Uncivil War

I'm old enough to remember when there were sensible Republicans - defined as ones who didn't wish the south had won the war.  I even voted for some of them.  That's hard for me to imagine now.  That was before the two parties flipped their roles, back when GOP politicians were often more progressive and the party more inclusive than Democrats. That was so long ago it wasn't even back in the day, it was more like back in the day before the day. It was before the terms conservative and Republican were synonymous.

Now I hate Republicans for what they believe, for what they represent, for what they are.  That's not literally true - I know some individual Republicans I don't hate.  I don't like them, but I don't actively hate them. But as a group, I do hate them for what they are doing to this country.  They seem determined to destroy it along with any hint of fairness, tolerance, compassion, charity, inclusion, and create a new country in their own image.  A new country dedicated to fear, intolerance, bigotry, selfishness, and ignorance.

Republicans and their political leaders don't even seem to consider themselves Americans.  Don't believe me?  Ask them if Obama is their president.  They are citizens of conservative world, with its own rules of governance, its own principles, and even its own reality that have little in common with the United States and its place in the world as the rest of us know it.  The way they describe it, the U.S is a weak, poor, dangerous country, governed by an ineligible president not respected by the rest of the world. In conservative world, George W. Bush kept us safe and Barack Obama hasn't. In the reality the rest of us live in, the opposite of all those statements is true

I live in the middle of conservative world, at least geographically, so I'm familiar with this alternate reality. I see it on television, I hear it on the radio and in conversations.  I get angry at the racism and determined ignorance of the Republicans that surround me, but I get even angrier at their leaders who mostly know how they are damaging our country, but can't force themselves to risk their elected offices by challenging their constituents.

I wonder if any of the leaders of the south in the years leading up to the civil war tried to talk their fellow citizens out of  tearing the country apart.  If so, I haven't read about any of them.  But I'm no historian, so there could have been some.  Are there any today? I'm more confident in my answer to this one.  There aren't any. Not one who will stand up and take the side of America over the interests of conservative world.  And as usual they create their own reality in which they are the patriots.  Not in this universe.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.