I want to go home and rethink my life.

To me the earth's most explosive and pernicious evil is racism, the inability of God's creatures to live as One, especially in the Western world. ~Malcolm X.

I want you to imagine something. Let's engage in a little speculative fiction.

Imagine if you will, a reversal of the situation we're in. On November 8th, 2016, Hillary Clinton handily won the election, leaving Republicans with a minority in both houses of Congress. Her first effort as President was to put Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court in early 2017. Her second choice, later that year, following the retirement of Clarence Thomas, was to nominate Barack Obama and he was handily confirmed by a Democratic dominated Senate.

It was there, that things began to go wrong. There was a subtle sense of energy building up around Republicanism, which was by then making a real effort...sincerely or otherwise, to wash itself clean of the stain of Donald Trump. This paid off in several off-year State elections, such as in Virginia.

Later, Following the retirement of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions in the fall of 2017, Roy Moore handily defeated Doug Jones and went on to preach fire and brimstone on the Senate floor. Though this often proved inconvenient, he made a good show for the base, which also began to regain some of its fire. Backed by a coalition of former Never Trump Republicans like Evan McMullin and Rick Wilson, by the turn of the new year Mitt Romney had declared his intention to make another run at the Presidency in 2020, and there was talk he might win this time.

And Democrats, overconfident, got their asses handed to them in November of 2018, losing 50 House seats and barely holding onto the Senate.

In the first week of the new Congress, Trey Gowdy (having replaced the newly retired Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House) immediately restarted the Benghazi investigations.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine...a NATO member as of the previous year...in April of 2019 citing Ukrainian aggression and naval incidents the previous autumn. Due to a diplomatic spat with Turkey, US forces could not be deployed by sea....and in any case since Cold War REFORGER plans had to be dusted off, and there was not enough shipping to spare for that. With US Army divisions and regiments of Marines pouring in to bolster their defense, NATO forces went on the offense and German and Polish forces bloodily stopped the Russians in hard urban fighting in Kiev, while the Turks saw to the liberation of Crimea...and then themselves refused to leave, citing the need to protect the (Muslim) Crimean Tatar minority. Additionally, much of the eastern part of the country had been devastated and was lost to occupation, with control of the Donbass consolidated and that region absorbed into Russia. Europe weathered the tide of another wave of refugees, and everyone began the costly task of setting up new lines of defense from the Norwegian arctic to the Black Sea.

Simply because there was suddenly too much else on their plate, the Clinton administration turned a blind eye to Turkish soldiers persecuting ethnic Russian Christians, particularly Evangelicals, which in turn enraged the American ones.

Supporting the defense involved a tax increase, which Republicans, sensing an opportunity, allowed to pass the House.

Between international fumbles, restarted investigations, tax hikes and the now deepening personal conflict with Erdogan despite the threat of the Russian juggernaut, support for Clinton began to sink like a stone as Mitt quoted Reagan's Evil Empire speech with all the gravitas of an Old Testament prophet and took the time to smooth things over with our disreputable ally.

Somewhere in all this, an impeachment inquiry began. Amid all the fuss, a group of younger Democrats who'd been elected in safely blue districts, led by freshman Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, decided they'd had enough of the Kangaroo Court Benghazi bullshit, and invaded the SCIF during a routine deposition.

In the process, several were shot and wounded, some severely. Though none were killed, all were arrested and would be charged and go to trial. Speaker Gowdy himself praised the professionalism of the Capitol Police while suggesting a measure of leniency for those in legal trouble. Both Fox News and Reddit got much political mileage out of a video in which AOC was seen to be wearing a GPS tracker on her ankle.

And like it or not, rightly so. It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, or which you think it is. People got procedures they have to follow.

It technically doesn't matter if what's going on in the room actually is bullshit.

If any of this were the case, it bears mentioning that national security stuff is supposed to be apolitical and nonpartisan for a reason.

Over the last 20 years, who keeps consistently violating that?

Republicans.

...

Yesterday, a bunch of Republican Representatives swarmed into the Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF) in the Capitol Building. In so doing, based on the videos that I saw, these people committed a number of crimes.

For which, in any other political climate, they certainly would have been arrested, and shot if they resisted.

Listen.

I know damned well what a SCIF is, what it is for, and that House Republicans violated one of the most fundamental aspects of US National Security, secure control of information, in doing this. They shit all over everything I was ever taught. They shit all over our national security...all to disrupt a fairly routine closed-door deposition that was part of the Impeachment Inquiry.

The door wasn't closed for nefarious purposes, it was closed because the law says it has to be. These people know this. They just don't care. They could all have been arrested, charged, tried and incarcerated. Hell, if they'd resisted arrest they would have been shot, because this really is a national security issue. I'm serious. Any unauthorized access, any violations of protocol such as bringing electronic devices into a SCIF is a serious matter that can potentially have deadly consequences, and so such things can be met with deadly force.

Try to barge into a SCIF on a United States Air Force base, or force your way into a Weapons Storage Area, let alone have your camera phone out around a hot structure taking video, and you're going to get shot.

And that's just one example.

House Republicans have effectively shown that they no longer care about their own lives. What do you think that means for you?

Yesterday, and last night at work, I was so angry that I could hardly even manage a conversation.

As a former Republican, among other things relevant here, I've spent the last two days wondering what the hell the first three quarters of my life was even for.

If this is permissible, I feel like I wasted my time. Like the alien dude that tries to sell Obi Wan the death sticks in Star Wars Episode II, and then gets mind-tricked, I want to go home and rethink my life.

I remember when NatSec *Was* pretty much the Republican issue. Now, Republicans don't care about it, to the point where they'll violate a SCIF? How can we continue to have a country when these people and the 30% or so of the general population that follows them do not care about the security of our country?

And why is it permissible, even...no, especially...to Republicans?

Fundamentally, at this point, it comes down to one thing.

Racism.

Even the vast majority of white conservatives will never see a dime, or one single benefit, from any of the Trump administration's policies or tax cuts or what have you.

Officially, at least.

But Trump is like a drug dealer with the racism, and he knows bitches when he sees bitches. Some people are so desperate to hang onto White Supremacy that they'll give up everything they have, even their dignity or self-respect...and quite possibly their life...for this motherfucker.

Because facts, history, law, reason and truth mean nothing to Republicans.

Indeed, Republicans long-proclaimed values mean nothing to Republicans. Actual conservatives like Bill Kristol, Evan McMullin, Max Boot, Mitt Romney and Rick Wilson are effectively apostate from The Party while Donald Trump's ideology of the Self remains supreme as he compares the House executing its Constitutional duty to the ethnic cleansing and murder of African Americans in the Jim Crow South.

And Republicans love him for it. Hell, some of these fucking people act like we never had a President before Trump.

Why? Because to These Fucking People, America isn't America if they have to share it with Black and Brown people or LGBT people, or if women have control over their own bodies and can say no to them. Because America isn't America if they can't just kill any person darker-skinned than they are. Because even though there's not much that Trump can do to actually change any of that...he has at least made the prejudiced assholes feel like it's OK to openly be prejudiced assholes again...and for most, that is enough.

And he has always done that. The ad to the left of this text was paid for by Trump in 1989, calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five kids.

What Trump did here, was basically try to call for a lynching, over 30 years ago now. At the time, I was around the same age as some of those kids and I was shocked and very angry about things like this ad, because as I saw it, if this rich asshole could do that to them, he could do it to me, too.

I should add, that my family was moderate conservative and just a bit over two and a half years later I registered to vote as a Republican. Trump was a Democrat at the time. I've never liked that guy.

Hate knows no party affiliation or national loyalty, it craves only the destruction of the Other.

And if we don't get a handle on that and find a way to stop this shit, impeachment or defeating Trump in 2020 isn't going to matter in the long term. Oh sure, it'll help for awhile. Our side winning either or both only buys off the real problem for a while longer.

As long as one American hates his neighbors more than he fears or hates a rival nation, these people are a dagger pointed at all our throats. As long as hate is presented as a virtue, or something to use to make money, it is a threat. As long as that kind of hatred is allowed to continue to exist, the longer it goes on the more likely this ends with Americans shooting at each other.

And nobody with a brain in their head wants that.