Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening an effort or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a saboteur. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identities because of the consequences of their actions or mask their actions, misrepresenting their intent.

On a wartime footing, sabotage is unrestrained and often lethal, blowing up factories, railroads, military installations and bridges, or conducted under cover through underground organizations.

In traditional democracies, established customs and norms usually guide permitted behavior, there being a high expectation of “doing the right thing.” Usually standards of behavior shame a party into the right behavior. When there is no shame, only avarice or focus on power, the whole system is challenged.

We now have such a system with few checks and balances and with the Republican Party self-serving and unrestrained, enabled by too much of a compromised media.

A highly polarized society is too disabled and disorganized, allowing unprincipled elements to violate rules with impunity, often without voter restrictions, especially when supported by a corrupting media.

We all know highly functioning, otherwise good people who cite news sources like Fox News, Epoch Times, and the New York Post as credible. The 70 million people who voted for a dangerous criminal for president didn’t do it to intentionally harm others, something that Trump does every day, but because they believe the Trump lies, especially with the media and their political party focusing on fear and anger to back up his lies.

In our country, that unprincipled element is the Republican Party and that primary media of scurrilous support is Fox News with a for-profit-based social media indirectly supporting the lies and dishonesty.

Sabotage is not unheard of with institutions in a democracy. Labor unions have used it as a mean of self-defense and action against unfair working conditions by withdrawing efficiency, including slowdowns, strikes, working to rule or bungling of job assignments.

Short of war, it is used by governments. The Stuxnet computer worm was used to subtly infect and damage specific types of industrial equipment. Security experts believe it was an attack on the Iranian nuclear program by the US or Israel.

The term political sabotage is sometimes used to define the acts of one political camp to disrupt, harass or damage the reputation of a political opponent, usually during an electoral campaign, such as during Watergate, it becoming criminal. Smear campaigns are a commonly used tactic.

More recent GOP sabotage plans were more legal in nature, but had more lasting and widespread effects on progress of average Americans in the midst of the Great Recession of 2009. It caused great hardships and economic damage to the poor and middle class, this while the rich continued in prosperity making strident gains, at the expense of all others.

On the day of Obama’s inauguration on January 20^th, 2009, Republicans got their heads together in a private dinner and decided strategy to repeatedly block Obama over the coming four years to ensure he would not be re-elected. The ebullience of 1.8 million souls at the mall to witness Obama’s swearing in was resounding in their ears and was too much for Republicans to bear.

An anemic stimulus bill was their concession to get America’s economy going for a slow recovery during the Bush Recession. It was calculated by Republicans to be only enough for a meager recovery effort.

A succession of Obama stimulus plans was rebuffed by Republicans, including the American Jobs Act in 2011-12. Its plan was to put 2 million construction workers, Cops, teachers and firefighters back to work. Senate Republicans torpedoed it, and in 2012, Mitt Romney could attack Obama with a spurious claim: “with America in crisis, with 23 million people out of work or stopped looking for work, he hasn’t put forth a plan to get us working again.”

The GOP sabotage strategy of investing in economic misery came close to working due to many short-memories or inattention among voters in 2012, but Obama was re-elected and the GOP was successful only in helping the recession linger. After all, huge corporate profits and recovery were their concerns not American workers.

Now Mitch McConnell continues his intent to sabotage Democrats in the White House. President-elect Joe Biden will be the next, this after much rejoicing on the streets by Biden well-wishers.

Mitch probably won’t openly say that his sole goal is to make Joe a one-term president as he did of Barack Obama in 2010, but that is truly his plan. In fact, part of his sabotage is to go along with Trump in demeaning our democracy and Biden’s election.

Just as his priority did not include dealing with the severe joblessness and monetary strife caused by the Great Recession during Obama’s administrations, even during Trump’s regime, he has had no focus on relieving the sufferings, even the deaths caused by the pandemic. Appointing right-wing judges always takes precedence.

In addition, he always made sure that huge corporations had plentiful funds to hold stock prices artificially high through buyouts, utilizing taxpayer money. Job needs, first responder supplies, money for opening schools, unemployment funds, health care, help for hospitals, keeping small businesses afloat, food on the table and anti-eviction plans were never major concerns. That is why the over $2 trillion Democratic relief plan of May was never considered by McConnell or Trump, or even the compromise a few months ago.

Even now Mitch is supplying Republican funds to re-elect two Republican Senators, Loeffler and Perdue, in the January Georgia runoff. Both Senators did insider trading, utilizing privileged information during the early pandemic, information not shared with the public to save lives, but which enabled stock trading by them to secure their own fortunes.

Politics too often has been a dirty business, but Republicans have made it beyond dirty, into the realm of reckless, vicious, cruel and even criminal, forgetting their oath of office to the Constitution and the people. The lives and well-being of their constituents or the country in general isn’t even a thought, or an after-thought.

Current activities are a cogent case in point.

Our two Republican Senators led the cacophony of GOP criticism of one of the few honorable Republicans, Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, who, to their dismay, conducted a fair and honest 2020 Georgia election.

Currently, Sen. Lindsey Graham was caught straying into that criminality in suggesting, during the election, that Raffensperger should try to discard some ballots in Georgia to sway the election in Republican favor.

Without Democratic wins in the Georgia runoff Senate election, Mitch McConnell will have enough control of the Senate to continue his sabotage policy, this time against Biden whose platform is to repair America after Trump.

Moscow Mitch’s sabotage will certainly impair that effort.