Our long national nightmare is not yet over, but, thank God, the American people came together and delivered to the Republicans the repudiation they have long deserved.
Forty years ago, I was a conservative Republican, but I slowly turned on Republicans because they put big business over people and the environment, and put discrimination over decency to our fellow human beings. Environmentalism, egalitarianism, and prejudice are dealbreakers for me.
And while I’ve long been a left-leaning moderate, my longstanding sympathy for conservatism itself has drained away as conservative principles seemed less important to the Right than identifying with an in-group which is protected by the law but not bound by it, and persecuting out-groups which are bound by the law but not protected by it. The recent savage history of immigration enforcement in America, where right-wing pundits almost reflexively justified the government’s attempt to thwart due process by claiming that the victims actually deserved it, is one of the clearest examples of conservatives turning their backs on their fundamental constitutional principles to support the cruel and unusual punishment of outsiders, many not yet convicted of a crime.
We need to do better as a country, and we need to start by putting a stop to the people that supported that.
Yes, I oppose many of Trump’s policies, and many Republican policies as well. But the real problem was civics: the willingness of the right wing to throw over the norms and rules of our democracy to get short-term political gains—or imagined economic advantages that never materialized. Illegal tariffs, unjustified trade wars, ill-considered actual wars, the bullying of our allies, the embrace of our enemies—and, at first and last, actually live-on-television treason, with Trump and his toadies supporting Russia, which has openly declared itself America’s enemy, over our allies.
We need to have tough conversations about our national debt, over immigration, over our support for Ukraine and Israel, over our military, and over how to deal with our enemies abroad like Iran. And patriotic Americans who believe in our constitution and traditional values need to have a say in that process. But we’ve got to start that process by repudiating the party, and the philosophy, that advocated treating our elected president as a “unitary executive” – a king – and that stacked the Supreme Court with people who betrayed their oath of office by granting immunity to that king for crimes committed while in office.
For that king’s minions claimed that he could knock down the Statue of Liberty if he wanted to, even if it was illegal, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him.
Not on our watch.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Me, just after voting.
