Cracking Up

DONALD TRUMP did not cause the disease. Rather, he is merely a symptom of it. There is sidespread agreement about that. The decline of the once marginally respectable Republcian party into a criminal, terrorist organization began not with Trump, but with Newt Gingrich, who convinced his fellow Republicans in the early nineties that the best way to oppose the liberalism of Democrats would be to attack them personally, in what came to be called, first by Bill Clinton, "the politics of personal destruction". This is the essential theme of a newly published book by journalist Dana Milbank; "The Destructionists: The Twenty Five Year Crack Up of the Republican party". Milbank doesn't use footnotes. He doesn't need to. All of his stated facts are common knowledge. He uses demonstrable, verified facts to show how the Republican party has deteriorated into what it is today: a cult following, the cult leader being a psychotic criminal; a terrorist criminal enterprise. Two thirds of registered Republicans still insist that the presidency was stolen from Trump, based only on the words of a confirmed liar, without further supporting evidence. The RNC (Republican National commmittee), thinking it necessary to weigh in on the insurrection, voted on it, and reached the following conclusion: the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was "legitimate political discourse". Legitimate political discourse? Smashing down doors and through windows, smearing feces inside teh nation's capitol building, killing people? Legitimate political discourse? Dan Milbank, one step at a time, makes his case. It is not a difficult case to make, nor to prove. The two Republicans members of the House of Representative sub committee investigating the insurrection have been censured by their own party; for merely taking part in the investigation. The indictment of more than eight hundred of the insurrectionsits teh party calls "persecution of ordinary citizens". Nto mentioned is the fact that ordinary citizens do not refuse to accept the results of a free and fair election, and they do not express their disappointment by trying to violently overthrow the government. Republicans, it seems, cannot be expected to understand that.