Keep quiet, get with the program and one day you will no longer be exploited by your boss, you will get the opportunity to oppress your own workers and customers. If it hasn’t happened yet it must be because those commie libs want to give all your stuff away to furriners, brown folks, and lazy hippies, i.e., folks who aren’t hard workin’ and god-fearin’ volk like us. Its the same bill of goods they sold to Johnny Reb in 1860; join up and fight for your god-given freedom to own slaves and one day YOU can have your own. And its the same bill of goods Adolf Hitler managed to sell to the hard-working, disciplined and highly cultured people of Germany.

The true genius of the modern Conservative movement is that it managed to convince its own victims to work against their own economic interests and political freedom by leveraging their racism, nationalism, religious fundamentalism, anti-intellectualism and nativism against them.

America has always been able to find a compromise between the productive dynamism and efficiency of the Right and the justice, compassion and humanity of the Left. This has been done through democratic reforms, unions, civil rights, election reform, rule of law, consumer, worker and environmental legislation while simultaneously allowing every citizen to manage his own economic life and personal property. Maintaining this balance has not always worked smoothly, and there have been setbacks and contradictions, but it is America’s finest achievement and its greatest gift to human civilization.

But for those who see human life as simply an arena for their own self-aggrandizement and the endless accumulation of personal wealth and power, these reforms have always been anathema. And what we are seeing now in politics is the natural result of those who are willing to wake up the most hideous demons in our collective psyche in order to briefly put to rest the howling beast in theirs.

It is not like this is a matter up for debate… the Leader of the GOP says he will be a strongman and dictator and his minions have drawn up publicly known plans to dismantle democracy.

One side is genuinely, objectively evil and relishes cruelty inflicted on others… this is simply objective fact

One side is gleefully detached from reality wallowing in patently absurd conspiracy theory, and using those conspiracies to justify violence against their fellow citizens.

There is no equivalency between the 2 sides… The GOP is a threat to all America has claimed to stand for, and the democrats are trying to stop them….

“President Biden gets harangued constantly about his age, but no one seriously thinks he is impulsive, destructive, chaotic, plundering, violent or bent on dismantling our constitutional system. We need not worry that he will try to pardon himself and hundreds of insurrectionists. We know he declines to interfere with the Justice Department, abides by court rulings and respects the military’s apolitical role. He is trying to bolster the international order, not upend it. With age and solid character come stability, calm, competence and, occasionally, wisdom. That is the real contrast between the two.”

Jimmy Kimmel Tricks Trump Voters Into Revealing What They Really Think About Trump

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/cm/jimmy-kimmel-tricks-trump-voters-070151203.html

There is more than just ideology or culture at work here. This cognitive dissonance only makes sense when viewed as a result of profound emotional and spiritual commitment. Only religion and racism have the psychic power to do this.

I just spent two weeks down in the South, and dear Lordy I bit my lip so often there might be permanent damage.

Today, with one of the two major parties in the nation showing distain for our long history of democracy, I wonder if it will even exist in America much longer.

Not since the days of early 20th century European fascism has the very concept of democracy come under direct public attack the way it is today. Democracies are accused of being weak, corrupt, easily suborned by factions and political and economic and class interests, and of course, those “elites” which are always undermining the true interests of The People. There is a bit of truth to this, even the earliest Classical Athenian democracy was controlled by rich businessmen and political hacks, it established tyrants and controlled an overseas empire and an aggressive foreign policy and repression at home. The Roman Republic was merely a club of the city’s richest families who agreed to rotate the temporary leadership amongst themselves because they didn’t trust each other. Democracy is no guarantee of freedom, it must be consciously controlled and fought for by an enlightened and informed citizenry. Even in our own country, the most profound political development of the Enlightenment, only white, male, “Gentlemen of Property” were allowed to vote, and the leadership was elected by the Representatives, NOT the popular vote.

Still, what we are seeing now is truly unprecedented. Democracy is being attacked not because it is failing, or led astray, or neglected, or incompetent. It rejects the democratic idea entirely, and substitutes for it the mere trappings of rule of law and the vote and the tough love of a allegedly benign dictator.

And its not just happening here.