See All the Hate? This Is Who the GOP Really Is

Why the GOP Is Trying to Make America Explode in Hate, Rage, and Fear

Image Credit: Fox News

I can’t be the only one who notes the painful, scorching irony of Ron DeSantis…publishing a new book. A man who bans books…is selling a new book. Called, no less, The Courage to Be Free. LOL. The publishing industry aided and abetted this…tragicomedy. They found him a ghostwriter, they paid him a small fortune, they’re marketing it, and that, my friends, is disgusting, on levels from moral to political. Why do I bring all this up?

Welcome to the GOP’s new strategy. You can see it emerging in plain sight now. I know I’ve talked a lot about American politics this week, and we’ll switch it up shortly. But first I want to crystallize some of what I’ve been discussing.

What’s the GOP up to? Well, it’s settling on a new strategy. That strategy has three parts, and they go like this. One, attack vulnerable groups, who are perfectly innocent, peaceful people — and turn them into scary, outsized, outlandishly dangerous monsters, who are an existential threat to “real” Americans. Two, whip its base into a frenzy with these manufactured moral panics and riptides. Three, use that to create the illusion of political movement, of turning a broken country around. Four, and this is a bonus point, use the Supreme Court to legitimize all the above.

The GOP’s plan is to make American life — and politics — as ugly as possible.

Let me sum that up another way. The GOP’s strategy for the foreseeable future? The next election, the one after that? Hate.

What am I talking about? By now you can’t have failed to notice who the GOP’s latest target. They’re not exactly hiding it. The LGBTQ. All over again. And this time, in absurd, almost funny ways — only it’s not a joke. If you’ve been on Twitter, you’ve seen the tweets: more than one GOP Congressman who’s out there railing violently against…drag queens…was caught dressing up in drag. LOL.

Drag queens? Have you ever been to a gay bar? To a drag night? Drag queens are about as threatening as, I don’t know, the ghost of Karl Lagerfeld, God bless his soul. I can’t ever remember having anything but fun with drag queens, at drag shows, because, guess what, they’re not exactly out there practicing, preaching, embodying, enacting even the faintest shred of anything violent. 

This is how absurd American politics have become. The GOP’s latest incarnation of an existential threat is…people who dress up for fun and listen to music and act out little skits. Think for a second how completely ludicrous that actually is. It’s like being threatened by the Muppets, but then again, Tucker Carlson’s actually guilty of that, too.

It’s funny, on one level, to be threatened by people who are doing such fundamentally peaceful things. Dressing up? Wearing…glitter? Acting and telling jokes? Or sitting there reading books to kids? These are — let me say it again — fundamentally peaceful acts. It’s the GOP that’s out there inciting, endorsing, nudging with a wink-and-a-nod actual violence. Hey, you want to carry a grenade launcher to Starbucks? You might think I’m kidding, so here’s a picture. Totally cool! Normal! Peaceful! But dressing up and acting and telling jokes and reading books to kids — now that’sdangerous.

Like I said, ludicrous. But also profoundly sinister.

It’s not just drag queens who are being targeted, systematically. It’s the trans community, too. “In Oklahoma, House Republicans also approved a bill Tuesday that would prohibit any facility that receives public funds from offering gender-affirming care for minors or adults, as well as blocking insurance coverage for it.” Think about how crazily authoritarian that really is for a second. No public funds…just because…people want medical care…that you don’t like…for your own reasons?

Let’s go back to the point about asymmetry, because that’s what really drives home how ugly all this is. You see, none of us are out there blocking their healthcare. I don’t like using “us” vs “them” terms, but in this case, I have to. Nobody’s saying to them, hey, you, you’re not allowed to get a blood transfusion because you, I don’t know, have a certain name or wear certain kinds of clothes. None of us are saying, hey, just because you send your kids to Sunday school, means they don’t get healthcare. We’re not saying just because you believe in whatever — anything at all — means you don’t get that heart medication or organ transplant.

None of us are out there getting them in any way whatsoever. None of us. In any way.

When I say “the GOP’s plan is to make American life as ugly as possible,” this asymmetry is exactly what I mean.Who’s “us”? Well, it’s anyone that’s not part of this crusade to purify society. Women, kids, men, adults, anyone and everyone. The point is to cause us moral injury. What’s moral injury? That’s a term psychologist use when you encounter ugliness. Of the spiritual kind.

When you meet hate, face to face. It injures you, deep down in the soul. It shakes you. People can really be like this? They can really just want to…get others…for existing? Hey, those people aren’t even doing anything to you. Disagree with them or disapprove of them all you like, your life, your choice. But trying to…annihilate them…as moral agents…as political agents…as social beings? Moral injury happens when you meet hate face to face, because its ugliness hurts.It’s like the old story of Medusa: just looking turns you into stone.