In thinking about my many and varied experiences with the dark side, it seems that it would be a worthy effort to document what I know and try to help clarify the nature of the opposition. The goal of understanding Republicans is not to agree with them, but to better understand how to deal with them. As Rachael Maddow has shown in her program, shedding light on the dark side is the best way to defeat it. Republicans maintain the following key features: bigotry, greed, and ignorance. This is perhaps an over-generalization but it is actually a good starting point for discussion.
The reason it is said that the news has a liberal bias is because the news is not openly racist. Saying someone is being politically correct means that they are not being tolerant of racism. Republicans share a sense of tolerance for racist views, and feel they are persecuted whenever people are actually tolerant of minorities or critical of their intolerance. Black Republicans are valued because of their being viewed as traitors. The same goes for gays, women and Jews. However being valuable and being accepted are two different things. Republicans are united by their hatred. When we see a key Republican caught being racist and exposed for their prejudice, most Republicans see that and think, ‘…and they think that is racist? They don’t even know the half of it.’
The key reason for becoming a Republican is to advance your career. Being in the ‘in crowd’ is what it is all about and cheating and lying to get there are accepted and encouraged. Being caught cheating and lying is cause for persecution and rejection, but that is part of the natural order of their social Darwinist views. Being caught means that you are not good at cheating and need to improve your technique before being accepted again. For a Republican that is not racist it is understood that you have to at least tolerate it. For a Republican that values honesty, the nature of cheating in the party just reflects the weakness of the human condition. Who you know is more important than the value of your ideas. Might makes right and there is nothing to do but accept it and make the most of it in the Republican mindset.
Belief trumps all reason. If something goes against your beliefs it is the work of Satan and no amount of logic will make it less evil. Global warming is silly because the earth is less than 6000 years old and is not going to be around much longer. Yes, the rapture is upon us, and we don’t have long to make the most of our time here. We need to be prepared to circle our wagons and take out the riff raff that are bound to come for our stuff. Sound stereotypical? Try it on a Republican, but be prepared to be surprised when their eyes light up with a sense of shared understanding.
Republican politics is ruled by paranoia and ruthlessness. Republicans always want to know what the Democrats are doing because they think of us as the smart people that they need to cheat off of to get ahead. The value of having power is getting away with whatever you want to do. To lose an election is to lose a key lever of power that allows the ‘in crowd’ to maintain a fantasy world of the status quo where class warfare can be permanently won by the ruling class.
Communism is anything that upsets the natural order of the ruling class making the rules and having the good life. Communism is still central to Republican thought because of the paranoia and fear of the loss of power.
Understanding the Republican mindset makes the choice of who to vote for obvious and simple, and the stakes of our elections vital and compelling. Any candidate is better than a Republican candidate as the yellow dog Democrats will tell you. A yellow dog Democrat will vote for a sick yellow dog before voting Republican. The Republicans may go through a transformation and become the party of Lincoln, but that has not happened and I would not expect it to happen soon.
We need candidates that represent our best hopes and aspirations, and not our fears and weaknesses. We have primary elections to make that choice and we need to keep the Republicans from messing with our primaries as much as possible. An open primary is an invitation for the Republicans to choose their opposition. It is a regular practice of Republicans to run candidates against Democratic nominees to weaken them for the general election. Fortunately, they are usually not good at pretending. In an open primary the Republicans will attempt to maximize their chances of success. Just look at who is promoting the open primary in California to understand why. When you understand the source of a political message you can more easily figure out their motive. The artificial outrage the Republicans have generated about Acorn is cover for the actual cheating that Republicans have been up to. They want us to be wary of the prosecution of political cheating, and have made a big stink about Acorn to cover their own odor.
The Republicans use their power to create more power as effectively as they can. Think tanks, focus groups and paid strategists are constantly at work to plan moves to maximize their success. Effective networking and dogmatic voting make them more formidable than their numbers would suggest. The success of our current president and congress is a testament to the shallow and worthless basis for Republican thinking. That does not mean that they will not regroup and keep up the pressure to regain their power.
Your mission if you choose to accept it is to be free thinking and successful in direct contradiction to their plans. If you are captured or killed the secretary will disavow all knowledge of your existence.