Monday, November 7, 2016

Why I Quit the Republican Party

At one point during this election cycle from hell (I can't remember which point, it has all blurred together), someone I am very close with and whom I love and respect called me "smug."

For some reason, that choice of phrase really stuck with me. Actually, it really pissed me off.

I have spent 6 months fuming about it silently, not really understanding how such a stupid choice of word could have such a great impact.

It is one thing to joke about being a "smug West Coast lib," a funny stereotype I gladly embrace as I sip my latte in the morning or eat my kale stir fry for dinner.

It is another thing to have someone you love and respect say it to you without a hint of humor present in a "let me help you see the error of your ways" tone.

The fact that it was after I answered a question about why I thought Brexit was a bad idea made it even more galling.

A little background.

I was brought up Republican, taught to worship at the altar of St. Ronnie Reagan and his "trickle down economics."

A lot of the lessons I was taught about why I should be a Republican are good ones and have made me into the put-together, successful young adult that I am today.

Being the adult in the room. Individualism. Fairness. Working hard for your keep. Personal responsibility. Free markets, free speech...pretty much anything that had to do with freedom. Standing up for yourself because no one else was going to do it. Respect for authority; Law and Order.

These are all ideals I hold closely. They are the ideals I was taught the Party of Lincoln stood for, and because I trusted the people telling me, and it all sounded like it should be right, I bought it.

The last few years have gone a long way to disabusing me of the notion that any of these things is true, however. The Republican Party I was promised may not have ever existed, but if it did, it certainly went away for good somewhere between the time they identified Sarah Palin as a leader of the party and allowed Ted fucking Cruz to shut down the Federal Government.

And that is why this election, for the first time ever, I voted Democrat. And the reasons why can all be found in those lessons I learned as a kid.

Look at that list of attributes above.

The Republican Party does not care about your individualism, unless you happen to be a white guy trying to dodge the estate tax or a Fortune 500 company trying to give them money.

Gay? Lesbian? Transsexual? Black? Hispanic? Female? Tough shit.

You see, many Republicans tell you that what they fear the most about Democrats is 'Paternalism.' I don't think that most Republicans actually know what Paternalism means, because if they did, they would know that there is no institution more Paternalistic than The Church (which the Republicans inextricably and voluntarily linked itself to during the Culture Wars) and no notion more Paternalistic than the government telling a woman what she can do with her body or any individual whom he/she should be able to marry.

The Republicans stopped being the adults in the room---the ones that keep their head on straight and make rational decisions and arguments--- a long time ago. Some would point to the Lewinsky hearings. Some would point to Sarah Palin. Some would point to Ted Cruz and the Freedom Caucus. Whenever it started, what it has lead to is a war on intellectualism reminiscent of a playground and best captured by Donald Trump's lawyer on TV in August, who replied to an anchor's question about bad poll numbers with "says who?"

We all laughed, but that actually summed up a major Republican platform plank.

Whether it is James Inhofe holding up a snowball on the floor of Congress to educate us all on why Global Warming doesn't exist or the party continuing to trot out spokespeople to tell us that the legalization of marijuana would have disastrous effects on the health of this nation or the Party's presidential nomination talking during the 3rd Presidential Debate about 9th Month Abortions (whatever that means), this is a group of people who refuse to deal in any sort of fact-based reality. If that's what the adults in the room are doing, I weep for the children.

By the way, if we're talking smug, is there ANYTHING more smug than people who reject the facts of scientists and economists, instead favoring their gut opinions? "Gee, that PhD you have is nice, but I work in HR and I feel very qualified to tell you that global warming is a myth created by the Left."

And while we're talking about children, let's not forget about Lindsey Graham's insistence that Sharia Law is crossing the borders from Canada and Mexico to be imposed in South Carolina. Or Sam Brownback's Bleeding Kansas. Or (Lying Ted) Cruz and (Little Marco) Rubio phone-banking this week for Donald Trump. The Republicans have turned the keys to their party over to religious zealots, know-nothings, shit heels and bed-wetters who view compromise as weakness. Nothing Adult about that.

Another favorite of Republicans is that they are the "Party of Lincoln". While technically true, only someone who slept through U.S. History in high school doesn't understand that it is ONLY true in technical terms after the 2 parties essentially traded platforms during the 1960s. And even if that weren't true enough for you, the Republican dominated Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the discriminatory Voter ID laws passed in Republican Statehouses as a result should end any thought otherwise.

Republicans are supposed to be the party of Law and Order, which they like to remind you any time a black kid gets shot by a white cop and there are riots when the white cop gets exonerated. However, the Republicans are also remarkably silent when a group of armed white thugs take over a Federal Compound (to hilarious result) in Oregon. Or when a white guy ambushed 2 cops in Des Moines. Or when Trump rally-goers beat the crap out of a REPUBLICAN protester. I guess Law and Order only applies toward "them."

(UPDATE: 6 cops shot by 3 white men in 5 days; none of them being talked about on Fox News-- I checked-- and all 3 guys are still alive, not shot in the streets.)

Free trade? Free markets? The Republicans voted overwhelmingly in their primaries for Donald Trump, who wants to build a wall on the southern border, repeal NAFTA and impose trade tariffs.

Responsibility? Republicans willingly identify businesses as people (which is insane) and yet refuse to hold businesses, or the people running them, accountable for the catastrophic fraud on Wall Street that collapsed the global economy. In fact, the mere suggestion of reform on Wall Street is a non-starter for Republicans. It wasn't the billionaires on Wall Street that committed these frauds which paralyzed the system, their thinking goes. It was poor people and immigrants.

I could go on and on. The party of Reagan and Eisenhower is now lead by a man who openly pines to be BFFs with Vladimir Putin. This was always the party of the smart guys, but instead it has turned into the party fighting a war on intellect and "experts," much like the "out" movement in the United Kingdom. How is that sentiment working out for them?

John Quincy Adams once said of America that "She does not go abroad in search of Monsters to destroy," and that served us well for a long time. See the  second Bush Administration for a good example of when we don't heed that advice, and the views of men like Tom Cotton for why Republican foreign policy is now something along the lines of "we got the bombs, in need of Monsters."

Look, the Democrats are FAR from perfect. There is a wing of the party that thinks Government is the best answer for every problem, which I fundamentally disagree with. But all in all, the party under the leadership of Barack Obama and, yes, Hilary Clinton, has been one of middle-of-the-road governing, incremental reform, restrained foreign policy and a true attempt to level the playing field for people that can't level it for themselves. It doesn't always work and oftentimes it is toothless, but at the end of the day I know that Barack Obama isn't going to nuke Russia because Putin said he had a small dick. Is Hilary Clinton a professional politician who sucks at email? Sure. But I also am not so arrogant as to think that a "normal guy like me" would have any fucking clue what to do as President of the United States, so I don't hold "experience in the field" against her.

On the other hand, the Republicans have become a party of fact deniers and fear mongers whose base is jealous and spiteful of the people who have bettered themselves through education or are members of an ascendant demographic group. What used to be the party of emulating success is now the party of "if you're more successful than me, fuck you."

I have read all the sympathetic pieces out there about the Trump base and the "white working class" and quite frankly I find them to be lacking. Because even if we understand that not all people who vote for Trump are bad people, we ALL understand that Trump is an awful person who sees himself a King and everyone else as stupid enough to actually vote him into the job. You might not be a racist if you vote for Trump. You might not be a white-nationalist. But if you vote for him, you KNOW you are voting for a racist white-nationalist. And at that point, what's the difference?

The old Republican Party, the legend of which I was raised on, wouldn't have stood for this. It might have taken Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin and Donald Trump and the rest of the modern GOP clown car to make me realize all this, but this party has nothing for me. They care about low income tax rates and low capital gains taxes and yet want a massive military and to enjoy 100% of their expected entitlements, a hypocrisy I cannot fully wrap my head around.

(By the way, they don't hate entitlements, they just hate YOUR entitlements)

Conversely, they hate all the things I care about. Equal rights for my friends, no matter their background or sexual orientation. Rational decisions based on science and facts. Complete separation of church and state. The First Amendment (in its entirety). Gun Control. But, hey, maybe if I'm ever a Wall Street CEO or really, really amped up about the Estate Tax I will change my tune.

Once this election is over, the smart thing for the Republicans to do would be to cut bait with the crazies, take it on the chin for a few years and re-formulate their platform. Drop the 90/10 and 80/20 issues that are serving to lock them out with millennials, figure out a way to communicate smart immigration reform to get Hispanics in the fold, make in-roads to minority communities, etc. Just like in 2008. And 2012.

But my suspicion is that they won't do that. They won't be able to win the mid-terms without the crazies, so they will double down. A new wave of mini-Trumps will crop up as the party makes excuses for why they lost. It won't be because they cravenly supported the worst American candidate in half a century. It will be because his data game wasn't on point.

They've already lost me. I will never vote for someone in any way tied to this Trump mess. But they also are going to lose a lot of people like me in the coming years. Millennials whose formative experiences as young adults were during the Great Recession and don't like being tied to big institutions. We like our freedom to move, because we remember what systemic failure looked like. We don't sign blood oaths with our political parties. And you can bet that a lot of us will be doing the same analysis I just did and the GOP isn't going to look good on the other end of it.

And so in conclusion, my message to the person that called me smug, and any other Republican that would call me 'smug' for what I wrote about above (and really, to anyone who voted for Donald Trump)...nothing but love, but kindly, blow it out your ass. It's people like me that will decide the future.

Also, Donald Trump wants to bang his daughter.

No comments:

Post a Comment