Republicans across the country continue to express shock and horror that the policies and behaviors they have long supported now affect them.
After four years of vocally defending a sexual predator who puts children in cages, embraces white supremacy, and incites violence, they just can’t believe that violence and white supremacy would become commonplace.
Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling expressed outrage a few weeks ago when Donald Trump supporters began threatening him. He couldn’t believe it when right wing activists threatened to rape the wife of Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state. Never mind the fact that every Republican in the state had zero concerns about Trump’s predilection for rape. Sterling and friends also never cared about the racist violence Trump has long supported, about slowing the spread of violent far-right groups, or preventing stalking and harassment of liberals. But when the violent people they have supported engage in predictably violent acts, we are supposed to be surprised and horrified with them. Violence is only for liberals and women—not actual people!
The man who has never managed to stand up for anyone but himself still somehow earned praise from liberals and moderates. We’re so used to Republicans encouraging violence that we’re ready to canonize any Republican who asserts that maybe violence is bad. The difficulty, of course, is that this abusive environment is exactly what Republicans supported and designed.
They just didn’t want it to come for them.
Whether it’s their daughters sneaking into abortion clinics only to protest outside them the next day, or their insistence on their love for babies even as they kill them in cages, Republican rules were always intended for other people. That’s the entire far right project in a nutshell: making laws other people have to obey, while ensuring a special set of rules applies to you and your friends.
In Washington, Republicans have threatened not to confirm Neera Tandem because—I hope you’re sitting down, because it’s truly stunning—she once tweeted something mean about Republicans. Freedom of speech only applies to the far right when they’re threatening to kill non-white people or sending rape threats to women.
And in message boards across the globe, the party with a long history of supporting child molesters like Roy Moore suddenly claims to care about child abuse and sex trafficking—but only because they have decided there’s a worldwide Democrat-led child abuse cabal. It’s fine when Republicans abuse children. And real allegations don’t matter—just those baked in the minds of conspiracy-mongers.
The Republican rewriting of history has already begun. So have the pleas for kindness and decency. Don’t let them get away with it. They deserve zero sympathy for the ways in which the toxic climate they’ve created is now coming for them.