We have to move forward no matter what

Commentary:
By Kat Avila

We’ve been through these racist scenarios before–generation after generation. I am talking about this unreal spectacle that the Republican Party (GOP) presidential candidates are shoving in our faces.

One or more GOP candidates want to build an isolationist and very expensive Great Wall between the United States and Mexico. For some, it’s let’s build a Great Wall between us and Canada, too! Security is important, but these candidates are not distinguishing between strategically smart and far-out ridiculous.

One or more GOP candidates want to deport millions of people who don’t look like them (obscenely wealthy, white and male). Whether or not you have citizenship papers is really irrelevant. The ethnocentric GOP just wants to drop off storm troopers in your neighborhood, break down doors, and drag poor people of color off to the Great Wall. The only people they won’t bother are the ones who can afford lawyers.

One or more GOP candidates want to track foreign visitors like FedEx packages. The Nazis ran out of yellow stars, so the GOP would like to use bar codes. Maybe they also want to put a bug on old-school journalist Jorge Ramos to make sure he can’t enter any GOP press conference to ask the hard questions.

One or more GOP candidates want to tear down women’s healthcare and access to family planning and birth control. Almost 100% of Planned Parenthood’s affordable community services are for things like breast cancer screenings and pap smears, nothing that any of the front-running GOP candidates would ever need so it’s low-to-no priority.

One or more GOP candidates are flies stepping in a lot of hate group shit and spreading their diseases around. Sane voters must become a flyswatter large enough to slap the clowns of the GOP down, so we can get back to talking about real issues for real people.

Those real issues include maintaining a globally competitive level of education, addressing the declining quality of natural habitats and other environmental challenges, and how to meet the economic and healthcare needs for a full spectrum of Americans and not just the 1%.

No matter who wins the next presidential election, these issues will remain. Like our grandparents and parents who had to deal with the overt racism and obstacles of their times, we have to keep moving forward to build a future generation of Americans strong, creative, and capable enough to meet the next set of great challenges. Not more of the same old, same old.