Diverging Values

THERE HAVE BEEN TIMES when the two major American poitical parties seemed nearly indistinguishable. The immediate post World War Two period was charachterized by a mad rush to the political center. Strong on defense, so strong the President Eisenhower feared that spending on military procurement might bankrupt the country. Support for social programs and labor unions by both parties, with no apparent retreat from the New Deal. Most noteworthy, the Republican party was barely right of center, often slightly left of it, with support for women's equality and support of labor unions written into the 1956 party platform, which more resembled the agenda of Bernie Sanders than Ronald Reagan. Reagan changed, both parties evolved over time. Back then, Ronald Reagan had only recently converted from New Deal democrat idealsim to his eventual soft landing in hard core conservatism. The most outstanding development of recent times is the flight of the Republicans to the far, extremist right. It is neither unfair nor unreasonable to assert that the current Republican party contains strong strains of fasism, racism, and pure neo-liberal economics, with unfettered corporate enterprise opening the floodgates of corporate money controlling politics, and both foreign and domestic government policy. The two parties are perhaps as far apart ideologically as they have ever been, but it can be argued that despite the divisive vitriole which characherized the political landscape, it cannot be denied that, perhaps more than ever, we the people, if nothing else, certainly have a clear cut choice. Nor are they equal in honesty, integrity,and what they offer the country. The mere fact that the G.O.P. has cast its lot with Trump says much about its abandonment of integrity for political expediency, and its willingness to allow or accept low moral character and even criminality within its leadership. That two thirds of registered Republicans still insist that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump,that the insurrection of January 6 2021 was either justified by circustances, or was nothing more than a peaceful demonstration that got a bit out of control, speaks volumes, about integrity. Climate change denial, a bulwark of contemporary conservatism, is no less revealing. Denying the very existence of what the Department of Defense has for decades termed the single greatest threat to American national security is, arguably, criminally traitorous. The two parties are on opposite ends of the moral character spectrum.The fact the Republcians are tyring to level the moral playing field by fabricating wholly unsubstantiated allegations of criminal activity against President Biden is yet more proof of their low moral character. For their sacred cause of remaking the country in their extreme conservative image, they have literally sold their souls to the devil. They have for decades perpetrated the false notion that their is a liberal bias in the mainstream American media. If anything, the opposite is true. The neutral and conservatve media is complicit by presenting the lucicrous idea that both parties are equally corrupt, equally disengenuous, equally contemptuous in disregarding the the preferences and demands of the general population. No less ludicrous is the conservative establishment using their strategy to enact the conservative agenda by law by packing the judicial system with conservtive judges to secure right wing renderings, has invented the fantastical concept of "originalism", according to which we are expected to predicate all bench rulings upon the "original intentions" of the founders, as if we are capable of reading their minds. Democrats support equality for women, minorities, and the LGBTQ community, and freedom of religion and acceptance of religious diversity.Republicans want to criminalize homosexuality, make no effort to and to enforce gender and racial equality and elevate the Christian religion to the status of formal societal establishment. Democrats want to use progressie tax policies to more equally distribute the nation's wealth, Republicans seem content with less than one percent of the population having a disproportionate share of it. The two parties are not the same.