OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
Ever since I was old enough to understand politics and politicians I have disliked Republicans. In my long lifetime I have seen only one and a quarter Republican presidents that were worthy of my admiration. And those Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush, would not be welcome in today’s Republican Party.
I have always associated Republicans with “royals” — people unfamiliar with, and far removed from, everyday working people. People who don’t carry money. The King’s men. I cannot help but equate them with the silk garbed members of Louie the sixteenth’s court, and his “base,” who had to flee the outraged pitchfork wielding citoyens of France during the Reign of Terror. And as I sit here and watch the news of Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen being sentenced to three years in prison, hopefully the first of many of the king’s men to go to prison, Like them, I am shouting “off with their heads”
Now, my dislike has turned to hatred.
I cannot help this either. I know it is not fashionable. I know it is not productive. Even my philosophy cannot keep me from this. Nor can my awareness that it is unattractive and in the grand scheme of things a hatred such as this is a waste of my finite energy. I know all this and yet the animus I bear for these people seems to invigorate. Besides all my creative reasons for continued life I think I must also live just to see these people thrown into prison. Even as I understand that what I think and how I feel pales into infinitesimal nothingness when placed in the cosmic design of the universe, I cannot help but harbor this burning hatred deep in the marrow of my being for these people.
My general dislike deepened in 1980 with the Presidency of Ronald Reagan who, among the many filthy feathers in his cap, destroyed California’s free College system, opposed every major piece of civil rights legislation, and busted worker’s unions. Since then I have witnessed their becoming an ultra-conservative party suspicious of government, allied against abortion, sponsored by the NRA, and motivated by faith. I watched through the years as they urged the transformation of Medicare from an entitlement to a system of personal accounts. As they increased use of coal for energy and pushed for a ban on federal funding to universities that give illegal immigrants in-state tuition rates. Watched as they passed the ultimate tip-off as to where their bread was buttered; Citizen’s United. All these things a naked attempt to destroy the very underpinnings to a worthwhile life. A concerted effort to keep us scraping by and too occupied by mere survival to have the energy to even care to fight. All this since 1980 and Reagan. Today, as I witness their cowardice, their self-serving willingness to put party before country in the service of a treasonous criminal I have come to hate them. These greedy conscienceless people, devoid of principle, absent a philosophy, worship at the altar of gold. These people who live to amass great wealth at the expense of their fellow man, and while doing so still refuse to allow others less fortunate the chance at betterment are, and have always been, the objects of my derision. Republicans are now truly the I’ve-got-mine-fuck-the-rest-of-you-and-your-country party. And my dislike has now curdled to hate-filled enmity.
Yes, I know there are those among them who are not as hard-hearted, not as greedy, not as corrupt. Yet I have to question why these people would then allow themselves to be members of a group of people who have for decades been trying to systematically unravel the frail thread by which I and most of my fellow citizens hang. To steal elections by brazenly preventing people from voting? The very cornerstone of a democracy. To not have immediately approved of universal healthcare for all at its very first mention? To seek to privatize Social Security and Medicare? To not offer the slightest effort to make College within reach financially in order that all our youth who desire to do so can get a good education? To have propagandized workers into busting their unions? To do nothing as the mass slaughters of our children continue — because they are indebted to the National Rifle Association’s money? To separate children from their mothers and fathers under some pretext that their parents are a threat? And put the children in cages? To cut elementary school budgets? To pander to the very worst in man’s instincts? To govern by fear? And to blithely ignore our very greatest real threat; the destruction of our environment. To keep taking, and taking, and then taking some more, while giving nothing back? While not even pretending to give back? And then…to have a vile criminal the likes of a Donald J. Trump as your standard bearer?
I can only hope they will not succeed in this ongoing concerted effort to rob us of our humanity. Our dignity. But for almost 40 years this has been their conscious blueprint to hold on to power. And it has all been at our cost.
I am proud to hate Republicans.
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