That phrase has been echoing in my mind since this train wreck really got going shortly after the inauguration.
I have been incredibly naive in my life.
In 1974 Nixon resigned and the Republicans fell to such a low that they later lost the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. There was a liberal flowering. The country made a lot of progress in the 60s and the 70s.
We, the liberals and progressives, had won. I genuinely thought that the vast majority of the US citizenry thought as I did. Racism is wrong. Oppression of the weak and powerless is wrong. Our government should do what it can to redistribute income so that the homeless have homes, the sick and crippled can get healthcare that is affordable and of high quality, no one should be going hungry, those that can't afford to heat their homes should be helped to pay and utility companies should be legally constrained from cutting off utilities...
But in my heart, I knew that everything is tribal and for most people if you are the "other" then you are deserving of no mercy or support. We are unthinking primates much of the time.
The Republicans are all about the narrowest definition of the tribe. If you aren't white then you're not in the tribe. It is still as simple as that.
We are fracturing into our respective tribes with it becoming more and more common for members of one tribe to call for the violent death of those not in their tribe. Just last week Ted Nugent said that Democrats should be hunted down like coyotes.
Our so-called President nominated this woman and she very well could make it.
How do we stop this without this lurching into French Revolution violence? When they refuse to abandon their horrible ideas I feel violent. When Nugent spews his verbal diarrhea I want to kill him. This is not how a democracy survives and thrives. This is way worse than the 60s.
This is not sustainable.
How can we get back to where these ideas only lived in the shadows and were shameful things that no one would openly admit to? What kind of world do we now live in where a judicial nominee implicitly says that she doesn't agree with Brown vs The Board of Education, but because it is settled law she'll honor stare decisis?
God, this is depressing. It just won't stop.
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