Has the Republican Party no shame at all?

Carol deProsse and Caroline Dieterle | Writers' Group

The Ku Klux Klan is a cult of hate, motivated by a delusional and fanatic belief in the supremacy of the white race. Over its existence, the KKK has been responsible for lynching at least 3,500 blacks. The most recent was in Mobile, Alabama, in 1981 when Michael Donald, 19, was found dangling from a tree.

KKK membership swelled to almost 4 million at its peak in 1928 as the group not only denigrated blacks, but also Catholics, Jews, and other non-white races. The KKK is working to be resurgent, led not by David Duke, but by Donald Trump. Please take time to see Spike Lee's “BlacKKKlansman,” playing now at local theaters.

Trump leads another cult, as well: MAGA clothing wearers who come to his rallies and cheer wildly for this pathologically lying, cheating, narcissistic egomaniac. Trump’s claque of followers repeatedly chants "lock her up" with the same tone and affect used by those who chanted "hang the n-----." Lacking rational thought, these individuals would drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid offered by the hand of Trump, blind to the fact that their leader was toasting with a McDonald's coke: "Goodbye and good luck. I love people who aren't educated.”

Regular Republicans — including senators, representatives, governors, mayors and local officials — are not necessarily members of the cult of Trump, but their posterior-kissing compliance in their quest for power and money makes them strong allies.

Republican voters claim to like:

Trump's foreign policy, but he does not have one;

his stance on immigration, which makes them equally racist;

and the actions Trump is taking that are causing untold damage to the environment, public education and civil rights.

His secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, is proving her racist credentials by obliterating rules and regulations put into place under the Obama administration that are intended to protect students’ civil rights. She is pushing hard to have money taken from educating low-income students in order to pay for guns in schools.

In upstate New York, Rep. Chris Collins was recently indicted for insider trading after he received private information that a company he’d touted for years was about to go under and then advised his family to sell off their shares to avoid enormous losses.

In California, Rep. Duncan Hunter was recently indicted for spending campaign funds on personal expenses, like vacations to Italy and a $600 airplane ticket for his kid’s pet rabbit, then filing false financial reports claiming that the money had gone to “wounded warriors.”

In suburban Ohio, Rep. Jim Jordan stands accused of failing to report the sexual abuse of student athletes by a team doctor when he was a college wrestling coach, and has encouraged his supporters to blame a delusional “deep state” conspiracy for his woes.

On the gulf coast of Florida, Rep. Vern Buchanan bought a new yacht worth at least $3 million on the very same day he voted to give himself a tax cut of $2.1 million — and paid for it with a loan from a bank that lobbied for that very same tax legislation, which Buchanan himself helped write.

In the suburbs of Phoenix, Rep. David Schweikert is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee because of his chief of staff’s questionable levels of outside income and lavish spending of taxpayer dollars, including $5,000 on a getaway to Super Bowl weekend.

In California, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, best known as “Putin’s favorite congressman,” has gone before two congressional committees over his ties to Russian officials and is reportedly of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as well.

A crime syndicate led by a man with a spray on tan is running the country into the ground. Has the Republican Party no shame at all?

Writers' Group members Carol deProsse and Caroline Dieterle live and write in Iowa City.