Dear Ma & Pa MAGA,
Now I know that questions like these are about as interesting to you as a tutorial on gun safety, an explanation of how Easter dates fluctuate year to year and a thesaurus, but you see, I’ve long since stopped giving a fuck, so I’m gonna ask it anyway.
And this isn’t really about you answering as much it is about me pointing out your culture war ridiculousness, so if you’re able to, and yer not too busy shooting up beer cans or rage-jerking to Tucker Carlson’s latest rants about unsexy candy characters in comfortable shoes, please do read along. If not, no worries, I’m still gonna say what needs to be said.
So here’s what I want to know - what exactly are Republicans FOR these days? What are they offering? What are they promising? What are they giving you?
Because it’s not infrastructure, the Dems did that. It’s not healthcare, which the Dems did too. It’s not all the other stuff the Dems are doing like lowering the cost of your insulin or lowering your taxes, it’s not creating jobs, not bringing manufacturing back, not honoring our vets, not actually “backing the blue” or “supporting the troops”, it’s not ending the opioid crisis, addressing the border, making Mexico pay for the wall, not lowering unemployment, raising wages, improving maternal care, feeding starving children, not keeping books on shelves, keeping the planet green, keeping you safe at work, protecting social security or growing the GDP, it’s not protecting your reproductive rights, your access to IVF and contraception, protecting Democracy abroad and it’s sure as shit not protecting your kids from gun violence at school.
When a bridge collapses after a ship collision and six workers die, they blame DEI. When a woman is killed they blame the border. When a movie theatre gets shot up they blame “mental health.” When a long-standing day of visibility for a group of people who pose no harm to them outside of the fact that they simply want to live their authentic lives, coincides with Easter, they blame “blasphemy.”
They say America sucks, that our economy is in ruins, and that our streets are rife with more crime than ever, when none of that’s true. They say prices are too high, but vote against stopping gouging, that our roads are in disrepair, but then vote against fixing them, and that our border is in crisis, while refusing to even vote on a bill THEY themselves demanded and co-wrote.
They’re not doing a damn thing about the kitchen table issues you think about every single night. In fact, they’re telling you that they’re coming for the shit you rely on like affordable healthcare, access to IVF and contraception, they’re telling you they are coming for the social security you have been paying into.
But you can’t hear them. You don’t want to hear them because you’re too busy being “scared” that your kid’s teacher ”grooming” them to be “furries” when they’re not, that immigrants come here to commit crimes, when they don’t, that some drag queen you’ve never met and you do not know tried to “indoctrinate” kindergartners with a book about earthworms when they simply would not and have not.
You’re too busy welcoming being stoked, poked and prodded with manufactured outrage and irrational fear, too busy letting them embrace your intolerance, empower your biases, and embolden your bigotry to ever care to notice that they offer you nothing which is real.
They’re for fostering angst, anxiety and anger in a “failing nation.”
They’re for telling you that someone else is to blame for your failures.
They’re “for” openly hating who you hate.
That’s it.
That’s all they are “for.”
And unfortunately, despite the fact that nothing could be further from the truth, that’s all you seem to think you need.
Republicans are not “for” anything but hate.