There are a lot of things we disagree on. We disagree on the effectiveness of the leadership in office. We disagree on the motivations of the administration. We disagree on the strategies necessary to run the government at this seemingly pivotal moment in time. We disagree on the level of brinksmanship necessary to "negotiate" with the leadership of the Republicans in congress.
We do not disagree that the Republican Party is controlled by corporate puppet masters who have ceaselessly promoted an agenda of broader corporate control over all aspects of American and global culture. We also probably don't disagree that they are cynically using the good will of regular Americans to do this.
This is not "business" that is being represented by the current Republicans in congress. This is a multi-headed and pathogenic virus. This is an unending line of financially well off corporate masters who dress up in diapers and play baby as they suckle at the teat of government entities of all sizes. As is usually the case, it isn't the provider and nurturer who is in charge here.
The radicalization of the Republican Party is a wonder to behold. The Democratic Party is still a big tent. The Republican Party at all levels is almost completely comprised of fringe radicals who have used financial terrorism, teenage angst, toddler tantrums, and, quite frankly, almost the exact tactics that any domestic abuser would ever use against their chosen target of abuse. Not only would they use those tactics, but they seem to use them in an intentional, almost ritualistic manner. It is a ritualism that would make any priest or monk feel shame at their lack of dedication to their religion. This ritualism is done in a way that seems to indicate that they will somehow gain favor with the beatified ancestors of their fringe, radical, and extremist movement. It is a religious experience that carries all the hallmarks of religious belief. Check that- it's a fanatacism that eclipses most normally held religious beliefs. This is how hard it is to rid the followers of this pathetic religion of their erroneously held beliefs. Bringing people down from the euphoria of shared fanaticism is difficult.
The Right Wing extremists who populate the majority of the Republican movement are anti-democracy to their core. They spend amazing amounts of energy and effort in deifying people who made it their life's work to attempt to discredit the government of the United States. The government of the United States is not some nebulous entity which exists outside of us. It is us. The fringe Republicans attempt to discredit the nation by espousing, endorsing, and perpetuating the idea that somehow government is not of the people, but that it is somehow a separate entity from the population of the US.
As Kurt Vonnegut writes in "Breakfast of Champions":
"Bad chemicals and bad ideas are the yin and yang of madness."
I have this mental image of the current political spectrum. It is a mental image of a road running from left to right. It is a road about one hundred miles long, and it runs straight. All the way over on the right edge is a clump of people who claim to be conservative. It is a tumorous mass that is approximately ten miles in length. There are no outside ideas here. They forage for the native ideas, and they re-eat them over and over again. They climb over themselves to be the ones who are at the very rightmost end of the road. Their road is continuously being extended. It is paved with gray rock that is cemented by the long ago deceased moderate Republicans. It is an orgy of right wing cannibalism. It is a self-reinforcing, bias confirming stretch of road that is completely maintained and controlled by the corporate agenda. All they have to do is pay the ferryman, and as he extends his gnarled hand, the corporate slave owners will begin to build the next section of road for them to wander ever more rightward.
As you move past that first ten mile stretch going right to left, you have a relatively vast distance in which no modern day Republican would ever claim to reside. It is an empty space which shrieks louder than any screaming toddler on a plane. A yawning abyss of moderacy that must be traversed to even begin a conversation about solving a problem. The roadside here is littered with the wasting, decaying bodies of those recent Republican travelers, as well as the long dead remains of a Republican Party that used to have use for this area. Unfortunately, it has been stripped of all resources, and it has been mined of any shiny metal bits. The ground here is barren, the exits are closed, and the potholes will claim the lives of any Republican daring to travel any further to the left. I would be foolish if I said that there were no Democrats who spend some time traveling this empty stretch of blankness, picking through the remains of recently and not so recently deceased. An item of value may be found from time to time, but as is often the case, there are reasons that nobody digs there any more. It simply isn't personally fruitful.
As we travel from right to left along this poorly maintained stretch of road, we eventually begin to encounter more and more permanent residences of Democrats as we get at least 40 miles from our starting point. We climb a hill of Democrats, and then coast down to the end of our trip where few Democrats reside at the leftmost end of the road.
That is the difficulty we are faced with. There are no moderate Republicans any more. There used to be moderate Republicans. They used to be able to temper and moderate the ideas of the party. We have our own road to maintain, and we need to not help them maintain the road that they have long ago forsaken.
Fanaticism, Extremism, Radicalism, Anti-Democracy, Fringe, Pathological...
"Bad chemicals and bad ideas are the yin and yang of madness."