Because Donald Trump and JD Vance have appropriated the town as a set for their racist falsehoods, Springfield lives under a pall of fear. The local Democratic Central Committee asked supporters to wave signs and flags outside their building during meetings because many members were afraid to attend. Children fear attending school because of bomb threats. A friend opted out of our regular game night because she does not want to be out after dark. Worried parents have insisted on taking their children home from a local university. And, of course, many of our Haitian neighbors are terrified to leave their homes.
You know who is not afraid to go out and about in Springfield? Proud Boys. Neo-Nazis. People handing out Ku Klux Klan fliers. Some of these people paraded swastika flags and rifles during our jazz festival. Their presence, and a torrent of threats, forced local officials to cancel the annual CultureFest celebration of diverse food, arts and music. These far-right groups clearly feel as though they have not just permission, but encouragement, from the Republican candidates. It is unsettling to live in this menacing atmosphere.
This is what happens when the judgement of Party members is excluded from the election process. Vote the Party line! Who cares who the candidates are, this is for the Party! We’ll stop abortion, taxation, regulation! No more need to use your judgment for voting. Just tick the box as instructed.
The Party hierarchy becomes rife with incompetent, violent members, whose first motivation, as we already see in Michigan and elsewhere, is to defend their position in the Party and its associated perks, and often to find unsavory, at best, ways to move up the ladder of power. We’ve seen outright shrieks of illegal meeting! and I’m still Party Chair!, even after physical ejection following a vote that those in power have lost within the Party. How much longer before the Party members begin to hire in goons to regulate Party meetings?
This is all because merit, of which one facet is being civilized, kind, and adhering to the tenets of a liberal democracy, has been eliminated from the Republican Party evaluation metrics by the Gingrichian dictates. It gets in the way of winning, you see, and that’s all important.
For those who see similar tendencies in the Democratic Party, it’s well worth examining them and criticizing them. I’ve already called out their abrogation of one liberal democracy tenet, and it’s worth finding others and calling those out in honest fashion. No Party is immune in what amounts to our late Roman Empire corruption period. But right now it’s the Republican Party which is most afflicted with mendacity, incompetency, and calls for brutality incompatible with traditional American ideals.
Yes, I’ve discussed this ad nauseam, but it’s important to keep pounding these points home. They’ve gone from horrid predictions to terrifying reality.
