Look around at the Republican party
Look at Matt Gaetz. Look at Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Look at Andy Biggs and Jim Jordan. Look at them. What do you see?
I see people who never grew out of adolescence. They still think they should get anything they want and they throw hissy fits if anyone naysays them. They still think everyone in the world should support their every wish, no matter how stupid or destructive. And they still think they can get their way by threatening to burn the house down.
Apparently, the Republican party has no parents. Or if there are parents, they are like Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman—the kind of parent whose fear of confrontation and fear of appearing unreasonable allow their kids to twist them around their little fingers.
If it were just a matter of bad behavior, decent America could put up with it. But it’s not. Arrested adolescence is fertile soil for fascists. Trump—who is nothing if not a fascist—has scooped up this loam from the Republican party and planted his authoritarian dreams in them.
It’s time to put an end to all this.
Teenagers and fascists
Fascism is “conservatism” that has been allowed to express all its worst tendencies. The deep fear of loss that dominates the “conservative” soul generates all sorts of degenerate character traits. Moderate degeneracy is exhibited by such “conservative” traits as pervasive selfishness, resistance to correction, suspicion of majority rule. But these moderate degenerate tendencies have been superseded by dangerously perverted tendencies that Republicans have nourished over the past forty years.
Ever since Newt Gingrich made terrorism an accepted Republican tactic in the 1990s, the Pandora’s box of “conservative” evils has been wide open. The plutocrats who run the Republican party have decided that the appearance of decency is no longer necessary to maintain political power. They have incentivized Republicans to become increasingly indecent, increasingly nasty, increasingly deranged. Even before the useful idiot Trump appeared on the scene, Republicans ramped up their support for indecent proliferation of weapons, indecent accumulation of wealth, indecent treatment of workers, indecent treatment of women, indecent treatment of LGBTQ+ people, indecent treatment of immigrants—and just about any indecency you see in America today.
But Trump was the capstone for the ungoverned adolescence of the Republican party. He let their rage out by showing he could get away with any sort of degenerate behavior without suffering any consequences. This lack of consequences is what fuels Republican devotion to Trump. He mouths the hatred that burns in their fearful souls, hatred born of adolescent rage at having to grow up and recognize that other people matter at least as much as they do. That is why they cannot be separated from Trump no matter how filthy and illegal his behavior. If he can go on unpunished, so can they. It never occurs to them that neither he nor they should go on unpunished.
The mean-spirited ecstasy displayed by degenerate Republicans at every Trump rally is an external manifestation of their devotion to his liberating hatefulness. He releases their inner scummitude—and they revel in it. Recent polls consistently show that most Republicans will vote for Trump again if given the opportunity. Despite years of evidence that Trump is quite possibly the most criminal person in politics—and that’s saying a lot given the twisted politics of the modern Republican party—arrested-adolescent Republicans cannot be separated from their cult of Trump worship.
This is how Trump and the plutocrats who support him have turned self-destructive adolescents into vicious fascists.
But don’t label us!
Criminals hate being called criminals. That’s why Trump rages so much against those trying to hold him to account.
But this too is typical adolescent rebelliousness. When parents or others call out teens’ self-centered and destructive behavior, they use the ancient technique of sophistry to try to evaporate any criticism. They blast out illogical and insupportable vilifications of those who accurately identify their perversity. They use the I’m-a-scumbag-but-what-are-you? mode of argumentation to deflect valid criticism. Just one example: Trump and his followers vehemently deny accusations of racism by trying to label their critics as the “true” racists—“racists in reverse” as Trump said recently. Trump has mastered this childish technique. He often uses it immediately after making horrendously outrageous racist statements. This abuse of language is the external manifestation of their hatred of rationality and their love of fascism.
Yes, please label them!
Decent America must recalibrate its sensitivity to name-calling. While Republicans rail without restraint against those who expect decency, decent Americans resist calling Republicans by the names that fit. Racism, fascism, and white supremacy fuel the hate-filled souls of many, many Republicans and all Trumpists. We need to stop restraining ourselves from calling them racists, fascists, and white supremacists. Being more decent to them than they deserve is a disservice to truth and a weakness in the fight against their degeneracy. Accurate labeling of their thoughts, speech, and actions reveals the truth about Republicans. It is not decent to hide the truth by injudicious leniency. By applying accurate language to indecent people, we show others what they really are.
The majority is finally catching on
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that 58 percent of Americans—including one in four Republicans!—recognizes Trump and his MAGA hordes as a serious threat to democracy. As the Declaration of Independence noted, “mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable.” But the fascist forces in the Republican party have become insufferable. Decent America seems to have gotten the first wind of this when Trump tried to impose his Muslim ban in the opening weeks of his presidency. Decent people across the country poured out to help Muslims fight this racist “policy.” And we won. It was an encouraging moment. We can beat back this perverted Republicanism if we just assert our disapproval of it through action.
The action decent America needs to take now comes in two parts.
First, we need to speak the harsh truth about Republicans, about Trump, and about MAGA. All of these are existential threats to democracy. Our language must accurately describe their degeneracy, portray their “thinking” and behavior as accurately scummy, and prompt people to see the truth about this extreme “conservatism”—that it is a rot in the soul of America that must be cut out before it eats away everything good and decent. The majority’s growing receptivity to the truth shows that it is time to speak it loudly and clearly.
Second, we need to quintuple both our organized and our individual efforts to get the majority who see the truth to the polls next year. Everyone knows that it is a tiny minority of MAGA-sympathetic degenerates in a few key-state primaries that puts the worst Republicans into our elections, and that those candidates can win in Republican-dominated areas. If we can just get enough voters—all non-Republicans and the few Republicans who still care about decency—to stop supporting the Republican party, we will win the battle for democracy in 2024. Because of demographic changes and the increased mortality rates in red states (arrested adolescence has its consequences), Republicans will never again be able to marshal the compounded tiny wins in the electoral college that have made them effective in destroying everything good and decent in America for the past forty years.
The majority’s growing receptivity to hearing the truth makes winning the battle for democracy possible. Now we just have to get out there and make it happen.
Say what they are
By calling out Republicans for what they are and what they have become, we aid our efforts to save decent America from the attack of the fearful “conservatives” among us. We must never shy away from accurate descriptors like “racist,” “fascist,” “white supremacist,” “cancer on democracy,” or even “scum” when Republican statements and actions warrant it.
The majority’s readiness to hear the truth gives us all the hope we need that, together, we can crush the “conservative” threat once and for all.
It’s time to call them out, vote them out, and safeguard the foundations of democracy for our posterity.