Some Gentle Advice For The Brave Men And Women Of The GOP

Dear Republicans,

Hey, you won! Heckuva job. I’m sure it must, in between the fear sweats because you actually got goddamned Trump elected, be exhilarating and sort of fun.

It must be freeing too, because you can stop pretending to be the party that even vaguely cares about what the founding fathers intended. Just drop the whole “Constitutional originalists” façade entirely and get on with whatever it is you really want to do, which I guess is frightening white people, shoveling money up to the super-rich, and trying to figure out how to get everyone else hooked up to those Victorian stair-punishment machines for being poor, only WAIT NO FREE ENERGY, so do that in a way that also means you get to burn coal and tar sands oil, because you’re not truly masters of the planet if you’re not making sure future generations can’t live on it without Dune outfits, right?

But definitely drop that Party That Loves the Constitution act. It’s official now: You’ve shat upon all three branches of government, so quit pretending you care anything about how the United States is supposed to work or why it was founded.

You’ve been undermining both houses of Congress for years now, what with the appalling gerrymandering – How are those nutball rabid-base safe-seat candidates working out for you? Are they super fun to work with, right along with their pal Horror Jesus? Keep foisting them on yourselves, you pathetic dingbats, it’s working out great! – and the bold eight-year agenda of showing Obama who’s boss by not doing one single fucking thing to help the nation and shutting down the government every time one of you gets butthurt about someone maybe possibly getting helped instead of flogged and thrown into debtor’s prison for being slow on the cancer treatment payments. Hey, why don’t you have another fake vote on Obamacare! (Oh, we guess those will be real votes now!) Or another fake fucking Benghazi hearing? Really dig in and see if you can get that approval rating below your shoe size!

And of course you’ve been shitting on the Supreme Court for more than eight months now. This one is impressive! Everyone figured you would hold dumb fake approval hearings, but then old Nobummer did one of those mean smart things that he does and nominated a sterling candidate that no one could even find made-up reasons to hate. So instead of putting your backs into it and finding an old Hotmail account that Merrick Garland had mismanaged or something, you just completely stopped even fake-doing your jobs!

So that was two branches down, plus a big fuck-you to the concept of representative democracy as a whole, what with the open attempts to suppress nonwhite voters (And students! And the poor in general!) in North Carolina and Wisconsin and Ohio and Florida and Jesus Christ, 14 states in all with new voting restriction laws this year. Did that feel good, GOP, winning one with a little help from Jim Crow? One to tell the grandkids about with pride!

Oh, and you also punted that whole “party of fiscal responsibility” thing, huh? We can pretty much call that one a done deal ever since Sam Brownback’s perfect experiment in trickle-down economics turned Kansas into a smoking ruin crisscrossed by Mad Max-style unpaved highways and roving gangs of elementary school teachers extracting the kidneys of unwary travelers so they can swap them for textbooks. We can all agree now that the trickle-down bullshit does not now and never has worked, except that you keep acting like it does and sliding in tax cuts for giant corporations and the ultra-rich, because hey, screw it, why not send more cash up the ladder before the whole thing burns, right?

And you could have kept your giant nightmare parfait of fucking over everyone but you and the Kardashians and your sixteen wealthiest platinum friendship-bracelet pals for at least a few more years if you’d just gone ahead and rolled ahead with boring old Jeb or Mitt or, OK, Marco Rubio, or – Jesus, really? – John Kasich or almost anyone even vaguely serious. But no, you didn’t. You had to take your last, biggest dump straight onto the Presidency and let your top slot get yoinked away by a sentient hunting vest with an impulse control disorder, top advisers sent over in a giant cake from Vladimir Putin, and an inability to read all the way through anything that isn’t a tweet from Stormfront.

Good job, GOP! Well done! Feeling good about this one, are we? As Trump appoints an actual white supremacist and anti-Semite to his cabinet and Russia mentions that, tee-hee, they gamed our election just the eensiest bit and fascists in Europe fucking celebrate this amazing victory for the cause and the actual goddamned Klan plans a hootenanny because they have finally openly taken control of the Republican Party instead of having to noodge you like pinball machines, are you feeling happy and accomplished?

Sure, you could have clamped down on your party’s rampant stupid fake Presidential runs years ago, but that wouldn’t have been playing along like one of the gang, would it? Because Newt’s gotta sell a few books and keep those speaking fees jacked up and Huckabee’s gotta get back on the teevee somehow and, hey, you might have wanted to hop on that fake-candidacy gravy train yourself someday, right?

So you gambled and you lost hard, and all those people you liked to posture to about guns and TurboJesus and then fuck over anyway figured out the game and took it right over, and only TurboJesus knows who they’ll elect instead of you next time around when they figure out that the ballot has some plums on it past that first slot.

So, as I mentioned: Here you are. You’ve trashed every single aspect of our government and every principle you ever claimed to have except for “fuck the poor,” the jig is up on your economic plan, and you’ve let an actual fascist take over the White House in your name, so you have some time on your hands. I have an idea on how you can fill it:

 HOW ABOUT FINDING YOUR FUCKING SPINES? 

Because in the process of putting every aspect of our imperfect-but-functioning representative democracy through an unregulated sausage factory, you have, as of this election, turned the GOP into the official party of bigotry and fascism™. Neato! Honest Abe must be proud, huh? And for all the disingenuous manbaby pointing at Hillary you’re going to do over this, you know damn well that it’s your own unparalleled chickenshittery that made it happen.

You could have stopped Trump multiple times during the primary process, but you were too worried about losing the big sports game that elections are to you now to risk standing up and spiking him. Because you were all too scared to offend the Trump voters – who fucking loathe you, establishment fellas – and maybe lose this year’s election to Hillary and then she’d do that sneaky thing where she does a good job and people love her (as long as she’s not actually asking to do that job!) and you would have lost the Presidency for eight whole years and all you would have had at your disposal to fight her was, probably, both houses of Congress and an entire national fake news network that broadcasts whatever you tell them plus websites that are even more dishonest than that. Woulda been a tough slog!

Instead, you’re well on your way to cementing the image of your party as anti-woman, anti-black, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-Latinx, anti-LGBT, white nationalist dickheads. And people will remember that for oh, the next 50 years or so, which you’ll notice is plenty of time for the current Olds to die off and the new generation of highly tolerant, socially progressive Millennials to swing into politics and bury you in your own Confederate flag pins.

Congratulations, you cowardly fucksmacks: You broke your own party forever. Do you really think you have a kitten’s shot in hell at the midterms after Trump starts walking back promises and grift-fucking the economy? And you topped it off by giving the goddamned Neo-Nazis and their rotting apple babydoll the keys to the country.

You’re the party of personal responsibility? HOW ABOUT YOU THROW OUT THE FUCKING FASCIST YOU ESCORTED TO THE BALL.

Because right now, kids, you are not the heroes of this story. You are not the brave U.S. troops storming the beaches at Normandy. You are not Winston Churchill. You are goddamned Neville Chamberlain. Only worse, because Chamberlain didn’t welcome a fascist in as the leader of his own political party.

Go back and watch footage of yourselves during the eons-long, horrific election process we just had. Watch yourselves cringe and calculate and descend into hair-splitting and pants-wetting to save yourselves. Watch yourselves endorse Trump and unendorse him and then re-endorse him or condemn him but continue to endorse him or make a big, bold manly convention move that involves the terribly brave act of not saying that you endorse him but also leaving yourself plausible deniability because you never said you don’t. Ooh, manly! And then watch yourselves cave like a sinkhole in fracking territory, watch yourselves jump on board one by one because even though you knew Trump was a fraud and a con man, even though you knew he didn’t even really want to win, even though you knew he was openly courting racists and your oppo research almost certainly meant that you already knew Trump had bragged about committing sexual assault on the regular and was probably doing mutual hojos under the blankets with Putin at their slumber parties, you decided to go along, because hey, why stick your necks out?

Do you really want to go down in history as the craven dingleberries who scrambled to capitulate? Do you really want to sit on the sidelines and play footsie with white nationalists while Trump sells the Grand Canyon to foreign mining interests to pay off his personal debts while you watch the Democrats become the heroes – the ones who get the glowing sidebars in the history books – who stand up against not just racism and sexism but bigotry of every shade? Do you want to let the Democratic Party claim the moral high ground for the next century?

If not, maybe take a fucking break from promising to yank people’s health care and burn The Gays at the stake and actually develop and stand by a couple of principles.

Conservatives used to have principles sometimes, you know. It was kind of a thing? Like sure, they’d use the Southern strategy and play on white anxieties (Hey, look! It’s that slippery slope that Trump slid down to get here!), but they wouldn’t go full-on racist after the ‘60s. Sure, Ol’ Poppy Bush would run a Willie Horton ad, but he knew it was time to draw the line at David Duke and his Klan buddies, and he said so out loud in public.

And that is not a terrific, earth-shattering line, but it is a line. And believe it or not, you cringing wussbangles, it’s important to have them.

You know who among you has a full set of nards and principles? Lindsey goddamned Graham. Go ahead and roll your eyes at him during your P90X bro-fests in the Congressional gym: He’s kicking your ass up and down the Mall right now. Because Graham gives enough of a shit about protecting his country to say that it is his and he will have no truck with a hostile foreign government trying to influence our elections. And Graham thinks that – this is the tricky part, so maybe read it twice – even if the hostile foreign government interference happens to temporarily benefit his side.

OH, DID MITCH MCCONNELL TAKE A BOLD STAND BY STAYING SILENT WHEN HE GOT ASKED IF HE LIKED STEVE BANNON OR NOT? CALL TM FUCKING Z. That is some hottt political diss action! I’m sure it’ll go right ahead of Tiananmen Square Tank Guy in the Annals of Political Bravery.

Do you want to be figures of anything other than mockery and contempt again? Do you want to be remembered as anything other than cringing slaves to your own cowardice and short-term self-interest?

Then stop massaging Putin’s prostate and talking about how dreamy and strong he is for 30 seconds and try being strong yourselves.

Talk to Congressman John Lewis, an actual hero, and get some pointers on how it’s done. You’ll notice that it’s scary sometimes! It’s risky personally, politically, and sometimes physically. You might have to say things that not everyone likes, or that can’t be spun to a more convenient position when you’re tempted to sidle back over and pick up some of those white-rage voters again in two years.

On the other hand, you won’t go down in history as the political party and generation that handed the U.S. over to fascist rule not even 75 years after your betters grimly rolled up their sleeves and went overseas to kick some Nazi ass.

You know what’s right and what’s wrong here. If you don’t, have John Lewis and Lindsey Graham give a few seminars. A few starter ideas:

• Shout down that scumspackle Steve Bannon and don’t stop until Trump drops him.

• Get Putin the fuck out of our political process.

• Audit every last suspicious element of the election. Yes, even if it helped you.

• Tell the Klan and the “Alt-Right” and any other white nationalist swamp monsters that they are not welcome at the table – not even in the nodding and winking sideways fashion they have been up to now.

• Stop letting Trump sell hotel rooms and White House knickknacks to foreign leaders. Make him publish his fucking taxes and take the consequences on the chin. Have there be consequences. Stop having fake Hillary Clinton investigations, for chrissakes, and investigate the massive network of conflicts of interest in the Trump companies. You know he’s a weasel. If you let him run free, people will lose all faith in the government. You know damned well that means that the next guy in is either a Jimmy Carter (Eek!) or a freaking Ted Cruz. Do you want freaking Ted Cruz in the White House? Trick question! Nobody does! See? There is such a thing as bipartisan good.

• Sadly, this one may need repeating: Stop the fascism. Don’t send unconstitutional bills up the chain. Stand firm against the anti-Muslim crap. (Yes, even if the anti-Muslim crap can help you frighten people into voting for you.) Maybe even think about sticking the nards back onto the Voting Rights Act for extra credit. Because fascism is like a Motel 6 hot tub: It may feel easy to just sink into it, but you may never escape the consequences.

• You did this. Your cowardice and go-along-to-get-along lockstep allowed it. You let a man who is laundering Putin’s jockstrap into the Presidency. You told white nationalists they’re in charge now and unleashed a sickening wave of violence across the country. You caused fascist celebrations across Europe and Klan rallies in the United States. You gave a lifelong grifter and congenital deadbeat a direct line to corrupting our government from within.

  You can go down in history as the guys who stepped aside and waved him in, or you can stand up for once in your vermicelli lives and fix this.

  Find. Your fucking. Spines.