REPUBLICANS: COMFORTING THE COMFORTABLE, AFFLICTING THE AFFLICTED.

     I recently had my car worked on at Tom Dwyer automotive. If you live in Portland, Oregon, they are highly recommended by me. They are tucked into SE Portland near the south side of the Sellwood bridge. If you happen to be a lefty, they have books and DVDs to loan on progressive issues, and magnetic bumper stickers for free.
     I now possess a bumper sticker that reads, REPUBLICANS: COMFORTING THE COMFORTABLE AND AFFLICTING THE AFFLICTED. Nothing could be closer to the truth. They always get nice backward, falling over themselves to suck up to the too powerful, and finding ever more novel ways to oppress the already oppressed. Back in around 2012 or so, Bob Dole was pushed into the Senate chamber in his wheelchair by his wife Libby, to plead with the Senate to ratify the UN treaty on the Disabled. He was 89 years old, weakened by age and illness. Less than a generation earlier he had been the Republican Majority leader of the Senate, and an unsuccessful presidential candidate. When he left on that cold December day, he had suffered the most crushing defeat of his lifetime, rejected by the Republican majority of the chamber he had lead. This post Tea-party Republican party was not the party Bob Dole had devoted his life to. The concept of altruism is alien to them. They are disdainful of nice, in themselves as well as the opposing party, now the enemy. In 1992, before his unsuccessful presidential run, and while he was leading the Senate, the House of Representatives had christened Rush Limbaugh, the rightwing talk radio provocateur, the unofficial leader of the Republican party. Shortly after Bob Dole was rolled out of the Senate in bitter disappointment, another Republican running for President had mocked Dole's old friend John McCain, for being captured when his jet was shot down during the Vietnam war. Since that time,  each week brings a new low in Republican cruelty or disdain. They have gotten so bad, that long-time Republican luminaries such as George F. Will and William Krystol have turned their backs on the GOP. George Will remarked that the Republican party should be crushed in the 2020 elections. The new leadership are, Mitch McConnell accepted, younger, stupider, and crueler. McConnell qualifies for two of those distinctions, there are indications he may once have been younger, but they may not be reliable. The American voter, about 45% of them anyway, are wallowing in it like a hog in slop. 
     We don't yet know what will happen in the November elections, but one thing is clear: the people for whom "nice" is an epithet will not be moved by appeals to logic. Traditional Christian values are no longer observed by the party who claims to hue most closely to "Christian values". They cannot, or will not recognized the irony that is so prominently displayed by every member of the party, save Mitt Romney. The party that used to be the most virulently anti-communist is now allied with Russia in support of Donald Trump's presidency. They are even taking millions of dollars in campaign donations from Russian oligarchs. The future of this country is hanging in the balance. We were never the unalloyed great, that Trump wants to take us back to, but we were evolving. We were striving for better. That has ended. Perhaps forever.

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