The United States is now facing the greatest threat to our free way of life in our history. Even the US Civil War was not the danger that is Donald Trump. In the Civil War, the South wanted to separate from the rest of the Union. Today, Trump does not want to separate from the US, he seeks to destroy the fundamental functions and purpose of the US. He seeks to destroy the Constitution, replacing the Judiciary and Legislative Branches with puppets of the Executive. Plainly stated, Trump seeks to establish himself as a dictator . . . and as of May 2025, he may succeed.
We know what’s in the Epstein files — Trump’s name and details about Trump fucking little girls.
Stop With The BS That “We” Don’t Know What’s In The Epstein Files
I see people almost to the point of defending Trump. I see people claiming that Trump only went to Epstein’s parties to socialize because nothing has been proven and none of the victims have spoken out.
Let me clue everyone in as to why Trump sued the WSJ for eleventy billion dollars over reporting about the provable birthday letter that Trump sent to Epstein. I wouldn’t doubt that Murdoch was complicit regarding the lawsuit. Trump sued the WSJ to send a message to the people who know what’s in the Epstein files: the victims, the victim’s lawyers the prosecutors such as Maureen Comey. If any of the above people make a statement about Trump , he will destroy their lives, he will sue them until the cows come home.
The victims, the victim’s lawyers, the prosecutors, need those files released to give them cover to be able to speak out publicly. Without the backing of making those files public, powerful people, will destroy the lives of the victims and their lawyers and the prosecutors.
This is why the Epstein files will never be released, it keeps a muzzle on the many people who already know what’s in those files.
It make me sick to hear people say we have no proof, the proof is out there, under lock and key.
To say that Trump , a piece of shit who raped a woman in the changing room of a clothing store, who had sex with a porn star at a golfing event, only went to Epstein’s parties to socialize is laughable. Trump made a deal with Maxwell to buy her silence, right out in the open, a quid pro quo. She sits in a fucking country club awaiting her freedom solely based on one word, “waiver.” Whitehouse and Garcia sent stern letters to the head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons asking for documents as to the reasons for Maxwell’s transfer, still fucking waiting for a response. What if they get no response, then what? I guess the answer is we just keep using the one word, “waiver,” and move on. There is no good reason to grant that waiver other than to protect Donald fucking Trump.
The victims get screwed again and Trump walks away from his crimes – – again.
Virginia gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears, a Republican and the state’s current lieutenant governor, released a new ad Tuesday attacking her Democratic opponent Rep. Abigail Spanberger for asserting that the LGBTQ+ community deserves human rights.
The entire ad focuses on Spanberger’s past support for transgender rights and falsely accuses the Democrat of wanting men—including sex offenders—to use women’s bathrooms. The ad goes on to quote Spanberger saying that “our LGBTQ neighbors have the same legal rights as anyone else,” casting the statement as part of the left’s “insane” belief system.
But Spanberger’s statement is a bedrock foundation of U.S. law and tradition.
The Declaration of Independence clearly notes in its preamble that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Similarly, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution states, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
To follow Earle-Sears line of argument would involve stripping rights away from millions of Americans, echoing the belief system of groups like the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazis, who did not believe in equality.
The ad ends with the tagline, “Spanberger is for they/them not us.”
This is the same construction used in 2024 ads by President Donald Trump attacking Kamala Harris for supporting LGBTQ+ rights, accusing her of being “for they/them while President Trump is for you.”
Earle-Sears’ ad, along with Trump’s, is part of an ongoing right-wing trend of attacking the basic humanity of LGBTQ+ people. These attacks are meant to whip up support among conservative voters who oppose equality, leading to Republican electoral wins.
For her part, Spanberger recently releasedan ad highlighting how Earle-Sears has “been in lockstep” with Trump. Virginia is one of the few swing states that Trump lost in the 2024 election to Harris.
In her ad, Spanberger notes the negative effect that Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce have had on Virginia, where federal workers compose much of the population.
Republicans currently hold the governorship in Virginia, but Spanberger has led in recent polling. And election forecaster Larry Sabato recently shifted the state from “lean Democratic” to “likely Democratic,” perhaps highlighting why Earle-Sears felt desperate enough to release her bigoted ad.
America has spent decades trying to cultivate good relations with India, which could be a useful counterweight to China. Now we have a nearly complete rupture, with India actually cozying up to China.
And what was that about? Apparently Trump, in his bizarre pursuit of a Nobel peace prize, tried to bully Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, into giving him undeserved credit for a cease-fire between India and Pakistan. The two men haven’t talked since.
China’s Xi (right) and India’s Modi (left) at recent Asian nation summit sponsored by China including China, Russia, India, and 20 other Asian nations.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged on Sunday to resolve their border differences and bolster cooperation, ahead of the opening of a regional summit in Tianjin.
Modi is on his first visit to China since relations between the two countries deteriorated after Chinese and Indian soldiers engaged in deadly border clashes in 2020. Modi is visiting as part of India’s membership into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional political, economic and security group founded by China.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin met with both leaders.
Earlier in August, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi flew to New Delhi, as the two sides announced their rapprochement. Both governments pledged to restart border talks, and resume issuing visas and direct flights.
Wang’s visit coincided with U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to impose 50% tariffs on India over its purchase of Russian oil, but Delhi’s process of rebuilding ties with Beijing had been in the works for months.
Meanwhile, India’s Modi also met with Putin in China.
And there you have it, folks — another foreign policy disaster generated by the moron in the White House.
US health secretary and loony vaccine sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr has called for the retraction of a Danish study that found no link between aluminium in vaccines and chronic diseases in children — a rare move for a US public official. Aluminium has been used for almost a century to enhance the immune system’s response to some vaccines. But some people claim the ingredient is linked to rising rates of childhood disorders such as autism.
Public-health officials in Kennedy’s position rarely request that studies be retracted, says Ivan Oransky, a specialist in academic publishing and co-founder of the media organization Retraction Watch. Through this request, “Secretary Kennedy has demonstrated that he wants the scientific literature to bend to his will”, says Oransky.
The study in question, published in Annals of Internal Medicine in July, is one of the largest of its kind, looking at 1.2 million children born over more than two decades in Denmark. The authors reported that no significant risk of developing autoimmune, allergic or neurodevelopmental disorders was associated with exposure to aluminium compounds in vaccines.
In an opinion piece published on TrialSite News on 1 August, Kennedy called into question the study’s methodology, analysis and results. Since his appointment as head of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has bypassed normal scientific review processes to change vaccine recommendations and terminated grants for projects on mRNA vaccines.
Trump likes to portray himself as having achieved (and continuing to achieve) things that no mere mortal could ever have done. In one sense, he is right: he is the stupidest, most ignorant, most incompetent person ever to become a dictator.
Date starts with Trump’s action a few days into his second term, when he ordered stored water to be released into California’s Central Valley, from where, in his addled mind, it would miraculously ascend the mountains and put out the fires in Los Angeles (and he still thinks that is exactly what happened. Oh — the water came from Canada, too. In fact (1) the fires were already out, and, (2) the water was intended for crop irrigation and all it did was soak into the ground near where it was released.)
This is not just a sign of dementia; Trump has always acted this way. He gets an idea, from some friend or passing internet guy or for all we know a comic book, and once it’s implemented in his head, he will never let it go. No fact, and especially no expert, can convince him otherwise. In Rex Tillerson’s infamous description (which he has never denied), he is a “fucking moron.”
Another person who was once close to Trump, who somehow escaped his constant demands for NDAs (non-disclosure agreements), says much the same.
“I’ve never met anyone else remotely like him,” said Charles Leerhsen, who co-wrote Trump’s book, “Surviving at the Top” in 1990. “He is and was profoundly stupid, completely lacking in intellectual curiosity.”
This is, as far as I know, unprecedented in the history of leaders who turn themselves in autocrats. Those who have risen to power on their own, who have seized and stolen power, may have been possessed of an understanding of the world not entirely in accord with reality. But none have ever been so far removed from the real world, and so unwilling to correct their mistakes as is Trump. Trump is truly uniquely stupid.
But wait, there’s more.
“It’s a psychopath’s emotional intelligence,” [George] Conway said. “He can smell fear, and he can smell whether people are complying. He’s not intelligent in the sense that he absorbs information.”
One of the few places where Trump is not stupid is in his ability to spot and stroke fear. In this, at any rate, he either knows instinctively what all successful dictators know or he has learned from them. (Which would mean he is not totally incapable of learning, I suppose.)
Trump shares other autocratic traits:
Overweening narcissism
Total lack of empathy
Grandiosity
Belief that he knows more than all the experts (the Dunning-Kruger effect; Date quotes Dunning in his article)
There are surely some others; feel free to add to the list in the comments. But one trait unique to Trump, especially to this degree, is his lifelong stupidity. He really is a fucking moron.
There is another, even more puzzling, trait that no other self-made autocrat could possibly share: his incompetence. Dictators rise to power by clever manipulation, by leading a military coup, by subtle, careful, long-range planning. None of that even remotely describes Trump. It does describe the GOP in the years leading up to 2016; their leaders had skipped the military coup part (though I wonder what traps have been laid), but they had inched their way over the decades (with a lot of help from Democratic inertia) preparing to take over. Then Trump muscled his way in and stole all their work. He did it at first because no one believed he had a chance, and then later because he used his true talent: fear.
Trump’s profound stupidity not only magnifies his incompetence, it makes him a pathetically easy target for manipulation, from Putin to Thiel to Musk (for a while) to even our nominal allies. In one sense, it doesn’t matter if Putin has kompromat on Trump; he just has to have Trump, period.
Richard Nixon is the closest we’ve come to having an autocrat in the US since we got rid of the British monarchy. But he was never stupid, never detached from reality. He worked his way up to the position of president, and ultimately the system worked well enough to bring him down.
Other nations have much more experience with autocrats, even stupid ones; Tsar Nicholas II, John of England (who was probably more arrogant than stupid, though it came to the same result), and so on. The United States is, as the propagandists like to say, unique: Never in history has a profoundly stupid person managed to seize the reins of power and turn himself into an autocrat.
Americans already understood Trump to be corrupt, and proved themselves willing to tolerate that. But now they are coming to believe that he is inept. In American politics, that is an unforgivable sin.
No “maybe” about it; he is a moron. We need to harp on that, as well as doing other things such as Newsom’s hysterically accurate trolling, in our campaign to restore our democracy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has lost patience with President Trump and is turning to China and Russia.
Mr. Trump had been saying — repeatedly, publicly, exuberantly — that he had “solved” the military conflict between India and Pakistan, a dispute that dates back more than 75 years and is far deeper and more complicated than Mr. Trump was making it out to be.
During a phone call on June 17, Mr. Trump brought it up again, saying how proud he was of ending the military escalation. He mentioned that Pakistan was going to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor for which he had been openly campaigning. The not-so-subtle implication, according to people familiar with the call, was that Mr. Modi should do the same.
The Indian leader bristled. He told Mr. Trump that U.S. involvement had nothing to do with the recent cease-fire. It had been settled directly between India and Pakistan.
Mr. Trump largely brushed off Mr. Modi’s comments, but the disagreement — and Mr. Modi’s refusal to engage on the Nobel — has played an outsize role in the souring relationship between the two leaders, whose once-close ties go back to Mr. Trump’s first term.
Just weeks after the June phone call, and with trade talks dragging on, Mr. Trump startled India by announcing that imports from the country would be subjected to a tariff of 25 percent. And on Wednesday, he slapped India with an additional 25 percent tariff for buying Russian oil, adding up to a crushing 50 percent.
Mr. Modi, who once called Mr. Trump “a true friend,” was officially on the outs. After telling Mr. Modi that he would travel to India later this year for the Quad summit, Mr. Trump no longer has plans to visit in the fall, according to people familiar with the president’s schedule.
The dispute has played out against the backdrop of trade talks of immense importance to India and the United States, and the fallout risks pushing India closer to American adversaries in Beijing and Moscow. Sure enough, Mr. Modi will travel to China this weekend, where he will meet with President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to discuss trade, defense, and other issues with Russia and China — the US was not invited to the meeting..
Trump was dangerous in his first term, however, the republic, the rule of law, our standing among other nations all survived. BECAUSE he was for the most part surrounded by people with good sense.
Now — as of August 2025 — he is surrounded and by and is advised by a gaggle of former third-rate Fox personalities (Pirro, Hegseth); unhinged, crazed racists (Miller); incompetent glory seekers (Bondi, Patel); and an immature, ignorant nutcase (Loomer).
In his first term, the Supreme Court had a different composition — he changed that with his appointment of three incompetent justices.
TODAY THERE IS NO ONE TO STOP HIM.
Add to this his health — both his mental and physical health are deteriorating rapidly in plain view.
His rambling speeches in which his fixations take over his thoughts — windmills, Obama, flushing toilets, fake gold — just listen to him.
His swollen lower legs and admissions of venous insufficiency mean that his heart has a much heavier load. He is headed for cardiac arrest or heart attack. We know that in his first term he suffered at least three incidents that were not publicized and that likely were TIA — transient ischemic attack — better known as “mini stroke.”
The recent scarring on the outside of his right hand are clear evidence of repetitive IV emplacement.
In his novel “Night,” Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel recalls a horrifying memory: “Around eleven o’clock, the train began to move again. We pressed against the windows. The convoy was rolling slowly. A quarter of an hour later, it began to slow down even more. Through the windows, we saw barbed wire; we understood that this was the camp.”
In the dark shadow of the Holocaust, trains tell many different stories. For some, it was a ticket to freedom. For others, it was a journey from life to death.
When Elie Wiesel boarded a train destined for Poland, he didn’t understand what awaited him. People boarded trains none the wiser. They had already survived the ghettos. What could possibly be worse? Who could have imagined the horrors at the end of the journey?
In Nazi Germany, trains were weaponized to transport Jewish people out of the country and to their deaths. But they were also a way out. Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer who escaped the Holocaust, recounted taking the train across the United States on his way to safety. He later coined the term genocide.
Today, dictatorial governments use trains to keep people in.
At the beginning of the invasion in Ukraine, the Russian military tried and failed to secure the railway network. Now, it’s deliberately targeting Ukraine’s passenger trains with missile strikes.
In North Korea, the trains are undeveloped, undermaintained and horribly slow. Trains to China are frequently monitored with numerous checkpoints. Travel is controlled, limited and escape is nearly impossible.
In the wrong hands, trains are the perfect tool for governments to weaponize. They can easily be utilized to keep people in or kick them out. That’s why, on Tuesday, when Trump announced his takeover of Washington, D.C., Union Station, I was immediately concerned.
Union Station was once described as “the gateway to the capital city.” As you step outside the grand, Beaux-Arts style train station, you stare directly into the eyes of the Capitol Building, with the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress only a few blocks away.
The iconic station has stood the test of time. It witnessed both world wars, welcomed generations of presidents to the White House and survived the auto-industry boom that brought the original New York Penn Station to its tragic end.
The station is more than just a place to come and go; it’s part of the anatomy of the city, and it’s an important building for residents and visitors alike.
The Trump administration knows this.
While the Department of Transportation has owned Union Station since the 1980s, the nonprofit Union Station Redevelopment Corporation ran its daily management until Amtrak assumed those responsibilities last summer.
Union Station, for all its architectural glory, has long needed repairs. However, if you listen to the Trump administration, you would assume the station’s state was borderline apocalyptic.
“You have vagrants, you have drug addicts, you have the chronically homeless, you have the mentally ill who harass, who threaten violence, who attack families, and they’ve done it for far too long,” Vice President JD Vance said, singing the familiar tune of Trump’s capital takeover.
To be clear on the facts, crime in D.C. is on a decline, and in 2022, homeless encampments were removed from Union Station. Yet, the Trump administration is legitimizing its takeover of the train station based on crime and degradation.
Most major cities — in the United States and around the world — experience homelessness and petty crime near train stations. Most train stations need repairs.
That’s why the Trump administration’s takeover of Union Station is so alarming. Trump won’t stop at Union Station. This is just the beginning.
On Wednesday, an event in Boston to unveil new Acela trains took a dark turn. Deputy Director of Transportation, Steven Bradbury, took Trump’s Washington, D.C., plan to New England.
“Here in South Boston, we need to address the cleanliness, the crime, the safety, and security of the station for the rail workers, for the passengers, because the people of Boston deserve that,” Bradbury said. Then, he left the audience with this: “All the people up and down the Northeast corridor and Americans who travel on these trains, they need and deserve beautiful rail facilities.”
Ignore the positive spin. This is a warning.
Even worse, at a stop in New York City, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke about “transforming” Penn Station “under the speed of Trump” — whatever that means. He even joked about renaming the iconic gateway “Trump Station.”
The Department of Transportation’s sudden special interest in municipal train stations has received varying reactions from city and state leaders. Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, said, “If it’s about what Union Station needs for its total transformation, that would be an amazing initiative for the federal government to take on.”
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey took a stronger stance.
“We’re not going to let the guy who went bankrupt six times take over our train stations,” Healey said. However, she also dismissed Trump’s claims as “political theater.”
For our sake, I hope she’s right. But I wouldn’t be so sure. As Bradbury notably pointed out, the Northeast corridor connects blue cities from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia to New York to Boston. It’s a critical route for tourism, business and connecting friends and family who live up and down the East Coast.
But it’s also critical for a quick departure. The first thing anyone would do to escape Washington, D.C., during a federal takeover is book a ticket on Amtrak from Union Station to Penn Station. If someone needed to flee New York City, they would likely head up the corridor to Boston.
Trains are both mentally and in reality the easiest escape route. The major stations are in city centers. There’s no security. If you live close enough and time it right, you can be on a train heading out within 30 minutes. Unless Trump wants to keep us.
Or maybe, Trump is trying to control the trains to take us somewhere else.
Hillary Clinton warned us about this dystopian reality last year in her book “Something Lost, Something Gained.” She wrote, “Welcome to Trump’s America. If you live in a major city, the first thing you’ll probably notice are the soldiers patrolling your streets outside your window. Are we at war? Have we been invaded by an adversary? The answer is no.”
We are already living this reality. The soldiers are outside our windows. They are already patrolling Union Station, and they’re coming for your city next.
So, don’t dismiss this as a conspiracy theory. Don’t laugh it off as Trump wanting to see his name on another building. Don’t ignore the reality they’re shoving in our faces.
The Trump administration is using crime and degradation as an excuse to control important transportation hubs. The government controlled the trains in Nazi Germany. They control them in North Korea. And now, they’re wrestling for control of the trains in the United States of America.
Open your eyes, and if you’re not ready to fight back, consider booking a flight. Or, you could do as I have done – I’ve been stockpiling ammo: .45 and .40 caliber for my pistols; .308 and .243 for my rifles; and 5.56 for my AR-15.
Call yesterday Black Wednesday for American health.
RFK, Jr., heroin addict, sex addict, anti-vaccination lunatic and aspiring architect of millions of deaths purged the CDC last night.He gutted the world’s premiere public-health agency in his endless quest to destroy vaccine science and plunge this nation into the Middle Ages.
It is widely reported that Kennedy has ordered a clampdown on reporting of COVID and human cases of H5N1 bird flu, and that he plans to entirely ban COVID-19 vaccines in the coming months. He has already cut access to COVID-19 vaccines, restricting it to adults 65+ and in high risk categories.
RFK is purging the CDC so he can replace professional doctors, scientists, epidemiologists, virologists, and public-health experts with antivax cranks, horse-dewormer morons, radical eugenicists, and inhumane conspiracy screamers. A month after a mad gunman (an antivax activist) charged the CDC on a killing spree, Bobby Brainworm fired Dr. Susan Monarez, the CDC’s director. More firings and resignations followed.
Yesterday there was another highly publicized school shooting. Republicans, as usual, are offering thoughts and prayers.
Christmas Card from Rep. Andy Ogles, Republican, Tennessee. Investigated at least twice for financial impropriety.
But why?
Why have Republicans — who, before Reagan, were the party in favor of gun control — decided that it’s just fine for America to be the only country in the world where the leading cause of childhood deaths and injury is bullets?
Why have Republicans — who, during the Eisenhower administration, pushed for massive public works programs like the interstate freeways and new schools coast-to-coast — decided instead to kill off as many of those sorts of programs as possible to pay for tax gifts to billionaires?
Why are they defending insider trading in Congress, supporting monopolies that rip off consumers and small businesses, and refusing to do anything about uninsured people or student debt?
The question is answered most easily with another set of questions, these ones rhetorical:
Would you trust your doctor if she told you the only reason she went into medicine was to get rich and doesn’t much care for people? Would you take your kids to such a physician?
Similarly, would you trust your child’s teacher if he said he hated kids but needed the paycheck and though teaching might be a great way to meet attractive single mothers of young kids? Or a pilot who hates flying but loves the paychecks and the flight attendants?
Yet this is exactly what Republicans have done with government. They stand up at campaign rallies and proudly proclaim that government doesn’t work and never will, and then voters hand them the keys.
Once in office, they make sure their wealthy friends and donors get the perks while they steer the rest of us straight into turbulence. It’s sabotage disguised as leadership, and the only way they get away with it is because they’ve convinced enough people that wrecking the plane is the same thing as piloting it.
Republicans — in the years since Reagan told us that, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” — have been like that doctor, teacher, and pilot. They run for public office because it can make them rich, introduce them to people who’ll help them get richer, and might even improve their sex life. Look, for example, how Tiffany Trump’s new husband suddenly got rich once Donald was back in the White House.
But making life better for average Americans? Hah, they’ll tell you: that’s for Democrats and suckers.
JD Vance has taken seven very expensive taxpayer-funded vacations in the 8 months since he became VP; Trump plays golf about every third day and has made an estimated $3.5 billion off his having occupied the White House so far; every Republican in the House and Senate knows that if they treat the right industry the right way they’ll have a very-well-paid job waiting for them when they retire.
They don’t care about governing; they’re just in it for themselves.
This is a far cry from the idealistic notions of public service that animated the Founders and generations of Americans who’ve fought and died for this country in the years since. It’s a twisted embrace of Ayn Rand Libertarianism, a philosophy that says greed is good and whoever’s the most efficient predator deserves whatever they can steal or con people out of.
Once you understand that simple reality, everything else the GOP is up to makes sense.
It explains why they’d saturate our country with guns while taking billions from the gun industry, why they’d deregulate polluters while Americans are dying from pollution and climate change, why they’d sanction a healthcare system that has caused millions of unnecessary deaths but has meanwhile made insurance, hospital, and healthcare executives into billionaires.
Here’s a test for you: Can anybody who name even one single piece of legislation from the past 40+ years (since Reagan) that was:
— authored by Republicans,
— principally co-sponsored by Republicans,
— passed Congress with a Republican majority,
— signed by a Republican president,
— and benefited average working people or the poor more than it did the GOP’s donor class.
Outside of a feeble-attempt bill to regulate spam callers during the first Bush administration and legislation reversing the Osage Allotment Act of 1906, nobody has ever won the autographed book prize.
Every developed country in the world has some variation on a free or low-cost national healthcare system, and free or subsidized higher education.
In most developed countries homelessness is not a crisis; nobody goes bankrupt because somebody in their family got sick; and jobs pay well enough and have union pensions so people can retire after 30 or 40 years in the workforce and live comfortably for the rest of their lives.
But not in America. Republican politicians have fought tooth-and-nail for generations to prevent any of those things from happening here.
Which again raises the question: “Why?”
Why do Republican politicians promote hateful messages and cruel policies? Why are Republican-run Red states the real “shithole” parts of the US with the highest rates of poverty, violence, early death, disease, and illiteracy?
What motivates these Republican politicians to say they’re for the “little guy” when the only policies they pursue are to cut taxes on the morbidly rich, gut unions, destroy public schools, and ship jobs overseas?
It’s not about ideology.
Republicans don’t hate Social Security and Medicare, for example, because they’re afraid that those programs are going to somehow turn America into a “socialist” country. They hate those programs because they’re paid for with tax dollars, and greedy Republicans hate to pay their fair share of taxes.
It’s not just about racism, although it often appears that way.
The reason Republicans work so hard to keep Black and brown people down is because they subscribe to a weird economic theory that “requires” an underclass who do most of the hard work for very little money. Thus, morbidly rich Republican “donors” — being part of the overclass — can reap the benefits of increased corporate profits while keeping their taxes low so they can stuff the extra cash into their money bins.
If their use of racist language and Confederate iconography brings in a few more low-IQ white voters, that’s just icing on the cake. They can use the racist yahoos to get themselves reelected so giant corporations will continue to stuff their SuperPACs with lobbyist cash they can use for their own retirement.
It’s not about charity.
Republicans say that the housing, healthcare, and other needs of poor people should be taken care of through “private philanthropy” instead of government. What they’re really saying is that they don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes to maintain a healthy society.
It’s not about Christianity, although they’re constantly invoking Jesus for everything from pushing the death penalty on women who got an abortion to giving bigots the legal right to discriminate against gay, lesbian, and trans people.
Jesus never once mentioned abortion and decried bigotry, but they regularly ignore and even flout His teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and His warnings in Matthew 25. They protect multimillionaire evangelists’ tax-free status, and the preachers repay them by preaching politics from the pulpit.
It’s not about saving Americans from the pandemic or concern for public health.
Last time he was president, Trump used the Defense Production Act to force mostly brown and Black meatpackers back to work, not to keep Americans safe. As long as the factories were humming and the stock market was rising, a few hundred thousand dead Americans were just collateral damage with the 2020 election looming.
It’s not about conservatism.
They’re not interested in slowly or “cautiously” improving society, or “conserving” anything other than the balances in their own checking accounts. They like to use the word “conservative,” but they’ve rendered it meaningless at best and code for “racist” or “obsessively selfish” at worst.
It’s not about making the world a better place.
Republican politicians deny climate change, deregulate industries that poison our air and water, and do everything they can to screw working people out of unions, good wages, and decent benefits. They’re totally down with pesticides that are killing our pollinators while they poison our atmosphere with their carbon emissions, all just to make a buck.
It’s not about having a better-educated electorate or populace.
They’ve spent decades trying to destroy our public education system that was, in the 1960s, the envy of the world. When they did away with free and low-cost college education during the Reagan years they kicked off almost $2 trillion worth of student debt which is preventing young people from starting families, opening small businesses, or even buying their first house. But it sure is profitable for Republican-donor banksters!
It isn’t about “culture.”
They do a good-old-boy NASCAR/Duck Dynasty routine to bring in the rubes, but there’s no way Donald Trump would ever invite the average Republican voter with a giant flag and a pickup truck to any of his golf clubs, nor would Ted Cruz want to vacation with one of them or their families in Cancun. And if any of their daughters were raped, they’d be getting an abortion in a New York minute.
It’s not about “gun violence.”
As long as their investments in weapons manufacturers are profitable and the problem of gun violence is limited to poor- and working-class Americans, Republican politicians don’t give a rat’s ass about “gun safety.” Although they’re happy to use guns as a wedge issue to bring in male voters who are insecure about their own masculinity. As California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote yesterday:
“We cannot even make it through the first week of school without mass shootings. And the @GOP will continue to do absolutely nothing while our kids are being gunned down. This is sick.”
It’s not about “protecting our children.”
The main through-story of the GOP attacks on queer people is that “they’re coming for your kids.” If Republican politicians actually cared about our kids, they’d do something about America being the only countryin the world where gun violence is the leading cause of childhood death.
Republican politicians know that most pedophiles are straight men, but attacking defenseless minorities has been the cheap trick of craven demagogues from the eras of crusades, pogroms, and witch burnings to this day. And don’t get me started on the damage Bob Kennedy is inflicting on our public health system and programs to vaccinate our children and grandchildren.
It’s not about immigrants taking jobs from working-class Americans.
After “reforming” our immigration laws in 1986, Ronald Reagan stopped enforcing the laws against wealthy white employers hiring people who are here without documentation (even though those employers were — and are — committing a crime by hiring undocumented workers). This was part-and-parcel of the GOP’s war on unions.
As a result, entire industries like construction and meatpacking that once provided good union jobs have been de-unionized, their former American-citizen union employees replaced by low-wage workers without documentation.
And when the spotlight gets shined on those industries, Republicans are more than happy to put poor, hard-working brown people in jail, but there’s no way they’re ever going to go after wealthy white employers. Not a single wealthy white employer ever goes to jail, although they’re the ones who initiated the “crime.”
Republican politicians don’t give a damn about your job, particularly when they can find somebody else to do it cheaper, although they do have to put on a little show from time to time to keep the racists happy.
It’s not about putting America or Americans “first.”
Reagan and Bush the Elder negotiated NAFTA and revived the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) so businesses could offshore entire factories. Since the Reagan administration instituted neoliberalism in 1981, over 60,000 factories have left America, taking along with them at least 15 million jobs.
Donald Trump’s rewrite of NAFTA even gave American companies a huge new tax break if they’d move their factories from America to Mexico.
At the end of the day, all Republican politicians care about is money. Greed is their principle animating force, and is what binds them to their morbidly rich donors.
The greed embraced by Republican politicians — and the billionaires and CEOs who fund them — is why average Americans can’t have nice things. It’s why we and our children must walk the tightrope of life without the same safety net other countries — from Canada to Costa Rica, France to Taiwan — offer their citizens. It’s why children are dead today in Minneapolis as Republican politicians happily pocket NRA cash.
It doesn’t matter to Republican politicians how many Americans die unnecessarily, how many of our fellow citizens struggle in misery and poverty, how many children’s growth is stunted or bodies and brains are poisoned by industrial and mining waste being poured into our air and rivers, or terrified by active shooter drills in our schools.
As long as the money keeps rolling in and the GOP’s billionaire patrons keep paying less than 3 percent in income taxes, then, the only thing Republicans are willing to fight for are greed and their own wealth and power.
