For years I’ve been saying that Republicans are the problem. They are not upstanding citizens. They aren’t concerned with the public welfare, they don’t care about the body politic, and they only out for themselves.
As I showed in my book Conservative Estimate, “conservatives” have character traits that make them unsuited to real democracy. It all starts with excessive fear, which leads to distrust, selfishness, antisocial attitudes, hatred of the “other,” and dozens of negative traits that make “conservatives” threats to a democratic society.
The press has always taken the attitude that “conservatism” is a legitimate political point of view. Reporters take the stance that the “beliefs” of “conservatives” are valid, defensible, political ideas that have equal status with liberal ideas. Hence, they are skittish about criticizing “conservatives,” no matter how self-centered, how hateful, and how vicious. They take the stance that “conservative” behavior is not the result of who they are, but the result of the valid beliefs they have.
The press’s just can’t see that “conservatism” is not a political philosophy on a par with liberalism but a post hoc hodgepodge of notions that have no intellectual integrity. “Conservatives” are, and always have been, about only one thing: power.
The problem with “conservatives” is who they are, not what they “believe.” They only “believe” the constantly shifting and contradictory things they say because they are the sort of people who want power above all.
Finally, someone in the mainstream press has gotten the message. Tom Nichols has written a brief article in the Atlantic finally calling attention to the Republican voter as the source of America’s political crisis.
The Republican base actively embraces Trump’s grievances; it emulates his pettiness; it supports his childlike inability to accept responsibility. These voters are not sighing in resignation and voting for the lesser of two or three or four evils. They are getting what they want—because they, too, are set on revenge.
Yes, because they are the sort of people who seek revenge rather than peace and understanding. The problem is who they are.
A lot of people, especially in the media, have a hard time accepting this simple truth. Millions of Americans, stung by the electoral rebukes of their fellow citizens, have become so resentful and detached from reality that they have plunged into a moral void, a vortex that disintegrates questions of politics or policies and replaces them with heroic fantasies of redeeming a supposedly fallen nation.
Yes, because they are the sort of people who bristle at criticism, who cannot admit their faults, who lash out in anger when they don’t get what they want, which is to impose their will on everyone else. The problem is who they are.
These voters now want to get even with their fellow citizens not for what’s been done to Trump but for what they feel has been done to them. They were certain that 2016 would finally bring them the recognition and respect they craved. Instead, Trump set them up for a steady diet of ego-bruising rebukes from other voters.
Yes, because they are the sort of people who demand respect even though they behave with shocking, selfish crudeness, arrogance, and aggressiveness—which earns you disdain instead of respect. The problem is who they are.
Nichols seems to get one thing wrong.
If in 2016 they suspected, rightly or wrongly, that many Americans looked down on them for any number of reasons, they now know with certainty that millions of people look down on them—not for who they are but for what they’ve supported so vocally.
I don’t know why he says, “not for who they are.” It is precisely because of who they are that Decent America looks down on them, despises them, and rightly rebukes them for their outrageous behavior. Who they are is precisely the reason why every true lover of democracy should look down on them. And rebuke them. And wipe them off the political map forever.
I hope this is the beginning of a general awareness that “conservatives” are the problem. It is who they are that makes them a danger, and it is who they are that disqualifies them for participation in the national deliberation.
It is absolutely imperative that Decent America run to the polls this November and destroy the Republican party.
Once it is gone, we can finally breathe, clear our heads, and get on with the serious business of forming a more perfect union.
My thoughts exactly.
Republican "policies" and "ideals" are fear-based, distorted, anti-social, and therefore sociopathic. To some degree, they always have been. They certainly haven’t been about “conservative” economic and appropriate constraints on government overreach for decades. They created and got the personification of their fungible beliefs in the Frankenstein that is DJT. He’s the abuser they remember from their childhoods and merely a caricature of the unlimited power they’ve always wanted. And they deserve him.
The rest of us didn’t and don’t deserve him except to the extent that we worship the rich and ignore their misdeeds. And that element, the Capitalist dilemma, the inherent nihilism of Capitalism, and the inevitable fall of empire now unfolding in real-time, NEVER get mentioned in the current chaos, even by the fiercest critics…except Chris Hedges and a small handful of others who are screaming it from the deep cave mainstream media keep them in.
The current surrogate for Republicans' self-destructive, democracy-killing ideas is a Capitalist creation—not the first and certainly not the last, e.g., Pharma Bro, and even Don Dixon (who crashed the entire Savings & Loan industry with his embezzlement of $250bil from Vernon Savings & Loan in Texas). (See, The Daisy Chain, by James O'Shea). And, last I looked, Dixon resided comfortably in California and still had some of that ill-gotten art in his office, while the FDIC paid out hundreds of $millions to clean up the mess, pursue and prosecute him—a picture of how DJT will end up because of the special treatment he gets from all sides, lest doing otherwise starts Civil War II..
FrankenTrump is no accident. In the end, he’s not even an aberration. He's merely a projection of the perverse, repressed, collective pathology and attachment disorder of the Republican mind. As to forming a more perfect union, we desperately need a real third party that will push the carcass of Republicanism over the side of this ship and allow real people a real choice.