Democrats will “destroy” America. They want to. This is now a staple of Republican rhetoric.
Democrats supposedly want to destroy America because they hate it. But don’t they live there? Who’d want to “destroy” their own home?
Or maybe it’s their policies you think would destroy America. Policies like tackling climate change, extending health care (including for pregnant women), curbing the proliferation of murderous guns, protecting voting rights, reducing inequality, welcoming immigrants, confronting Russian aggression, etc. Non-radical policies most Americans support.
I was a Republican myself for 53 years until 2017 — being plenty critical of some Democrat policies. But they were just normal debatable issues. Not “communist” or some such craziness.
Democrats have held the White House for 11 of the past 15 years. If they’d really wanted to “destroy” America, they had ample opportunity. Yet, strangely enough, the country is doing very well, economically at least — with growth and wages strong, jobs easy to find, and inflation coming down. Though Democrats get scant credit because the national mood is deeply sour.
True, “woke” excesses are nasty stuff, but that applies to only a very small minority of Democrats, hardly threatening America’s “destruction.” And it’s not what most Republicans really and truly fear. It’s the loss of white dominance. They hate Democrats because they’re seen as the party of non-whites.
And this “destroy America” rhetoric comes from the party of January 6, a violent attempt to overthrow our legitimate government. Republicans are the party of January 6 because they refuse to acknowledge this reality of the event, want to whitewash it, or pretend it never happened. And support a presidential candidate most directly culpable for it; who engaged in a conspiracy of lis and fraud to prevent his elected successor from taking office.
While hallucinating that so great is the Democrats’ threat to America that anything — anything — is justified to thwart them. Including violence, like January 6. Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz recently explicitly endorsed the use of force to achieve political outcomes.
Mere hot air, you might say; people like Gaetz don’t literally believe this. But too many of the rank-and-file, steeped in such polemics, do believe it. And have guns. Fetishize guns.
Columnist Cynthia Tucker recently called the Republican party a cult that’s “now a morass of bigotry, corruption, graft and irrationality.” (She inexplicably forgot lies.) And “we have become inured to . . . the ripping apart of the civic fabric, the shameless assaults on common decency.”
Our democracy endured for over two centuries not thanks to our Constitution, but something more fundamental — a civic understanding that a diverse society requires respecting the right of people to disagree, to participate legitimately in politics, and to share in governance. Today’s Republican party is taking a sledgehammer to that compact.
A recent Thomas Friedman column discusses Lebanon, where that kind of civic understanding, which long underpinned societal stability, was shattered. And so was the country — truly destroyed.
At the recent debate, when asked if they’d support the party’s nominee even if convicted of a felony, six of the eight Republican presidential hopefuls raised their hands. To whooping applause from the Fox News audience.
What the hell has happened to these people?
And yet it’s Democrats they think will destroy America?
I was actually surprised that the January 6 insurrection did not bring out way more gun nuts. But that was just a dress rehearsal. They’ll be better organized and prepared next time.
Violence won’t be necessary if the electorate is so insane as to elect Trump again. But I’m almost as fearful of what will go down if he loses again.
I once blamed Democrats more for partisan bitterness. No longer. Today’s Republicans should scare the shit out of any reasonable person. While their hate toward Democrats is part of their overall derangement. So deranged they can’t see it’s they themselves who truly do threaten America’s destruction.
