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| − | Whatever it once was, the US Republican Party has become truly awful -- that is, far more so than the average political party (by which of course I mean the Democrats). This is a fact that is now pretty much obvious to anyone who isn't a Republican; there has been debate, and the debate is over. Republicans are, as a group and as individuals, absolutely terrible at running a government of any size.<ref name=expansion1>If you take any arbitrary piece of terrible legislation that has come out in the past ten to twenty years, it was probably sponsored by a Republican and backed by Republicans. If a Republican and a Democrat disagree over something important, it's almost always the Republican who is not just wrong, but absolutely and utterly ''dead'' wrong. I'll expand on this later.</ref>
| + | {{moved/wrs|Introduction}} |
| | + | =Introduction= |
| | + | ==A Brief Word to Republicans== |
| | + | If you consider yourself at least reasonably well-educated and reasonably intelligent, and yet you still somehow inexplicably find yourself voting Republican, or running for political office as a Republican, then this book is for you. |
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| − | If you are a Republican, you may not care what I think since I'm not a Republican and therefore not to be trusted or taken seriously (which would only prove one of my points: Republicans think they're right by definition, a concept which is explored in a later chapter). If that's true, you can stop reading here, because I'm not going to be saying much of anything nice about your Party as it now stands. | + | That is, it's written with you in mind. If you ''are'' a Republican, then you may not actually care what I think, since I'm not a Republican -- indeed, I oppose most or all of what the GOP has come to stand for -- and therefore am not to be trusted or taken seriously (a bit of authoritarian logic which is discussed further in {{hilite|the "Moral Abolutism" chapter}}). If that's true, you can stop reading here, because I'm not going to be saying much of anything nice about your party as it now stands – though I do have a few harsh things to say about Democrats as well, if that's any consolation. |
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| − | If, however, you're curious as to why so many people find your party and the people who vote for it to be despicable human beings, read on. | + | If, however, you're curious as to why so many people find your party and the people who vote for it to be despicable human beings, read on. I can promise you that it won't be "politically correct" or coddle your sensitive feelings in any way. (That's good, right?) |
| − | ==Republican Politics== | + | ==Not to Put Too Fine a Point On It== |
| − | Plenty has been written about the correlation between Republicanism and authoritarianism; I'm going to take a different (though compatible) tack, and put it in less technical terms based on my own observations:
| + | In short: your party is a blight upon civilization, a virus that infiltrates all the right and proper functions of society and uses their hard-earned legitimacy to support nothing but its own cancerous growth. It is everything it habitually accuses everyone else of being: a useless parasite, a menace to society, a threat to the values we hold most dear. |
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| − | In short, Republicans don't see politics the way rational people do.
| + | That which appears principled, it uses only to excuse its most heinous excesses -- and ignores when inconvenient. That which is based in rigorous scientific research, it either distorts for its own ends, claims that the opposite is true (see {{hilite|Counterfactualism}}), simply ignores, or even suppresses. |
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| − | Rational people living in a free society see politics as the process of arriving at policies that work as well as possible for the most people. We may have disagreements about the best policies, but they're based on honest beliefs about what the known evidence suggests. Any discussion should be about sharing evidence to minimize disagreement, and working out compromises until we arrive at a position that most participants agree is at least acceptable.
| + | That which is grounded only in ancient ambiguity and can be interpreted one way today and another one tomorrow, however, is exalted and held aloft as moral guidance for all to follow -- often under penalty of law (see {{hilite|Christian Extremism}}). |
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| − | Yes, we recognize that in reality things often don't work this way -- but it ''bothers'' us when they don't. We see mudslinging as a ''failure'' in our representatives, and we'll tend to vote ''against'' someone who uses personal attacks to overcome an opponent's position.
| + | ''[a summary of the following chapters should go here]'' |
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| − | Republicans, however, see politics as being more like an Olympic gladiatorial mud-slinging contest where the key criterion for a good leader is that they ''defeat the other candidates'', by any means necessary -- not that they ''have the first clue about running a government''.
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| − | Republicans will ''cheer'' when one of their representatives manages to change a civilized discussion of relevant issues into a brawl, if that's what it takes to get people to overlook the fact that their position has no merit. The guy won, didn't he? So what's the problem?
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| − | In Republican politics there's absolutely nothing wrong with lying to the public, even if it causes harm to your constituents (present or future). All that matters is whether it will help advance your (and by extension the Party's) position and whether you can get away with it. Having won, the winner will naturally be the candidate best qualified for the job -- never mind that the contest filters for qualities almost completely unrelated to job performance.<ref name=fallacy>This is an example of another common Republican belief: the "just world" fallacy, where virtue is dependably rewarded and lack of reward is a reliable signal of non-virtue. I'll discuss this more later.</ref>
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| − | Likewise, the only bad thing about accepting a bribe is the risk of your enemies finding out and using it against you; there's not actually anything ''wrong'' with it, in the Republican worldview. It helps fund the Party -- and the Party's ideology thus becomes, over time, the ideology of those with extra money and a shortage of scruples.
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| − | To a Republican, positions of power are rewards to be given out for loyalty -- not important work to be done by those best capable of using it, and certainly not implying any kind of responsibility or duty to those underneath or to those supposedly being served.
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| − | Republicans have slashed budgets for public education at all levels, have inserted unscientific dogma into school curricula, have required stickers on textbooks stating that essential cornerstones of how we understand the world are "just a theory", not to be taken too seriously, have removed any elements of critical thinking from school curricula.
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| − | It is by this irresponsible and underhanded ethos -- victory at any cost, we're always right, suppress any information that shows we might be wrong -- that Republicanism has not only thrived but remade much of American culture in its own image: violent, hateful, narrow-minded, dishonest, ignorant, superstitious, paranoid, blindly loyal to the undeserving and trusting of the untrustworthy.
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| − | Put more simply: Republican ideology has made us gullible and stupid.
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| − | Or, rather, it has made ''you'' stupid. Yes, you out there -- railing about how terrible Donald Trump is while preparing to vote for Ted Cruz. Cruz's policies are, on the whole, no better than those proposed by Trump; the only difference is that Cruz is constrained by the needs of the Party establishment, and will backtrack when he accidentally carries Party beliefs to their logical conclusions in public. Trump ''is'' that logical conclusion; he is everything the Party wants to say but is afraid to; he is everything that right-wing voters have come to believe because Republicans have led them to believe it. (Listen to Cruz's dad sometime if you want to understand better where Cruz is really coming from.)
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| − | What this really comes down to, though, is that the Republican base represents people who ''don't care enough about the facts to bother checking them,'' and probably don't have a clue about how to do so. They'll blindly go along with whatever false beliefs their trusted leaders present to them -- and savagely defend those beliefs against any evidence they encounter, no matter how compelling.
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| − | {{box/info|
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| − | * '''Scientific method''': collect evidence, make guesses, and test those guesses against reality to see if they hold up
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| − | * '''Republican method''': believe what you're told, look for evidence to prop it up
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| − | This is not a noble thing, but they seem to think it is. The Republican idea of "how we decide which things are true and which things are false" is basically 100% inverted from the scientific method: instead of collecting evidence, making guesses, and testing those guesses against reality to see if they hold up, Republicans take the truth they are handed and look for evidence to prop it up -- and the only reason they bother looking for evidence is with the hope of convincing us heathens that there is something to their beliefs; they'd be just as happy closing their eyes and ears and just Believing.
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| − | This is an absolutely terrible way to attempt to understand the universe, much less run a government. It's the opposite of what works.
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| − | Given the numerous Republican attempts to keep others from voting, then, I think it's only fair to break with liberal policy on this one issue and say the following:
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| − | If you can't be bothered to check the facts your leaders are giving you -- to research the issues you're voting on, to understand what the other side is arguing and why -- then ask an informed Democrat or independent to explain them to you, or to offer suggestions on how to vote. If you're the sort of person who prefers to let others make the big decisions, then try trusting your informed neighbor instead of the megacorporate news or your megachurch's pastor.
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| − | ==Republicans Think They're Right==
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| − | Republicans think they're in the right, regardless of any criticism or evidence. Anyone who criticizes you is therefore the enemy, and not to be trusted. As George W. Bush famously said: you're either with us, or you're against us; either you're with those who "love freedom", or you're with "the enemy". Never mind that his idea of "loving freedom" seemed to involve hoarding it. (I'll touch only lightly on Bush's awfulness; I'd have to write another book to explore the subject even a little bit thoroughly.)
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| − | I find it simply unbelievable that anyone could think this is acceptable behavior.
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| − | It's not what America was ever about, it's not what civilization is about. It's what ''destroys'' civilizations. It is exactly what "the terrorists" want: a black and white world where everyone believes that our in-group is Right and everyone else is Wrong and evil and we'd be doing the world a favor if we just nuked 'em.<ref name=ISIS1>It says as much in the ISIS training manual: they're trying to create a black-and-white world where everyone not actively fighting against their cause is aligned with it... and this isn't the only point on which Republican hardliners and their worst-frenemies seem to agree.</ref>
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| − | In other words: Republicanism is what the terrorists want.<ref name=ISIS2>Not that I think we should care all that much about what the terrorists think; they're just part of the dark pantheon of overrated, created, or invented bogeyman threats that Republicans need to have around in order to be seen defending us from something -- but y'all seem to be scared of them, so....</ref> When Donald Trump says we should kill the families of known terrorists, he's following their playbook to the letter. When Republican leaders talk about nuking countries we dislike, they're doing the same way: using the threat to advance their own agenda, then using their agenda to advance the threat.
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| − | ...which is how the Republican Party makes its living, in a nutshell: create a threat, campaign on promises to defend against it; when elected, go out and attack something not necessarily related to the threat (which may have been imaginary to begin with), and act all shocked when they retaliate or protest -- a new Threat to America! <s>We're saved</s> I mean how terrible, and we must bomb, torture, imprison, or harass more people to show them we ''really'' mean business!
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| − | ==Footnotes==
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| − | <references />
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Introduction
A Brief Word to Republicans
If you consider yourself at least reasonably well-educated and reasonably intelligent, and yet you still somehow inexplicably find yourself voting Republican, or running for political office as a Republican, then this book is for you.
That is, it's written with you in mind. If you are a Republican, then you may not actually care what I think, since I'm not a Republican -- indeed, I oppose most or all of what the GOP has come to stand for -- and therefore am not to be trusted or taken seriously (a bit of authoritarian logic which is discussed further in the "Moral Abolutism" chapter). If that's true, you can stop reading here, because I'm not going to be saying much of anything nice about your party as it now stands – though I do have a few harsh things to say about Democrats as well, if that's any consolation.
If, however, you're curious as to why so many people find your party and the people who vote for it to be despicable human beings, read on. I can promise you that it won't be "politically correct" or coddle your sensitive feelings in any way. (That's good, right?)
Not to Put Too Fine a Point On It
In short: your party is a blight upon civilization, a virus that infiltrates all the right and proper functions of society and uses their hard-earned legitimacy to support nothing but its own cancerous growth. It is everything it habitually accuses everyone else of being: a useless parasite, a menace to society, a threat to the values we hold most dear.
That which appears principled, it uses only to excuse its most heinous excesses -- and ignores when inconvenient. That which is based in rigorous scientific research, it either distorts for its own ends, claims that the opposite is true (see Counterfactualism), simply ignores, or even suppresses.
That which is grounded only in ancient ambiguity and can be interpreted one way today and another one tomorrow, however, is exalted and held aloft as moral guidance for all to follow -- often under penalty of law (see Christian Extremism).
[a summary of the following chapters should go here]
