As a Dutch Canadian immigrant child of the 50s, having been much exposed to the post war atmosphere where talk of the war was still a very regular experience, I came to wonder how Germany could allow itself to commit atrocity on such a massive scale. What made the Germans so different? Especially since being Dutch, I knew I had a hereditary (genetic),geographic, and religious connection.
I really don’t have to wonder about that anymore. Recently, having watched this con man, Donald Trump stirring up our worst instincts, he now has a worshiping party that can defend and support each and every decision he makes to ruin and terminate lives, while he enriches himself and stretches his power.
I just want to leave it on the record. I spoke out against the Republican party as completely morally bankrupt.
I was a Republican up until the 2000 election. It is possible to leave. At this point, given the Republican party’s continued support of Trump and the evil he does, I don’t see how any moral person can stay in the party. That doesn’t mean becoming a Democrat or even voting for Democrats.
More than one well known Republican has left, and good for them.
This makes it sound like it’s Trump who’s the head or the heart of the evil in the party, and everyone else is just following him. I believe it’s more likely that the evil in the party predates Trump and is using him.
While true (the rot in the Republican Party dates back to Goldwater, also the modern incarnation was kicked off by Newt Gingrich and his “Contract With America”) but Donald Trump is emblematic of the ethical and moral compromise that the GOP has embraced so they can “win”.
I’ve been saying this for years. The GOP’s anti-intellectualism, rejection of established science, contempt for the poor and middle class, animosity towards anyone who isn’t a straight white Christian cisgender man, and willingless to ignore democratic norms to get what they want makes them a greater existential threat to American democracy, and for that matter the human race, that has ever existed.
The entire organization needs to be dismantled, its leaders imprisoned, and its philosophies cast into the dustbin of history.
There’s a spinoff of crying wolf, which is that even if a wolf is, in fact, there, and always has been there along, if you cry wolf enough times, the villagers will not heed the wolf.
If a side is in fact fascist, but you cry “fascist” for years and years, people will tune you out.
…Uh, I think that the opinion that “the leaders of the political party I disagree with need to be imprisoned” is also “a threat to American democracy” as well.
Was imprisoning the Nazis a threat to German democracy? Because that’s the point we’re at. The Republican party is not a party that values democracy or the good of the American people.
Before Trump there were evil people in the party, and reasonably moral people, like McCain. But today anyone in the party who is moral had better be actively resisting (like voting with the Democrats most of the time) or should quit.
My number one example of abandoning America for fear of the tea party being mad at you is McConnell.