After 40-50 years of brainwashing, of being told (among other shit) that THEY are not just the TRUE Americans, but that they’re 65-80% of the voting population - that ‘the rest’ of us are just the fleas on the dog, and ought to have no more say over the course of the nation than the fleas ought to have over the path the dog takes….
This is the smudge that grew into the “take back OUR country” shibboleth the so-called ‘right’ waves with such glee. I. They were fools to believe it, of course, but it wasn’t just them: it was workplace pressure, Fox & Limbaugh instead of music in the office, expectations and political “jokes” from management; it was religious pressure, as preachers stopped teaching about Jesus, turned him into the brand on the box, and started answering the question “what would Jesus do?” with fundamental mischaracterizations of what the red-letter Jesus might actually do - mischaracterizations that have their roots in white folk’s refusal to see anything wrong with what THEY’ve inherited, or the cost extracted from the servant population that’s always been our national dirty secret; it was family pressure from respected elders, brothers, lifetime friendships with others under the same pressures; It was economic pressure from a society in which prices and costs endlessly rise while wages evaporate, in which “anything for a buck” starts to sound almost honorable - even biblical.
Stir in a few pounds of resentment (they’re taking YOUR MONEY!) and as much misinformation as you can lay hands on, add some unexamined sense that there really IS something off around here, then into the pressure cooker for 4/5/6 years in accordan email with the directions provided by paid agents of the overthrow, as filtered through favorite relatives a mentor, and the same news “everybody else“ watches.
When the timer dings, it’s 01/06/21
What it was NOT was principled, the product of a “deeply-held religious conviction”, in line with the teachings of Christianity (or Judaism)…nor was it what Jesus might in fact do his own self.
NOT “legitimate political discourse”…by any imaginable definition…unless you want to adopt the standards of Hitler, Rohm, and the SA …in which case, I take exception: not in my country, and whatever it takes to stop it EVERY BIT as legitimate as the traitors who want to kill the USA and dance around in its skin.
Fortunately, the hoodwinked ‘real American patriots’ who’d rather trust *private* government than the system we have have no such majority. In their total numbers they sound like a lot…but the GOP has slipped badly since the Reagan days - which were themselves a catastrophic fall from the conservatives of the Eisenhower era.
The actual number of die-hard, yellow-dog MAGA devotees both old enough and eligible to vote has been hovering around 30% for a decade, and as more and more of the venal, racist anti-American core of “modern conservatism” is exposed, the smaller that number gets. McConnell’ declaration of war against the insurrectionist wing yesterday ensures that turnout in November will be depressed and deeply divided. After Watergate, the Republican base STAYED HOME. Now, in the wake of Trump’s confession, the mountain of misdeeds, the mountains of evidence and testimony and the hours of video footage that testify to their innumerable broken laws & deliberate destruction, and the utter lack of ANY PROOF FOR ANY OF THEIR BULLSHIT, I’m going out on a limb, to say I think this is the end of the GOP.
As a whole, the nation is still largely caught up in shock and disbelief, literally not knowing what to think or what to believe…but over the next 10 months, it’s going to sink in just how cold-blooded and calculated it all has been, just how thoroughly manipulated, misled and straight-up lied to we have been - how complicit American Christianity has been in our near-destruction. By November, every genuine Christian, every actual conservative, every true patriot will understand that the Republican Party is an existential threat to the nation and its people, and for the sake of our survival, it must be removed from our political life.
I believe this will happen in the most natural and most American way possible: their candidates will not be able to win, because too many will refuse to vote for them and/or will vote against them.
Either way, they’re cooked…or something worse will intervene.
Sure, I could be wrong - and sure, I hope I’m not. I find the emotions I feel regarding the nation and our circumstance to be essentially parental: I want it to stand up straight, look the world in the eye with a smile, not be a bully, not be a thief, not be a menace. I want it to stay out of the dirt, show respect, be fair, be honest, do it’s best.
I want it to grow up to be a force for good in the world, to get along with the other countries; to grow into a nation to be proud of - not afraid of; to show the qualities as a nation that I would respect and admire in a person.
Insha’llah