Why the GOP Wants to Tear America Apart

The GOP Doesn’t Just Not Believe in Democracy Anymore — Now It Doesn’t Even Believe in America

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You might have thought to yourself over the last year or so, “The GOP’s got to have learned something from the Trump years, right?” And you’d have been right. It did. Just all the wrong things, as it turns out. What do I mean? This week, one of its leading lights — Marjorie Taylor Greene — sparked an uproar by calling for a “national divorce.” Why? Because of “sick and disgusting woke culture issues.” How to accomplish that? Breaking up the country, along with banning people in Red states from voting if they’re not Republicans, LOL.

Cue creeped out, nervous laughter. Sure, this person is a crackpot. But this person is also a Member of Congress. With leverage over the Speaker of the House. And a huge following in the media, who likes to legitimize what she says. So yeah, laugh. But don’t pretend like you’re not raising your eyebrows in alarm at precisely the same time.

What is all this about?

Before I come to that, let’s keep going for just a moment. You might say, that’s just a fanatic being deliberately provocative. But you’d be wrong. Take the Speaker of the House himself. He just turned over the footage of Jan 6th to…Tucker Carlson. The mind boggles. Any shred of giving him the benefit of doubt was itself just shredded, because that’s a little like…it’s hard to even find a metaphor…maybe like giving a painting of a tragedy to the lunatics who made it happen.

So. Like I said, and you’re probably asking: what’s all this about? It’s not just stunts and provocation and ginned up outrage. This is the GOP’s strategy now. All of it. Extremism bordering on sedition, calls for violence, real-deal fascism, right out there in the open. This is an evolution of what happened during the Trump years. You see, Trump wasn’t out there calling for the country to be broken up or for votes to be explicitly banned. The Big Lie of course was that the election was stolen. “Just ban the votes of people you don’t like to begin with” is a major evolution of authoritarianism — as is the rest of all this lunacy.

Let’s go back to MJT’s reason for calling for a national breakup — which, by the way, is of dubious legality for a Member of Congress, but hey, Merrick Garland appears to be playing golf on a perma-vacation, so. Members of Congress, remember, take an oath. That oath isn’t to Red States. It’s not to “culture wars.” It’s not to Trump, it’s not an oath to hate people. It’s an oath to protect and defend the United States. All of it. Not just what they pick and choose from it. That is precisely why any reasonable Attorney General would at the very least want to talk to said Member of Congress, but I think by now we all know that Merrick Garland’s about as likely to do that as my dog is to turn into Luciano Pavarotti.

MJT’s reason for calling for a national “divorce” — and breaking her oath of office — was… “sick and disgusting woke culture issues.” Now, that doesn’t come in a vacuum. Where else do you see that stance? You see it in Florida, where the loathsome Ron DeSantis has created a hostile environment for…everyone…who’s not a MAGA Trumpist, basically. In incredibly disturbing ways, which still haven’t received enough attention, really. Banning books, banning words, banning history classes, making entire people’s existences de facto illegal. Across the nation, families are being investigated for…what? For being criminals? For being traitors? Nope. Because their kids just want to live in a different way from other people’s religious and social beliefs. But so what?

You see, in a democracy — a real one — it’s nobody’s business what I do with my life. Nobody’s. But mine. Because we all have a thing called “self determination.” If I want to pierce my nose or have green hair or read this kind of book or wear gigantic bell bottoms because they’re back in style. Doesn’t matter. My choices, so long as they don’t hurt anyone else, are nobody’s to question.

That’s hard to dispute, even for lunatics. And so the American right has done something remarkable. It’s made itself the real victim. Who’s really hurt, these days? Why, it’s the right wing. Because when we teach kids slavery existed, we’re hurting their feelings. Hurting their feelings! LOL. When we teach kids that gay people exist, we’re hurting the right wing’s feelings. If we say that everyone should be able to read books, that, too hurts the feelings of the right wing.