I read an analysis in The Washington Post recently which recounted quite well, over the last ten years or so, out-and-out Republican efforts to obstruct the operation of the very government to which they were elected—discussing/passing legislation, approving judges—if it was deemed, in the end, to somehow benefit the Democratic Party. This, of course, included legislation to assist Americans who were most in need of the government’s help.
Today, that party-specific monkey wrench is still being monkey-chucked into the gears of the federal government. However, it has morphed—quite monstrously and unabashedly—into an otherwise inanimate tool topped grotesquely with the head of former president Donald Trump.
Many party members today see Trump solely as their leader, unable to conceptualize anything else about the man—a figurehead for which to lay down their lives, and the lodestar to set their sails behind into a glorious, self-validating and more isolationist Tomorrow. The rest of us, however, see Trump as an inept man-baby who shouldn’t be anywhere near politics, let alone have any Constitutional authority, and who only joined in because he wanted another way to be admired by people, and to boss around the weak-minded. Because: man-baby.
And who lost the popular vote in two presidential elections, has been criminally indicted four different times on ninety-some felony charges, yadda yadda yadda.
You can see how some of us would question the sanity of many Americans.
Brainwashing is a hell of a thing, certainly. But how about when it’s voluntary? Is that not an arguable definition of insanity?
I’d say I was outraged by the revelations of that Post analysis, I’d say I was dumbfounded, but I wasn’t; it’s nothing new that I’ve seen (my outrage has long sailed on that). Frankly, I was amazed that such a thing was said out loud—first by Republican politicians and then by the analysts and journalists who were able to report it—and then printed in such a heavily circulated newspaper. And what I truly find dumbfounding is that more people aren’t being outraged by it, in turn.
Though I did see data from a poll the other day that indicated more than half of Trump supporters just don’t watch news sources that discuss the various concurrent trials of the former president, and so therefore can plausibly claim ignorance to the whole thing.
Brainwashing. Yadda yadda yadda.
I look to the center-leaning, not-so-heavily-brainwashing news about the Republican Party, and I keep seeing the same things:
“I admit to continuing to publicly believe Trump when he lies out of his teeth after he’s been shown by a dozen different sources to be lying (in public) for years.”
“Them dark-skinned immigrants is going to overrun this country.”
“We need a government bill to stop them dark-skinned immigrants overrun this country, but we won’t support your government bill to stop them dark-skinned immigrants overrun this country, Government, because that lying SOB leader of ours who indeed don’t tell no lies told us not to.”
“Look at them sub-humans trying to do human things that humans do.”
“It don’t matter if you get raped by your cousin or your daddy or whomever, you ain’t getting no abortion.”
“The Democrats-led federal government needs to stay out of the border South because we keep saying we need help to keep out them immigrants but we don’t want your help because if we keeping fighting the Democrats it makes our local politicians look good because we constantly need to be at war with liberals, immigrants, people who want to bring up our state or country’s morally questionable past, poor people, and whoever else ain’t like us.”
“The federal government can’t help support our poor people, we don’t need no help supporting our poor people. We’ll support our poor people. (But only so much. Because we really don’t like them poor people).”
One of the worst aspects of it all is that conservatives aren’t speaking to me, an open-minded independent; they don’t even consider me. They’re speaking to people who think only like them, who cast a vote for them—an audience that stands as a minority in this country. And the “greater good” these politicians see, and act toward achieving? It’s that of sustaining an America that was historically and deliberately unfair to its own citizens for centuries, all because those citizens weren’t a “type” of person—a once vast majority—who had been given more opportunities for success, or, rather, hadn’t had opportunities diverted from them because of how they were born, and had taken steps, once in positions of power and where possible, to limit the success of others.
America is full of people from all over the world, with ethnicities today, thanks to readily available DNA testing, that defy single-word descriptions. As it always should have been.
And it’s still full of people with plenty of unnecessary barriers to financial stability, and barriers to living a normal life.
And instead of helping out the needy and seeking a fair balance for the lowest socioeconomic tiers of its population, there only emerges in the deliberations (and on social media) strife, chaos, doublespeak, political maneuvering and struggles for party dominance. The product of a rabid, almost unitary mindset.
While sometimes guilty of other political misdemeanors—detachment, influencing, lobbying, favoritism, nepotism, revolving door-stepping, the occasional probe or indictment—the rap sheet of the Democratic Party, in general, doesn’t even compare. Not objectively. Not to this.
The Republican Party—today, the party of conservatism in America—has always been a solvent of contempt, bitterness, fear, narcissism, intolerance and dog-whistling most refined. To many on the party platform, the federal government, “outsiders”, non-normative sexuality, “race”, non-Christian religion, the disabled, disadvantaged, changes to the status quo of tradition in the form of balancing out systemic and societal discrepancies between citizens have all been targeted for marginalization or dissolution. Ultimately, all that solvent ever needed was the fatty, waxy, orange solute that was Donald Trump—more or less harmless on its own—to be added to it to violently react into the toxic solution that’s bubbling over today. It’s nothing surprising. Or uncharacteristic. Anyone who knew anything about it, followed it year after year—journalist, political scientist, average schmo like me—could have seen it coming.
(And if you think the “border crisis” is exactly what your favorite politicians are telling you it is, you should get some perspective on that.)
