You know, in the wake of the Republican victory in the Virginia governor's race, the one thing that should be all too obvious to Democrats by now, if it ALREADY wasn't blatantly obvious to us before, is that the GOP in its current, radicalized form, and their constituency, are OBSESSED.
Their politicians, pundits and supporters, an angry, willfully misinformed cult following with a mob mentality, fed upon lies and alternate realities and galvanized by fear, and hatred for some perceived "other" who they believe to be usurping their presumptive place by right.
And they are determined to do whatever they can to ensure their place, THEIR will, whether it's via the dissemination of conspiracy theories and fear mongering, via hate based racist rhetoric, via the suppression of the minority, poor, and student vote, or via the supplanting of TRUTH with misinformation and falsehoods.
They obsessively fight to shut down and obfuscate even historical truths they'd sooner bury, so as not to draw parallels to their own present day actions, showing up at school board meetings to dictate policy and shout down opposition while defending the use of a Nazi salute and the teaching of "opposing views" to the Holocaust.
They are anti-vaccine, anti-science, anti women's rights, anti gender self determination... anti anything that doesn't conform to their definition of society and life as they think it should be. And they are rabidly vocal in their beliefs.
Nor are they concerned with the grave threat their ideologies pose to Democracy itself, because of the fascist and openly racist elements of that which they've embraced. They don't even TRY to hide it anymore. Only we're not supposed to actually call it fascism.
So while THEY and their elected officials go about saying just about whatever they please, with even right wing airline pilots employing a coded message their passengers as a way of saying "f***** Biden," we mincingly go about only hinting at that OTHER "f word" that so aptly defines what many among them support.
And they're not only obsessed. They're dangerous. To the point where poll workers have had to move under threats to their lives, politicians have had their children named and threatened, and jurors are ignoring summons rather than serve in a trial for the murder of a Black man.
They're dangerous to the point where their political pundits on network openly call for violence, their congressmen speak of sabotage, and a third of their constituency openly advocate for civil war.
In the face of which begs the question, "Where do we get off being so sure of winning?"
Yesterday, besides President Biden's own ill-advised pronouncement, I saw several articles predicting the same. How? Why?
With so much at stake, for us and our democracy, and with the threat of a still defiantly seditious Trump possibly succeeding at a second term that, as predicted by some observers, would be ten times worst than his first, how could someone even think to so blithely proclaim, a day before yesterday's Virginia election, that we would win? Toward what end?
Why lend false assurances to Democratic voters, rather than urging... IMPELLING them to show up and vote as if it were life and death? You know. Like REPUBLICANS do. And why give Trump the opportunity to gloat over something he'd call HIS victory whether he had anything to do with it or not?
And while I'm at it, with all we have seen and heard to date from the ever increasingly radicalized RIGHT, since when can WE afford to be divided and critical of our leadership? To become party to casting doubt, as if Donald Trump and the GOP could EVER be a palatable alternative. Since when can we afford to be any LESS unified and rabidly determined as they?
Do I suggest we should resort to their kind of hateful rhetoric, their embrace of lies and disinformation, their addiction to batshit crazy conspiracy theories, to death threats against families and children, other threats of violence, and talk of civil war? Do I suggest that we should not hold our elected officials to higher and nobler standards than their supporters do of them?
No.
But we sure as hell had better start ACTING like the values and principles we hold dear, as liberals and progressives, matter equally as much to US... like our very lives depend on it. Better get busy, get active, get vocal, and get involved.
They are obsessed. So why aren't WE?