Friday, December 11, 2020

Explaining My Shame

The following is not an excuse; it's an explanation.

Back in the 80's I was young and a pretty vanilla-flavored Reagan Republican.  Even then, you could hear the dog whistle to the right-wing crazies and racists, but it was faint, and they were effectively suppressed from having any power in the party.  Meanwhile, the Democrats were still recovering from having gone full-blown batshit crazy in the 60's and early 70's.  (Nixon played dirty, but he probably didn't need to.)

In the 90's I was disillusioned with the whole system.  I wasn't super happy with Clinton, but Bush was unexciting and Dole was a nonentity.

By the end of the 90's the dog whistle was a lot louder, but I could still justify voting for conservative policies, even if the unsavory types were starting to ooze out of the cracks.  I voted for Obama in 2008 because McCain clearly didn't know what he was doing, but for Romney in 2012.  By this point, I couldn't in good conscience call myself a Republican, because the crazies were, if not actively driving the bus, at least whispering instructions to the driver.  Still, I was right of center, and when push came to shove I voted more Republican than not.

(An aside:  The Massachusetts governor version of Romney is pretty much my dream candidate.  It's a shame that the only thing he couldn't manage was a presidential campaign, and it's a shame that that version didn't run.)

Which brings us to Trump.

I was just as shocked--and horrified--as anyone that Trump beat Hillary.  I didn't see it coming, and reckoning with the fact that that many people would vote for him under any circumstances was sobering, to say the least.  Still, I thought that the lesson to learn was that there were a whole bunch of desperate people who weren't being listened to.  The backup lesson was that they were furiously angry for being actively hated by half the country, and lashing out was poor form but possibly understandable.  At this point, I was still willing to entertain the idea that I could vote for decent conservatives at some point in the future, after the insanity had abated.  I still considered myself a right-leaning independent.

That the 2020 election was as close as it was has really shaken my faith in humanity.  That so many people were willing to vote for the Worst Person in the World after seeing him oozing along the national and international stage for 4 years is simply incomprehensible.  Still, in the days following the election, even with Trump doing his full-up Pennywise the Clown act, I thought that we were still mostly dealing with people who had voted for policies they liked, and were willing to extend the deal they'd made with the Devil to get them.  At this point, I'd pretty much resolved never to vote for any officeholder who had ever supported Trump, but I still thought that eventually the insanity would break.

Well, that's out the window now.  When three quarters of Republicans think that an obviously normal election was somehow fixed because their guy didn't win, and are willing to engage in extra-legal means to reverse the outcome, we're no longer dealing with fringe insanity.  Instead, we're dealing with insanity as the very core of the GOP.

I am deeply ashamed that I voted for these guys, ever.  I am deeply ashamed that I didn't see the seed of the rotting tree that they would become.  I will never vote for another candidate with an (R) next to his or her name.

I am a Democrat.

I can't say I'm happy about this, because I still think that moderate conservative policies are better than liberal policies, and the Democrats are pretty far left of center these days.  But the policies simply don't matter when you're dealing with crazy people.  Yes, the Democrats have crazy people as well, but they're so much better managed than the Republican managed their crazies that there's no longer basis for comparison.

Of course, that's what I thought of the Republicans in the 80's.  The difference is that I'm reasonably confident that I'll be dead before the craziness gets bad enough on the Left to have to weigh it against whatever happens next on the Right.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to believe that there's an explanation for why the Right went nuts.  So far, I can't find it.  I really want to find it, because it means that there might be rational people with whom reasonable discussions can occur.  And without reason, I'm very frightened that the nation will be a howling wasteland for quite a while.

I'm sorry.

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