CPAC. Once a year, it allows us to witness, compressed and packaged, the degeneration of a formerly rational political party. Lucky us: twice, this year. Time was, the acronym stood for “Conservative Political Action Conference.” Now, it’s gotta be “Christians Perverting Actual Christianity.” What a lineup of lies, victimhood, ignorance and hate. Hate for their fellow humans; for the poor and needy, for immigrants, for teaching and truth. Everything, in other words, the Bible tells us Jesus loved. Died for, briefly.
Perfectly presenting the direction their party is headed – namely, electing and showcasing nasty, dishonest, uninformed, anti-democracy, pro-autocracy, conspiratorial demagogues -- it’s more sorrowful every year. Attendees actually cheered for low vaccination rates among Republicans. “It’s horrifying,” said Dr. Fauci. “I mean, they are cheering about someone saying that it’s a good thing for people not to try and save their lives!”
New guy Madison Cawthorn, whose preexisting dishonesty, like Trump’s, first time around, didn’t keep him from being elected, warned that the next step from bringing vaccinations to homes is coming for your guns and Bibles. This is a party bereft of ideas. Not to mention morality. It’s no exaggeration: they delight in death in order to “stick it to the libs.”
It’s even worse than that. They cheered for ending every pro-life program our government provides. This, the party of “pro-life,” which they wave like Trump flags, shout it louder than “lock her up.” Their pretense that they’re protectors of life ends when it’s those no longer enwombed. Excepting the already wealthy.
Attendees were also treated to a 7-point plan to restore Trump to office, immediately. Among others, it included getting the Congressional Black Caucus to switch to the party that would like them never to vote; that welcomed racist Proud Boys and Three-percenters to their ghoulish gathering. Cogent.
This berserk zeitgeist is who and what they’ve become. How they got there is a complicated story, the result of decades of deliberate disinformation meant to endumb and divide. The why, though, is simple.
Okay. Stop. This is pretty bad writing, right? Hyperbolic. Purple. I admit it. The thing is, the continuing rise of Trumpism is making me increasingly incoherent. And perpetually depressed. Seeing America crumble before my eyes; witnessing one so-called conservative after another, people so far beyond redemption, so demonstrably against everything for which America once stood, get up and spew their reality-averse vitriol to a cheering crowd, is becoming psychically intolerable. And it shows.
I’ve tried to tell myself, well, these are just the lunatic fringe. But they’re not. Trumpism – by which I mean making lies central to the message, absent anything positive but full of voter suppression, science denial, and selfishness – is now the uncontested mainstream of today’s Republicanism.
Commanded by the most dishonest, divisive, and delusional “president” this country has seen, whom they can only have elected not in spite of but because of those attributes, they’re culling any member who stood for democracy in the aftermath of the most scrutinized and confirmed election, ever.
And, while feigning outrage at so-called “cancel culture,” they’re systematically canceling the history of America: from learning why we amended flawed founding documents to acknowledging what happened on January 6, and what caused it.
Lacking a positive agenda, they’re counting on riding a hyped-up, cynically-created culture war to victory. Said Jim Banks, R-Indiana, the “backlash against Critical Race Theory is real … We are in a culture war … we are winning.”
Till now, America had tended to improve itself by acknowledging and repairing its flaws; so what Republicans are doing is worse than Stalinism. Stalin did his gaslighting without Fox “news” and Rush-like radio talkers. And CPAC.
The people cheering at CPAC are forever lost to rationality. Their disdain for democracy is irreversible. They’re the culmination of a long-term project to stupefy millions of people, based on the recognition that for a top-heavy, unpopular agenda to prevail in a democracy, voters need to be made ignorant. CPAC proves its effectiveness. Tennessee confirms.
Better writers than me, with far wider audiences, are making no difference. Polls show Republicans remain steadfast in their delusions, about the election, about Trump, about climate change and vaccines, about poverty, about education. Evidently, we’re at the point where carefully-crafted ignorance becomes indelible. No columnist can change it.
America could save itself by outvoting idiocy. But that’s like bailing a boat with no bottom: red states are attacking education and voting rights faster than efforts to stop it. Trumpists would only awaken, if at all, when they comprehend the damage being done to them and our country, by cynical manipulators. By then, it’d be too late. I think it already is. I need a break. Again.
Democracy is fragile. It depends on accepting the "common good" as a mandatory principal for survival. Autocracy only requires an individual leader with the ego to overcome the rule of the common good by equal representation in governance.
ReplyDeleteThe historic theocratic religious wars throughout Europe and the dictatorships under Stalin and Hitler are ample proof that only disaster and chaos are the result of autocratic rule.
Jesus' personal living example and definitive teachings certainly warn his followers to avoid leadership from dictators and egomaniacal tyrants like the MAGA man Drumpf.
Without equal opportunity to vote by all citizens, democracy is not possible. We must protect that right at all cost. I believe we will succeed.
The GQP has become an actual death cult, with people like *ucker Carlson competing for the role of Jim Jones.
ReplyDeleteIt's becoming what we all knew it would. A pandemic of the unvaxed. Everyone dying is unvaccinated. The same people who say "fkm, it's a liberal pandemic" "It's the Seattle pandemic" many said. Well, can we now say the same in return? Yes we can, but we won't. For we the libs pay the bills when the kids break stuff. The confederacy is like children that need to be grounded until they can follow the rules both inside and outside the house. One of the Dakotas never did a thing. Not a single thing. Just continued on as if the world was not on fire. Now they are the biggest problem per capita and it's evolving into new stronger strains. 'mercas' petri dish where angry petty ignorance and pithy come together in a death broth for the masses...
ReplyDeleteWe do what we've always done brother. Head down, throw punches, move forward. We out last em'. It's who wants it more. That's Democracy. Beware the snakes and don't ignore them. But it'll come down to who's the last left standing. In this case, it doesn't look good for the confederates.
They demand standing in long lines at polling places. Well, election day is a sooooperspreader event gatherings. The vaccinated will show up and vote along with the unvaxed. The vaxed will wear masks and the confederates will not. They will do massive rallies and hold one sooooperspreader event gatherings of all kinds after another. I'm hoping for more boats capsizing. Let's eliminate the idiots as quickly as possible. The libs can stick it to the traitors by planning BBQ's mask free and inviting them. Take donations but it's free. Just party plan all summer for SS event gatherings.(ahem) I say we start having SS rallies all over 'merca. Have an SS rally in Richmond, the future new capitol and everything.
Sooooperspreader events need to start before it's too late! Darwin is a bitch.
This is why it's so hard to fight them. Citizens United sunk this country.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN9kXj4M5cQ
This is why we will win in the end...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4HkdClZgPo
Why Republicans don't really need 'more time' on infrastructure...
ReplyDelete"Republicans say they need "a little bit more time" before a bipartisan infrastructure package advances. It's a tough line to take seriously."
"As of late yesterday, Senate Republicans were nevertheless insisting that they're prepared to derail tomorrow's vote. The measure will need 60 votes to advance, and one GOP leader said there's "no chance" that 10 Republican senators are prepared to go along with the Democrats' timeline."
"Around the same time, the president delivered brief remarks about the economy, and said, "[W]e should be united on one thing: passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, which we shook hands on. We shook hands on it."
PFFFT...OK Boomer...Ya shook on it. We are so proud of your effort Joey.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-republicans-don-t-really-need-more-time-infrastructure-n1274479