Are any of our nation's current political problems or polarization not, at bottom,

[Atticus]

attributable to the fact that today's Republicans are not what used to be called "decent Americans".

When you winnow it down past all the memes, sound-bites and silly excuses, is it not their cruelty, avarice, intolerance, hunger for power and glorification of violence that are at the root of our national exasperation and disgust?

They're just not good people.

[The Magistrate]

1. In A Nutshell, Sir

Many people are rotters. Here they have a political party.

[Caliman73]

2. All of what you said is attributable to their worldview.

Conservatism is a hierarchical, top down structure. It was a shift away from supporting monarchical and aristocratic rule, to shifting the allegiance primarily to a wealth, Whiteness, and Christianity (mainly Protestant) structure for who should be in charge. The ideas never changed, just "who" they deemed as "deserving of power". Naturally (to them) the wealthy people were "blessed by god" and the poor were cursed and being punished. Why else would they be rich and poor respectively?

When you see people as "better" or "worse" than... you develop a moralistic and often cruel idea of what your "fellow humans" deserve.
Certainly Christianity dictates that we "feed the poor" and "do onto others" but if you start seeing the poor as somehow deserving of their situation, you start robbing them of their humanity and pretty soon you think that they "must" be wicked and deserving of punishment.

When you believe that being LGBTQ, or "worldly" (intelligent and not religious), or other "liberal" qualities that are an affront to god, then you start seeing people as the enemy.

Liberals tend to believe that while there are differences within people, and there may be people who are better suited to certain roles in society; we tend to think that the person who sweeps the floors in the office building has as much human dignity as the owner of the building, and that they both deserve respect and to live decent lives. We believe that without the people who sweep the floors, the owners of the building can't focus on making the money to own the building, therefore the floor sweeper deserves respect and a fair chance at both living their best life, and advancing away from sweeping the floors if that is desired. We want to structure society to give the floor sweepers those opportunities, even if that means making the building owners pay a little more in taxes.

Conservatives see that as theft, as taking away from the deserving, and giving to those who are "less than". A corruption of the natural order.

They aren't simply "not good people". They have a really messed up worldview that allows them to develop antisocial attitudes.

[Atticus]

3. Thank you for a well-reasoned post. nt

[Initech]

4. Again most of our current problems can be traced back to Fox News and AM propaganda.

Fox News is the reason why we can't have nice things.

[FSogol]

5. "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is,

the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

John Kenneth Galbraith