politicians are gleefully reprising those dark days in their feckless race to abandon our own foundational principles. Simple notions – that our community hospitals are actually full, that the people in our Towns are actually dying, and that the voters in our neighborhoods actually voted – are being replaced with absurdity so relentlessly expressed that it is now normalized.

In truth, I do not have the mental bandwidth to confidently tell you how America came to this point.  I just live here. But as a lifelong Republican, I can unequivocally say that while both parties bear some responsibility, on the fecklessness spectrum there is no co-equivalence.

The Republican Party at all levels – national, state and local – has abandoned the American people for the most ephemeral and empty of reasons; that is, to seek the momentary favor of an emotionally disturbed president who has proven himself incapable of loyalty, honesty, wisdom, or leadership.

We know who the worst offenders are.  Putting aside our seemingly irredeemable president, the easiest way to identify them is to subtract the few who have acknowledged Trump’s loss from the many who have not.  Even so, there are some Republicans who have worked particularly hard to earn our revulsion.  The Arizona GOP is one.  Mitch McConnell is another.  Along with Ronna Romney McDaniel (the Chair of the RNC), Trump’s “crack” legal team, and Lindsay Graham, all of whom should make us ashamed of being homo sapiens.

This election was actually not that close.  But it was close enough – particularly in swing states – for Biden to need everyone, including some millions of disaffected Republicans, to win.  Those same Republicans now have another role to play.

At the end of his speech on the Munich Agreement, Churchill prophesized what Britain’s feckless abandonment of its core principles foretold, warning “do not suppose this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless, by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.” As it must be for any nation whose citizens permit their political leadership to deliberately choose fiction over fact as its method of governance.  

Thirty-seven days have passed since the election.  Clearly, the decisionmakers in the Republican Party are not going to fix this.  Leaving us where we have always been.  To fix this ourselves.  And – perhaps – we can.  Perhaps not.  But to do nothing guarantees failure.

It is time to try.  I ask each Republican and Independent to contact RNC Chair McDaniel directly and to ask their friends and acquaintances to do so as well.    By phone, email, letter, or other means. Tell the RNC to “stop the stupidity.”

A thousand such contacts registers.  Ten thousand can move mountains.  Let us begin that task here and now, as Americans who honor those who came before us and are determined to prepare the way for those who follow.  Our citizens have done this before. Indeed, it is the thread that binds us to past generations, and part of what defines our greatness as a nation.

The RNC website is https://www.gop.com.