Anyone who has attended a Passover Seder will be familiar with the repetitive singing of Diyehnu ("It should have been enough") in thanks for God's works in leading the Israelites out of bondage. Most people are probably also familiar with the story of the plagues, in which it took all ten plagues, including the loss of the first-born sons of Egypt, before Pharaoh finally capitulated. The story may be thousands of years old, but stubbornly sticking with the party line, ignoring reality all around, and refusing to cooperate sounds eerily like the present-day GOP. Like today's GOP, Pharaoh ended up boxing himself in -- oh, sure, he could have given in and admitted his own folly for the good of his people at any time after plagues 1 through 9, but then he'd risk losing his base, and besides, the more his policy of "no" brought ruin to Egypt, the more convinced he became that he was right. Like the Israelites, with each victory, may we all shout "It should have been enough!"
Oh, sure, you might say, slavery is a bad thing, but when you've got the pyramid-builders guild and the merchant class all clamoring about how they really need their slaves, and you're worried about looking weak to the Egyptian people, what's a GOPharaoh supposed to do? Rattle his saber, that's what! So a group of peasants is unhappy? So what? They're slaves because that's what the market dictates. Labor has demands? Bah -- they're lucky to be working and to be fed every day. Anything more is just labor being greedy as always. Those damn liberal Israelites and their demand for "freedom" -- it's those Israelite liberals who are bringing Egypt down! And GOPharaoh was supposed to just give in and let them all go? Uh-uh.
Free the Isrealites? NO.
Rivers of blood? Bah -- who needs clean water? NO.
Frogs, lice, flies, and locusts? We can't give in to these alarmists and "scientists" prattling on about ecosystems. NO.
Hail? Everyone knows this pseudo-science "climate change" is a myth. NO.
Darkness? A boon for the big-donor candle and oil industries, and everyone knows those athiest "scientists" are just trying to scare everyone with their talk of "planetary movements" and "eclipses." NO.
Boils? Hey, I've got MY healthcare -- who cares about healthcare for the peasants? Their boils are nothing but a sign of their own weakness. No handouts! NO.
By now, politically, GOPharaoh had put himself in a no-win situation. He could capitulate and appear weak to his base, or he could hold the party line and risk more calamitous plagues. Like all GOPharaohs, he chose his own political power over the good of his country. Besides, those dirty liberal Israelites and all their talk of "rights" and of not being slaves to the elite made them convenient scapegoats. No, see, it's not ME, your GOPharaoh, or my policies based on denial of reality causing all these problems for Egypt -- it's those dirty liberal Israelites!
All this ruin, all this destruction -- and still GOPharoah persisted. Any rational person would have seen what was happening all around him and changed course. But not GOPharaoh. It was going to take another plague for the Israelites to be rid of GOPharaoh.
So, after bringing Egypt to the brink of economic and environmental ruin, what finally brought GOPharaoh to his knees? Continuing, spiraling healthcare woes in the form of the death of the first-born, that's what -- as infant mortality rates skyrocketed despite having the finest medical technology in the world. GOPharaoh had finally been defeated. YES, WE CAN, said the Israelites -- and they did.
Now, having witnessed the virtual destruction of Egypt as a result of his own stubbornness and political greed, and after finally letting the Israelites go, what did the GOPharoah do? Did he admit defeat and move to rebuild? Of course not -- instead of doing all he could do to undo the damage he had caused, GOPharaoh changed his mind, ramped up the anti-Israelite rhetoric again, whipped up his followers, and tried to chase the Israelites down, ultimately causing the complete destruction of his army.
Flip-flopper.