At what point did we become a mediocre country?

Although I have no political party affiliation I will most likely be vilified for what I am about to put forth as I live in a bastion of the Republican Party.

Honestly, I hate the two-party system of politics that run this country. I am 67 years old and for the last 50 years have watched as through the shenanigans of current and former members of both parties we are now stuck with an extremely polarized, exclusive, winner-take-all system of governance. Hopefully, we are viewing the culmination of this process, the failed deterioration into totalitarianism at the hands of an adolescent and his party hacks.

Things are such now that we have had Republican congressional members, Representative Dan Newhouse included, willingly going out of their way to placate their base in disputing the outcome of the recent election. And this based upon what, nothing but the rantings of a narcissistic manipulator leading their party. They have been empowering President Donald Trump’s attempt to cling to power at the expense of rejecting millions of votes cast in four states. They have done this despite no credible allegations of widespread voting issues, as affirmed by dozens of judges, governors, and election officials, the Electoral College, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the US Supreme Court.

As former Republican Representative Paul Mitchell recently stated, “It is unacceptable for political candidates to treat our election system as though we are a third-world nation and incite distrust of something so basic as the sanctity of our vote. … As elected members of Congress, we take an oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States,’ not to preserve and protect the political interests of any individual, be it the president or anyone else, to the detriment of our cherished nation.”

Come January 6, we will see if Representative Dan Newhouse and other Republicans collectively reject the electoral process, which the Department of Homeland Security said was “the most secure in American history.” Hopefully, we witness an exhibition of moral fiber and at least the beginnings of a less polarized partisan governing environment. However, by the time this is printed the more likely scenario will be another long-term harm to our democracy, thus continuing down the path to mediocrity.

Robbin Boyce