Why Being Purple Increasingly Means You Aren't Republican
The Republican Party is as Extremist a Party as I Have Ever Seen
I want you all to take a good look at this tweet. Aside from the fact that “Marxism” had absolutely nothing to do with what is happening in the image (in fact, it is the exact opposite of Marxism), Senator Lee chose to twist a terrible act of lone wolf homicide into something overtly political. The guy in the mask is Vance Boelter, the murderer who stalked Democratic State Legislators in Minnesota, killed two people in the middle of the night, and shot two more people NINE TIMES EACH, one of whom’s reaction was to cover their young child while being shot over and over again. It is as abhorrent and disgusting a single act as can be imagined. Yes, the motivation seems to be political, as Boelter was a zealous RIGHT wing advocate, but that should not matter in assessing his conduct. Remove the political angle from these events, and its a tragedy that most everyone would admit was a horrible, horrible crime.
It was quickly followed up with this one:
Get it? It’s because it’s in Minnesota and Tim Walz is Governor of Minnesota. Hardy har har. As if this was all Tim Walz’s fault that a right wing MAGA nut decided to shoot up elected officials in the middle of the night for kicks. What a knee slapper.
The utter classlessness that prompted someone to post this tells you a lot about the people who comprise today’s Republican Party. They absolutely love to ingest and meme their way around mocking anyone who isn’t as deplorable (yes, I’m going to say it) and deranged as they are. That these two tweets came FROM A SITTING U.S. SENATOR only further demonstrates that they are hollow to the core and absolutely bereft of any virtue or principle. I mean, think about this, Senator Mike Lee is GLORIFYING a murderer, praising that he killed DEMOCRATIC STATE LEGISLATORS. Not only is that a disgusting message to prop up, it’s the antithesis of everything we hold dear in a civil society.
And it’s no longer uncommon on the right. In fact, it’s standard operating procedure now. THEY ALL ACT THIS WAY, OR ALTERNATIVELY GIVE SILENT ASSENT TO IT.
This outright indignation of common decency is now held up as being the norm among Republicans. There used to be a time when the animosity would stop in the face of a tragedy like this one. People would take a step back and reassess the words they used and their conduct. They would calm the waters. A good example of this was when there was an attempt at President Trump’s life, being shot at while on a podium speaking to a crowd. Democrats rightfully called out the shooter as deranged and disavowed it. They called the event horrible, (which it was) and every single elected legislator called it something that shouldn’t EVER happen. Not in America. You didn’t see U.S. Senators posting sarcastic comments about the shooter’s aim or that the Secret Service secretly wanted Trump hit. EVERYONE recognized this for what it was, Democrats and Republicans alike; Republicans even turned it into a misguided rallying cry saying “They all want Trump dead!” (which wasn’t true, but that didn’t stop them).
Instead, when Trump was asked if he would call Walz following the act, he said the governor of Minnesota was “whacked out” and wouldn’t because it would be “a waste of time.” Our President folks. Unable to fulfill a single decent gesture that doesn’t advantage him in some way.
To put it bluntly, there is a culture on the right that is awful, ugly, hateful and yes, deplorable. Despite the flack that Hillary Clinton got for using that term to describe those around Trump in 2016 and what the GOP was becoming, it really is a perfect term to encapsulate this level of barbarity. Now they use that term as a badge of honor. Republicans used to hold themselves up as the paragons of civic virtue; Democrats had the heart to make programs and policy and the direction we as a society need to improve on and the Republicans were the party of pragmatism, of maintaining our level of resources and financial limits, while maintaining decorum and basic civic decency. Today, the GOP are the exemplars of the worst that America has to offer. When you can’t even offer condolences for what should be a no-brainer outrageous act of such horrendous proportions, you really need to reassess your principles and how they became so abased.
What occurred over this weekend with Senator Lee is not a one off either. You routinely get GOP officials trying to justify their worst indulgences and corruptions, and twist themselves into knots trying to pivot away from the worst instances of their conduct. MarkWayne Mullin and Thomas Massie immediately come to mind. I mentioned recently that “whataboutism” is at the core of every GOP argument, and the lengths they go to turn what is a act that has zero justification, that everyone on the left disowned when it happens, the manner in which the right comes right back to that and says “whatabout that event” is just outrageous. What about it? Everyone acknowledged it was bad; nobody held it up as the paragon of virtue. 1
Many of the Republican true believers who read this will comment about how I often ridicule the left’s activists and how they are at times just as ugly. It’s true, their activists can be pretty toxic at times as well, but you’re talking about their activists, not their elected officials. These are people RUNNING the Republican Party that are the worst of the worst. All the legions of Qanon quacks look UP to these people and follow on their every word. They look at Trump trolling in putridness and emulate it regularly. Rather than stand up and call out wickedness of his ways, they kowtow and like pilot fish following the shark waiting for scraps, swim with the flow. The liberal activist base is ugly, but I don’t see many Democratic officials praising their worst impulses; in fact, I usually see them call it out when it goes too far. There are lines between activism and crimes, and the Republican Party routinely crosses them, with only their endemic corruption that the DOJ or state level prosecutors will just turn the other way when they witness them being their saving grace.
The Republican Party no longer stands for anything. The only guiding principle it has is to follow Trump in whatever he says or does. That means you may agree with him this week, and then next week when he changes his position, you have to change yours and say you were always there supporting it. It means you have to claim victory for losing position in the global market and the view of the world. It means you have to say Trump demonstrated strength when he left the G7 with his tail between his legs. It means that calling on Iran for an “unconditional surrender” means something without ever dictating any idea of what that would actually entail—surrender what? The entirety of Tehran? When people say Trump wants to be a dictator or authoritarian, they’re not wrong; he wants all of the accolades that go with the cult of personalities those systems provide. When they scream Fascist or Nazi, they’re on less accurate footing because those actually required some form of political principle involved, of which Trump really has none. If you don’t believe me, you can equally picture Trump as Stalin too. He blows with the wind. If American approval for his immigration crackdown dropped down to 20% tomorrow, he would claim success and can the whole program. And if you don’t believe me on that, that is exactly what happened with his planned tarriffs.
For 2 1/2 years I have tried to stake out a place in the median of American political culture, because I thought there were a lot of people like me disaffected and disengaged by the extremes on both sides and that the common debate lacked analysis on the practicalities of many programs and principles. I was not surprised by the positive response I got and the feedback I continue to receive today. There are millions across this country, just like me, who look at the Democrats’ liberal base and see a far too culturally left melange of idiocy. They see an overeducated, elitist, snobbish set that requires purity and 100% adherence to it’s belief system or be ostracized from it altogether. They look at Republicans and see a bunch of 8Chan, Breitbart watching, Alex Jones conspiracy minded trollers that grow ever increasingly rabid and deranged by the day. We in the middle used to be called “the silent majority” but we’ve never been silent; we’ve just been moderate (in both principle and tone) and we were always the swing voters who decided elections. The middle is the “flip flopping, waffling, half in half out” people who are just averse to whichever direction the world seems to be moving; they want things to stay as they are, not go down rabbit holes toward the fringes of society. Small and incremental steps, not grand sweeping changes. Increasingly, you can’t call yourself a moderate and also condone the level of cynical, sarcastic, off-putting commentary coming from the leaders on the right.
People have been trying to decipher how Trump won and the easiest explanation of it was that they looked at what Dems were selling and said “no.” Having lived through Trump’s first term, coasting on the Obama economy and feeling nostalgic for inflation to be low again, they neglected all the horrible things about it; Charlottesville, kids in cages and blackmailing our adversaries for political leverage. Now that Trump won, he is acting as if he has a mandate for ALL of those things again, that America actually wanted the worst of Trump 1.0, and he has amped it up even further in Trump 2.0. Gone are the sane men in the room willing to tell him “no,” and what are left are toadies that can’t do the jobs for which they were appointed. America didn’t ask for this, and they certainly don’t want it. For Republicans to stand quiet and not speak out about the worst excesses of the Trump Administration is outright unconscionable.
Which brings me to the rest of this weekend. Trump, in an ever increasing testament to his own vanity, used the occasion of the Army’s 250th Anniversary to throw a military parade for himself. The sparsely attended event, complete with outdated military equipment and lack of quality imagery projecting any sense of strength have largely been tamped down. No protests of the event were allowed; in fact Trump mentioned that if they saw a protester the Army had the green light to shoot them (no indication has been made of whether that was a joke, off the cuff statement, or actual direction to the Army). Trump has not really mentioned much about it since.
On the other end, the “No Kings” marches across the country completed without major incident.2 Millions turned out, making it the third largest mass protest in the United States ever (two of the top three are now in direct protest to Trump). The protests weren’t about much of anything, only being “anti-Trump” and opposed to monarchies. It remains to be seen whether the anti-Trump crowd will be able to turn around and mobilize their supporters, but it seems to me that most of the protesters are the same people we see all the time protesting on the left. Until they incorporate more moderates into their groups, I’m not sure how much bigger they’ll get. The Democratic Party on the other hand—as if trying it’s darnedest to demonstrate why people dislike them so much— spent the weekend in the Hamptons, amassed for the wedding of a descendant of George Soros with former Mrs. Anthony Weiner and Hillary Clinton advisor, Huma Abedin. If that’s the leadership they have, they’re in trouble.
But as far as which side is better, there really is no contest. Democrats at least stand for SOMETHING, not SOMEONE. In a democracy, principles matter. What you stand for matters. What issues you find important matters. Trump is working to erase all of that. Allegiance is the only thing that matters to him. It’s why he and Republicans scream all the time about the illegitimacy of elections. It’s why they routinely reflect on the more violent aspects of their agenda, including pardoning January 6th insurrections (calling them PATRIOTS! which is offensive to people who actually understand the meaning of the word) and support for armed mobs and ICE raids. It’s why they make fun of Minnesota State Legislators being shot by MAGA fans in the middle of the night. In a world where loyalty is all that counts, making Trump smile to prove you’re on his side is currency. That is an ugly world to live in. You can at least compromise on principles to get things done and work toward the greater good; compromising on people is akin to a betrayal, and Trump most certainly treats it as such when he doesn’t get his way.
Honestly PurpleAmericans, if you consider yourself rational and thoughtful, and want to live in a better America for everyone, you should work on helping make the Democratic Party better, because the Republican Party is a lost cause at this point. Until Republican elected officials start calling out opposing Trump and what he does, elections be damned, they’ll continue to govern by wretched meme or Truth Social post. That is a bubble of insanity and dystopian worldviews that no practical person can look at and say that is the direction America should go. It’s Red, with no purple in it at all.
And frankly, I’d rather live in the real world. Where people care about one another regardless of their political beliefs, and when something bad happens offer condolences, when something good happens respectfully applause, and when something uneventful happens still offers the common decency and mutual appreciation that entails the best of community. Blue still has some shades of purple, and seems to want to genuinely find a way to bring purple back over to their side. The activists and younger crowd are more dogmatic, but that’s a problem for the future. For now, there’s less and less reason to look toward the Red Republicans, and all the more reason to consider Blue Democrats.
PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner
An great part of the musical Hamilton was “The Election of 1800” where Hamilton sides with Jefferson for President over Aaron Burr. Hamilton hated both of these people for various reasons, and the circumstances of the situation no longer exist, but it’s important to consider in relation to our current situation.
Here’s a small clip:
So Burr and Jefferson were both running as the VP and Presidential candidates respectively, for the same party, and the Electoral College at the time said whoever got the most votes became President and whoever got the second largest amount became V.P.. Electors had two votes back then and what happened when Jefferson won the most states guaranteeing an EV win, was that both Jefferson and Burr tied. It was anticipated that Burr, as the designated V.P. choice on the Democratic-Republican ticket would just concede the Presidency to Jefferson, but the Federalists sniffed an opportunity to cause a little mayhem, and chose to back Burr for President. They even supported the notion that Burr’s lack of principles was an asset. When it went into the House because nobody had a majority, there was a standstill, setting up Hamilton, who knew both of them very well to offer his endorsement to break the logjam.
Hamilton chose Jefferson, who he really loathed, because he stood firm that at least Jefferson HAD principles. A person like Burr, who had none, could be just thoroughly swayed by corrupt officials and malactors that this fledgeling democratic experiment could flat out collapse overnight.
And that is a lesson that we should continue to consider today.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
Jefferson was so pissed off by Burr’s conduct, he ostracized him from all cabinet level meetings and had the 12th Amendment passed. Burr would be shunned in D.C. society and in 1804, after shooting Hamilton at Weehauken, N.J., would sail down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers planning an Insurrection liberating New Orleans, Texas and much of the western U.S. as a separate country with himself as it’s head. He failed and was tried as a traitor but eventually acquitted.
PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
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Footnotes and Fun Stuff
As if to demonstrate, Democrats were just as appalled by Hunter Biden’s conduct and repeated drug abuse, sleeping with the widow of his brother and other putridness that they didn’t defend him. When Republicans respond to anything Trump does with “Whatabout Hunter”, what about him? Nobody ever defended him. The only modicum of defense I ever heard was whether Hunter Biden was ever even relevant to the discussion at hand.
Where incidents did occur, they were instigated by irate Republicans, including one where a person drove into a crowd. This is the kind of shit I’m talking about when I say they are deplorable.
I am honestly less scared of the lack of indecency than the intellectual bankruptcy needed to claim that the shooter was a radical leftist. In the past few days, videos have come out of boelter practically possessed at evangelical churches, and many people in MAGA still refuses to recant their claims that he was a left-wing terrorist. A large part of the MAGA base hates the libs so much that they are losing congitive ability by the day.
The right has, ironically, become the very model of postmodernism they spent decades accusing the left of. It goes to show that sacrificing principles for short term victories leads to rot.