Monsters Incorporated

| 6:00 pm EDT May 15, 2022
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Sometimes it is easy to look back at the past and remember things as one would have liked them to be — not as they were. Rose-colored glasses are easy to put on but not so easy to remove. And that is what many are talking about. The past — and the Republican party.

“The GOP has changed,” many pundits whisper. “They used to be so different.” “I miss the old GOP.” Bullshit. I am here to call BS. The GOP has NOT changed — they’ve only gotten nastier. But they were ALWAYS who they are now.

The non-party has ALWAYS shown the symptoms of evil — of insurrection — and that started LONG before Donald Trump. It is like a puzzle to me — a mad jigsaw puzzle — why anyone would think otherwise.

I could offer hundreds — perhaps thousands of examples but let’s use one that wasn’t so long ago. That is the race between Republican George W. Bush – and Democrat John Kerry. Remember the race, my friends? Think about the past. Lose yourself in those memories for a few moments.

The cruelty was evident back then — the shaming — the “Big-Brothering.” The attempts to tell the voters up was down, and down was up. Do you not remember the Swift-boat Veterans for Truth? How they maligned Kerry? How they crafted a false image of him, using his own heroic qualities against him?

How utterly fine most Republicans were with that? They were good at sleaze; I’ll give them that. How about the Republican National Convention that year? Where mocking and glinting-eyed Republicans laughingly gave out fake purple hearts to attendees? They laughed at Kerry — they derided his service.

It was bubbling then — percolating — waiting to get nastier. The GOP were ALWAYS monsters. This is nothing new for them. It is just a new FORM of monster — the insurrection form.

But it just does not come out of nowhere. If one looks back on the past and looks at it objectively, anyone could see that. All we’re dealing with now is the monster all grown up.