The truth damns them all and they know it. They're co-conspirators.

Time and time again, Republican politicians have put wealth and power over everything else.

They care only about staying on the good side of their Trump-cultist primary voters, their super-rich donors, 45 himself, and increasingly, Trump and other Republicans' various foreign patrons such as those in Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, etc etc. and so on and so forth.

They've got their dictatorial President who champions everything from tax cuts for the rich, cutting social programs for the poor, slashing any and all regulations of business, stacking the federal courts with far-right ideologues, cracking down on immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, Muslims, and the rest of the "least of these" that these so-called Christians love to hate, giving the Religious Right the "right" to discriminate against LGBTQ folks and others based on "religious freedom" - all while President Tremendous Deals distracts everyone with his Twitter tantrums while party elites like Mitch McConnell get their way on the aforementioned causes and others.

Those waiting on basically any of them to "see the light" will be waiting indefinitely.

Re: Putin, note that he is from St.Petersburg - Russia's most "European" city.

Yet he grew up in the poor, burned out ruins of the post-WWII “Leningrad.” Putin desperately wants to be taken seriously as a Great Man, and Russia as a Great Power - a Great European Power - but Russia is not that powerful in and of itself. And Putin, rather than owning up to the harsh reality, has decided that it’s better to exploit the weaknesses of the European powers (and the USA, of course - the “Main Enemy”) in order to drag them down to Russia’s level.

On a related note: Putin wanted to be a KGB officer from a very early age. Yet while stationed in Dresden in the 1980s, he was by all accounts a decidedly average paper-pusher in the KGB. I think Putin has a massive inferiority complex about this, and about being left helpless in the face of the Berlin Wall coming down and the East German regime’s collapse (“Moscow is silent”), not to mention, the collapse of the Soviet Union itself (“one of the greatest geopolitical catastrophes.”). To this day, he’s nursing his grudges, remembering the slights, the “traitors” past and present, real and imagined. Putin clearly relies on his intelligence services for information and advice of all kinds - the paradox of a man who values the lies and secrecy of Machiavellian espionage services and secret police over any truth or transparency.

Botton line, while Putin is a shrewd tactician and brutal authoritarian, he’s every bit as petty and corrupt as his friends/assets in the White House and elsewhere, even if he’s smarter than most of them (especially 45 - low fucking bar though!). He’s not at heart that powerful a leader; his foreign policy is often calculated based on what is perceived by the Kremlin to be politically popular WITHIN Russia. Translation: sticking it to the US, the UK, the EU, NATO, and the independent non-Russian countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, he’s figured out our country’s neuroses and pathologies and has learned how to play them accordingly (Not that we were hiding them - it doesn’t take a KGB officer to know the power of racism, sexism, and conspiracy theories, especially if uttered daily by a bloviating Reality TV star...).

Anyway, that’s basically my take on Vladimir Putin. Stream of consciousness, I know.

A Saudi doing pilot training in Florida ends up killing people.

Where have I seen this movie before...

Roughly 40 percent of this country would rather burn down the world than allow liberals a "win."

They’d rather burn their own houses down than live next door to black and brown people.

I don’t understand that mentality. I understand on an intellectual level just how deep racism is embedded in this country - what was colonization of North America, Native genocide, and the kidnapping and enslavement of African peoples but racism at its most brutal and systematic? - and how slaves and poor, marginalized and persecuted immigrants built (literally) this country, while rich white men benefited for centuries, but it’s one thing to understand the long history of this racism and colonialism. It’s quite another to WITNESS the associated fears and hatreds that cynical, opportunistic politicians and right-wing media figures are using in the here and now, or all of the Trump administration’s fascistic racist policies, notably on immigration, refugees, asylum-seekers, and so many other already marginalized social groups.

The emotional gut punch, trauma, and damage that this administration and its party - the Republican Party - has caused is likely permanent, regardless of whether Trump is defeated in the 2020 election or is impeached and removed from office. Nevertheless, we have to keep going, no matter how scarred or how scared we are, or our worst fears WILL come to pass.

Who here thinks both Trump AND Pence should be impeached and removed?

So, a majority of Republicans think Trump is a better President than Lincoln.

"There were many fine people on both sides of the Civil War...it was a big misunderstanding, Lincoln couldn't get a deal with the South, couldn't get it done. I would have done it, OK? I would have gotten a tremendous deal, oh God I'm so good at making deals. Obama couldn't get it done, Crooked Hillary blew it, people were saying it, no one said we could win. Biggest Electoral College victory ever. The polls were wrong, the media lied. Lying, dishonest people, the worst kinds of people I tell ya. Terrible. Disgusting and sick. Fake News. I have the greatest economy ever, we've created more jobs than anyone - more than Obama. Worst President ever, I turned it around, believe me. I turned it around. We're doing better than ever. Fake News won't tell ya that, but we're doing better than ever. Trump makes the best deals. I have the best people. Best ever in the history of this country. People are saying that. The best."

George W. Bush had 80-90 percent approval ratings after 9/11. Trump has barely half that...

...and Republicans are every bit as lined up behind Trump as they were under Bush in that period, if not more so.

What does that tell you?

They cut taxes , increase military spending, and deregulate everything while in office.

Then, when the economy inevitably goes into a recession, and if a Democrat is elected POTUS- particularly if that Democrat is, say, a black man, just as an entirely hypothetical example - they rally the racist troops to sabotage that Democratic President and distract people from their own (Republican) crimes and corruption.

Yes, George Wallace was a VERY important antecedent, as was another, even more racist George...

George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder and leader of the American Nazi Party, who was one of the pioneers of showing up at college campuses, civil rights demonstrations (especially those led by Martin Luther King, Jr.; Rockwell gained some notoriety for trying to sabotage MLK's Chicago protests), and other places where he could - to coin a phrase -"trigger the libs."