What You're Telling Us If You Say You're a Republican (Hint: It's Not Good)

I frequent a forum about Cal athletics. Politics rarely comes up but when it does most people who comment reflect progressive or liberal views. Cal is in Berkeley, after all. However recently one commenter identified himself as a “conservative and a Republican.” I noted that I had a visceral reaction to reading these words. I can best sum it up thusly:

What you’re telling me when you tell me you’re a Republican or a conservative or both.

You support big businesses and corporate power over the working class. You don’t want to raise the minimum wage but you’re fine with people being multi billionaires.

You don’t support a woman’s right to choose. Indeed, you don’t support the right’s of women. You’re comfortable with men making choices for women about women’s bodies.

You don’t respect the rights and safety and autonomy of the LGBTQ+ community. You’re likely homophobic and certainly anti-trans.

You’re a xenophobe who participates in or accepts the fear-mongering around immigrants. 

You’re a racist. Anyone who supports Trumpy is identifying as a bigot. Plain and simple. You’re prejudices may not be overt but they certainly exist.

You care more about guns than children. You have totally misrepresented and misunderstood the second amendment which you view as sacrosanct. Unlike human lives.

You’re afraid of education and books. Just as slave masters didn’t want the enslaved to read and learn, you don’t want young people to learn the true history of this country, or about social issues or African American history. You know that a well-rounded education is a threat to your efforts to suppress dissent against the military-industrial complex.

You’re opposed to high voter turnout because you know it hurts your candidates' chances. You are so opposed that you work towards and support measures to suppress the vote.

You don’t give a damn about the plights of underprivileged people. 

You want to shrink the government, transferring their power to the rich and powerful. To that end you abhor government regulations no matter how much they help the common good.

Your idea of tax reform is less taxes not closing loopholes that benefit the richest Americans.

You extoll punishment over rehabilitation. Indeed you favor long prison terms for the poor but amnesty for the rich.

You see schools as a necessary evil and hate having to fund them or pay teachers a decent wage.

You don't trust our electoral system because someone told you not to. Facts don't enter into it.

You watch a "news" network that is right wing propaganda which perpetuates blatant lies that you believe.

You’ll let the planet roast to a cinder before admitting that human-made climate change is real and is the greatest threat facing humanity. 

You don’t honor or even trust either the scientific or medical community no matter what they’re overwhelming consensus is on any issue. You do, however, trust the business community. You also believe the myths from Christianity over facts empirically verified by science.

You could well be an anti-semite or an Islamophobe or both. 

You think that Alabama, South Dakota and Idaho are the “real America” but New York, San Francisco and Chicago aren’t because the second group has large populations of people of color and gay people who are out of the closet.

You blindly follow a leader who is a narcissistic, lying, twice impeached, convicted felon because you’re goddamned stupid. Period.

Note: Four of the last five Democratic nominees for president have either been a person of color or a woman, one is both. The Republicans have never nominated either a person of color or a woman as president. The last three times they've nominated Donald Trump, a serial philanderer and known bigot.