I am a recovering Republican. The boils on the gluteus maximus are gone now, as is the inflammatory bowel, but the vomiting episodes remain whenever I hear the froth. Perhaps I was ripe for departure, since I was never an evangelical. Although a church-goer, I never bought into the Christian extremist ideas, never wore sheets or cone hats to meetings, somehow believing the party was pro-business, pro-entrepreneur, mostly because my father grilled my brain every Saturday like a steak on the barbecue. ‘The Party of Lincoln!’ Pop was a pre-1970s Republican and apparently ignored Pat Buchanan and the rise of religious fanaticism. The party once seemed logical–as seen through my father’s interpretation of it–and in 2000 he encouraged me to register as a Republican.
Can I erase that moment? It hurts. Agh, the boils....
At that time the party platform didn’t seem overtly religious–or perhaps I was as good at ignoring certain things as was my father. Pop, a Veteran, was anti-war and although he had voted for G.W. Bush in 2000, he said he couldn’t vote for him the second round. Around that time I took flight on the back of an arctic tern, traveling the world. In viewing America and the Republican administration and the party from places such as Argentina and Thailand, I began to rethink.
Despite the rhetoric of family values, God and country, etc., I began to realize the party rarely did anything that wasn’t for the benefit of BIG business (not the small ones like my father’s). It is a party for the privileged. And as it moved from mainstream to religious fringe ideas, I could no longer square with it. Michele Bachmann really rattled my nuts loose.
Although I remained a registered Republican, I voted for President Obama. Twice. But I still squeezed out Republican votes for other offices along the way. Yet... I was growing more and more disillusioned with my entire identification with the Party of Guns & Jesus. I began to think the NRA was the government’s Department of Firearms, and the Koch Bros were part of the Department of Forestry. I needed therapy.
The final disillusionment: Trump. He dug the grave. A beautiful grave. Deep. Very deep.
Because of Trump’s serial and possibly pathological lying, arrogance, insult, and the general behavior of a con-man who clearly believes he’s vying for the position of dictator – ‘I alone can fix it’– and not for POTUS, and because the mainstream Republican leadership refuses to condemn his clearly dangerous ideas and his hate-filled rhetoric, it is now impossible for me to even want to associate with Republicans of any stripe. I’d rather bed a skunk.
In fact, I wish I could erase my past association with the Party of Idiocy. I don’t label it that as an insult, but as an observation, because so many members of this party have tossed logical discourse aside and embraced The World According to Trump. They threw out any semblance of regard for facts, for science (for GODSAKE!), for truth, for civil discussion, for tolerance. Because of them, we are no longer the United States of America.
We are now Trumpians vs. The Enemy. And Enemies are everywhere. Lock them up!
This hurts. I want to believe in a country where we can discuss our differences and show tolerance to those who disagree with us, a place where we don’t frisk the chicken just because he’s crossing the road. Yet Trump calls for violence against those who oppose his sandbox ideas. He says things that if actually carried out would be unconstitutional... or destroy the world as we know it. Doesn’t he have a clue about what makes America a democracy? His supporters have no clue. Hatred and ignorance and stubbornness and fabrication reign.
Worse: those who usurped the Republican Party as the Christian Right are now supporting a man who lies, cheats, bribes, demeans women, ridicules those with disabilities, praises international despots and terrorists; an egomaniac who has had numerous mistresses and divorces, has a current wife who poses nude or almost nude, has no clue about the Bible, has business ties with unsavory people and may have used charitable donations for his own benefit and for bribes. The Christian Right embraces this charlatan without a blink and opens the door to racists, white nationalists, KKK members and gingerly calls his opponent ‘crooked’?????
This strange virus that infects Trump supporters seems to destroy their cognitive functions, eats away at the region of the brain where rational thought rises. Is it an STD? Does it transmit easily in crowds? Can you get it from using the same toilet? Does it rub off from posters and banners?
Is a vaccine available?
Fearing I might have to take it in the glutes, I’ve come here, hoping for a cleansing, hoping that my therapy as a political cartoonist by day, and a data analyst by night will erase my recurring nightmare where Trump wins and idiocy becomes the new normal.
The cartoons I create and post here will be for anyone’s benefit and I encourage you to spread them far and wide. I don’t even care if you fail to credit me. My only motivation is to make up for time as a Republican.
I have seen the light!