There’s a reason we all feel like the Republican Party is careening out of control like a deranged, evil clown car packed with explosives (in addition to being packed with Republican clowns). Ironically, the news media has, for the most part, stopped using the word “strategy” to describe what Republicans are doing when it’s now most apparent that this madness IS their “strategy”. The old rubric says if you don’t have the truth, argue the process; if you don’t have process, bang your fists on the table. Republicans are flipping the table over, dismantling it and setting it (and the whole courthouse) on fire. The Hill reported this morning that, in a recent poll, fifteen percent of Republicans now believe that “…the government and other entities are controlled by Satan-worshipping pedophiles running a child sex trafficking ring”. That’s in addition to 53% who believe Trump is still president and that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the election from him. That — and it’s ludicrous that it needs to be said — is rubbish. It’s bullshit that any of us has to qualify ourselves and our truth-telling bona fides against a person and a party famous for their blatant disregard for truth.
The modern GOP is what happens when lies and truth become indiscernible. When what happened in the past is a function of what those in power need it to be. It’s not a coincidence that Republican culture is grievance culture is white supremacist culture. And white supremacist culture is one hundred percent fear culture. White supremacists have convinced themselves that white people are genuinely superior (a thing totally unsupported by all evidence) and that God has chosen them to rule the planet on his behalf. Once you’ve put that idea into your own head — that a deity mighty enough to create literally everything has chosen you to speak for him because you’re “special”? You’ll pretty much always believe it. Why wouldn’t you? Having God on your side — or in your pocket even? That’s heady stuff!
Our news media can’t imagine how or why Republicans believe The Big Lie. The news media, always happy to carry water for Republicans, continue to report Republicans refusing to acknowledge Joe Biden’s legitimacy or the need for a January 6 Truth Commission as if they were legitimate, concerns by serious people. FFS – how much bullshit must a journalist endure before he or she is willing to call the stuff being spewed at them “bullshit”? If the answer is “an infinite amount” then we’re doomed. It gets worse, of course, when said journalist takes the bullshit that’s been spewed at them and holds it up as “possible”. It usually comes in the form of a “Yeah, but what if bullshit was true…?” kind of question. What if the murderer/thief/rapist was justified? What if the high crime wasn’t that big a deal? What if the end of democracy was just another thing that could happen?
On the one hand, Republicans are at the point where literally nothing except survival matters. They’ve committed treason — or been suspicious or aware that possibly treasonous acts occurred but said NOTHING. That makes them co-conspirators. That puts them in extreme legal jeopardy — a baseline fact. But then, plenty of Republicans are also deeply religious (Christian mostly of course). If they ‘re even remotely devout, that means they’ve accepted as “Gospel Truth” a lot of things that simply could not and did not happen. If one is willing to believe in all sincerity that a sky deity had sex with a female human virgin in order to impregnate her with a man-god tasked with dying for humanity’s sins (all caused by the first woman eating a piece of fruit cos a talking snake told her to), then truly one might believe almost anything.
Not all Republicans live at the intersection of Ooga & Booga, their belief system utterly fungible. Plenty live in the sewer beneath that intersection.