Since the first annual update was published in August ’23, the GOP has moved even further to the right and embraced Trump’s lies, seditious power plays, and demeaning or racist rhetoric even more. It’s not a stretch — at all — to say that Trump now ‘owns’ the GOP, since he has effectively rid the party of his detractors and is once again (unbelievably) riding high as their chosen presidential candidate.
This despite his many active indictments (almost 100 of them remain unresolved) and a consequential 34-count conviction in his ‘hush money’/election-tampering case.
It’s a full-scale American disaster-in-progress.
And this annual ‘crisis update’ details exactly why and how this is all happening.
The current horrifying state of the GOP can be summed up by the following “Nine C’s” — the nine nasty, negative character traits that are now required to be a ‘real Republican’:
1. Be Callous and Cruel: The R’s proclaim their reverence for human life, and loudly oppose abortion — but don’t seem to care one bit about the mother’slife, needs, or freedom. Plus, their supposed caring endsthe moment a baby is born since they refuse to back paid maternal leave, affordable child care, and ongoing support for infants and families.
They are also cruel and callous in their adamant refusal to guarantee a decent living wage or even a semi-livable minimum wage for American workers and breadwinners.
Clearly, many in the GOP are modeling themselves after Trump, who despises the poor and gleefully insults, slanders, and demeans all critics and opponents.
Their M.O. is unremittingly ugly: ferociously attack their ‘enemies’ — liberals, Blacks, women, librarians, drag performers, gays, transgender kids, etc. — keep attacking, divide us, and then … conquer. And their nationwide push to prohibit all abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, is both horribly cruel and deeply misogynistic.
2. Be Corrupt: Where to start? Massive GOP corruption is everywhere now, but here’s the Big Kahuna: their unswerving support for Trump’s endless lies and manipulations and their continued, unconscionable belief in the Big Lie that Trump ‘really won’ the 2020 election.
Today’s GOP is happy to embrace deception and sow intense social distrust/discord if it helps them stay in power. And they’re happily punishing honest Republicans who refuse to support the Big Lie (as well as many smaller lies).
Then they have the gall to turn around, pretend to be honest, upstanding citizens, and label their ongoing push to limit or restrict voting a ‘patriotic’ effort to ‘ensure election integrity.’ What total, hypocritical nonsense — pure deceit and corruption in action.
The GOP has even made a nationwide push to take over local election boards and other county or state administrative positions, so they can more easily overturn election results they dislike in the future. This is truly corrupt, amoral politicking at its worst.
3. Be Combative: Republicans overall are becoming more extremist, threatening, abusive, and sometimes violent (on Jan. 6, on airline flights, and even at city council, school board, and other public meetings!). Plus, all the hot GOP ‘rising stars’ love to create loud, aggressivepublic spectacles in which they viciously attack the Dems, ‘libtards,’ or the ‘radical socialist agenda.’ As they see it, whoever is the loudest, ugliest, and nastiest WINS!
Rationality, restraint, and even common politeness are out; instead, verbal abuse, demagoguery, and outrageous, hateful public hijinks are not only tolerated but tacitly encouraged. Mean-spirited, inflammatory politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Kari Lake (and Trump, of course) are the GOP’s most ‘inspirational’ role models now — though the GOP is quick to deny this.
But their denials ring hollow; if we keep our eyes and ears open, we can easily see/hear what’s really happening within today’s GOP — that is, a lot of hypocrisy, lying, shouting, and anti-democratic hysteria. And also, not coincidentally, there’s a ton of naked aggression: remember Trump’s infamous “Fight! Fight! Fight!” and upraised fist following his attempted assassination.
4. Be Compliant: The GOP’s increasingly dangerousgoal is for its politicians to be slavishly compliant with Trumpism, and with Trump’s constant stream of nonsense, distortions, and lies.
It’s truly the exact opposite of the super-aggressive stance taken toward the ‘libs’ and Dems — for within the GOP, it’s now seen as positive (and compulsory) to be a spineless, soulless coward in dealing with Trump and his rageful MAGA fanatics.
No amount of sniveling surrender is too much; today, open rejection of one’s former morals, principles, and sworn Constitutional duty is both expected and demanded.
In fact, to be a ‘success’ in today’s GOP means you have to forget adherence to the Constitution and to our actual laws (though there’s still plenty of public braying about ‘election integrity’ and ‘protecting the Constitution’).
What’s now required, instead, is an ongoing commitment to undermine democracy and sneakily control or ‘rig’ future elections — all while yelling about the ‘libtards’ and Democrats stealing our elections! And if you want to keep or grow your political career, you’d better get fully compliant… fast!
5. Be Conniving: Today’s GOP is busily attacking and undermining our most basic societal and democratic processes. It’s mounting a concerted, mainly covert blitzkriegagainst U.S. civil society: the most creative far-right legal mindsare figuring out every possible way to challenge, disrupt, or overturn every little public health, education, and election procedure that helps hold our society together and promotes good citizenship.
To win and/or hold onto power at any cost, the R’s are rapidly and deliberately destroying our overall faith in our democracy and our citizens’ remaining trust in each other. They are maliciously politicizing everything, down to the tiniest micro/local level, and working hard to control and manipulate school boards and election oversight in counties and states all across the country.
In fact, they have a comprehensive national ‘game plan’ — partially expressed in the now-infamous Project 2025 — to undermine and manipulate our democracy at the federal level and the grassroots level, state by state and county by county. To call this behavior ‘conniving’ is far too kind: it has now turned actively seditious.
6. Be Conspiratorial: This requirement is a ‘twofer’ — meaning it includes both fervent belief in fascism-friendly conspiracy theories, andwillingly engaging in real, ongoing conspiratorial planning and plotting. Today’s R’s increasingly parrot Trump’s conspiracy-mongering, anti-democratic beliefs and actions, and paranoid “poor persecuted me” attitude.
In addition to believing, lemming-like, in the non-existent voter fraud and ‘stolen election’ that Trump constantly lies about, they are always screaming about being ‘canceled’ by ‘liberal’ news outlets and social media — even as they continue to publicly and very successfully lie, pout, deny the truth (i.e. climate change), demonize minorities, and spout moronic conspiracy theories, both in the media and online. That does NOT look or sound like they’re being ‘canceled,’ does it?!
Simultaneously — taking public hypocrisy to a disgusting new low — they are working overtime to cancel liberal ideas and influence, many of our rights and freedoms, humane democracy-promoting laws, and election results they dislike.
Scarily, as a national party they are actively conspiring to weaponize their constant (bogus) claims of election fraud to … yes, help them commit real election fraud and rig/overturn future elections.
Overall, the GOP has become a party of wily, seditious conspirators, and it’s also embracing weird conspiracy theories about everything from the 2020 election to voting to black history to IVF (in-vitro fertilization) to books and libraries, and seems willing to believe almost anything… except the actual, factual truth!
7. Be Complicit: In today’s GOP, going along with and adopting allof the nasty character defects and corrupt practices mentioned above is a prerequisite for membership — and tonot be labeled a RINO (Republican In Name Only).
The ‘litmus tests’ for adequate complicity (aka kissing the ring of King-to-be Trump) include all of the following:
- embracing the Big Lie
- whitewashing the intent and the real-world events of the January 6 riot/insurrection
- minimizing all of Trump’s crazed attempts to overturn the 2020 election
- actively working to restrict Democratic voting, while mouthing platitudes about ‘ensuring election integrity’
- rejecting the findings of the bipartisan Jan. 6 investigation
- accusing the Biden administration of ‘weaponizing’ the DOJ to ‘persecute’ Trump and interfere with the election
- excusing or glossing over Trump’s continual distortions and lies.
Ultimately, these horrific ‘litmus tests’ demand working hard together — in truth, conspiring — to attain several anti-democratic and un-American goals: 1) undermine our representative, pluralistic semi-democracy; 2) de-construct American society as we know it; and 3) replace it with a theocratic/authoritarian, White-ruled society.
Please realize that this is not an exaggeration. Today’s GOP is actively and unrepentantly seditious, and its members in good standing are required to be directly complicit in the slow-motion overthrow of our democracy.
- Become a creepy caricatureof your former self. Over the past nine years, the GOP has become unrecognizable — and increasingly dangerous to democracy and our society.
Every year, the GOP has gotten even ‘weirder’ and more brazen with its devious anti-democratic maneuvering — until today, the GOP has been reduced to a hollowed-out, pathetic, and deeply dysfunctional shell of its former self … the once-proud, once-respected ‘law and order’ party.
Now it’s become, quite literally, the ‘outlaw and disorder’ party. Yes, the GOP has morphed into a weird ‘Outlaw and Disorder Party’ — dominated by a ‘wild bunch’ of crazed, seditious, un-American wackos!
Today’s GOP is merely a sad, sickening, and dangerous caricature of itself.
Sadly, horrifyingly, these 9 C’s — being Callous and Cruel, Corrupt, Combative, Compliant, Conniving, Conspiratorial, Complicit, and a sickening Caricature— sum up the deviant and extremely dangerous essence of today’s GOP.
And that awful summation points directly and irrevocably to the final damning ‘C’:
As a political party, the GOP has become utterly CALAMITOUS for our nation and our future.
*Vote blue as if your life depends on it — because it probably does! *
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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