Friends, Democrats and Americans: I have come to ameliorate your suffering, not to praise it.
Over forty years ago, I was studying Anthropology at SUNY-Binghamton. I wish all my notes did not get misplaced in all the 60's haze, but here is what I do remember. (If any current student can fill in the name, etc., of this tribe, I would sure apreciate it.)
In the upper Amazon, lived a tribe that planted untidy plots of root vegetables (and maybe corn) along the riverbank. All of the other locals were hunter/gatherers. To jump to the relevant matters, the anthropologist who lived among these people (I seem to remember their tribal name bagan with an R) could not figure out how or why.
The local inhabitants of the jungle were short, dark, kinky-haired and smart. This tribe was taller, pudgier, straight-haired and dull. It did not seem to make any sense that the slower, dumber folk would have developed agriculture, but the smarter, more energetic folk did not even want to copy what they saw.
Of course, planting in the jungle does not yield very good results. There is more protein in hunting monkeys.
The mystery continued as the anthropologist watched. They were even lousy farmers. They spent all day weeding but their plots were always weedy.
Then one day she watched as a woman got up from her gardeen, walked down by the river, dug a hole, lined it with leaves and standing alone above it, proceeded to give birth. Two other women watching her from their gardens, slowly came over and helped hold her up while she delivered. After the baby was out, the mother walked down to the river and dunked her baby entirely under water for over a minute! The water, snow-melt, was 40 degrees F. The baby, when it was pulled out, was blue. It began sputterring and began to breathe.
WHAT THE...? Well, it turns out that this "tribe" descended from a group of Spanish sailor/soldiers that went native after deserting from Pizzaro's army. To the extent that they knew anything about farming, they set up their own village. They taught the locals how to "baptize" their children. It came down the centuries to mean: Hold the baby under water for a minute or two and God decides who is sturdy enough to survive.
So, from generation to generation they continued to oxygen starve all babies so that no one had ever grown up sharp enough to turn to his people and say, "Stop this. It is keeping us stupid." But they kept planting, having babies and surviving.
So,if these people could continue their self-destructive behavior for centuries, then: Yes, Virginia, there can be Republicans.