We don’t negotiate with terrorists
When I was fourteen I was given crap advice that I knew instantly was very crap advice indeed. The first bit of crap advice that I was given was that I should be careful not to have misplaced guilty feelings for causing my parents’ divorce. The second was that there were two sides to every story.
I already knew that my parents getting a divorce wasn’t my fault. In any case, had I believed I was the cause of their divorce I would have thought of it more in terms of credit than blame. But I knew their problems were all caused by my father, that I personally had nothing to do with it.
I also knew from firsthand experience that sometimes there is only one side to a story. In their divorce my mother was the wronged party. Period. There was never any doubt about it then and there still isn’t. My father didn’t have a side to the story, at least he didn’t have one that was defensible.
Back then I learned something about so-called truisms. They weren’t always true. In questions of morality one cannot “agree to disagree.” There is no compromise or mutual understanding that can be reached when one side isn’t merely wrong, they are also hideously and obviously immoral while being wrong.
So I am not interested in bipartisan rapprochements when Republicans complain about “wokeism” while simultaneously divesting pensions and boycotting companies for considering sustainability as an aim. And that is what state Republicans are in fact doing in West Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, and now Florida, and they’re doing it right now.
I am not interested in Kyrsten Sinema’s blather about how “both parties” are “guilty” of the same polar extremist positions and that, by changing her affiliations from Democrat to Independent, she now somehow represents a new and more reasonable moderating middle ground. Just because her sanctimonious narcissism won’t permit her to allow national attention to be drawn away from her for a second doesn’t mean she has anything new or useful to say.
Nor am I interested in the sudden counterfeit outrage from the right that Joe Biden would exchange Brittney Griner for a notorious arms dealer, after Trump released 500 Taliban prisoners without any compensation and with hardly a peep from the right. I am also aware that Republican virtue-signalling is particularly exercised because the trade was a) for a woman who b) is black and c) is a lesbian. They can’t say that bit out loud, but that’s the part that really pisses them off.
Nor am I interested in Republican pearl clutching over the Hunter Biden red herring after Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made hundreds of millions of dollars from influence peddling with the Saudis while they both drew White House paychecks from American taxpayers. Such obviously partisan attempts to personally hurt the President because they can’t find anything else to hurt him with and he never wears tan suits are clearly nothing more than insincere partisan hackery in its most loathsome form.
In short I’ve had it with Republican hypocrisy and the smug insistence that people like me are somehow being “partisan.” This is not a “both sides” issue. Republicans don’t have a side. In the words of Nancy Pelosi, we don’t negotiate with terrorists.
Republicans no longer represent an ideological point of view. They spread hate and fear and lies so Americans will vote for them so they can have power. And that’s all. Most of them don’t really give a crap about abortion or gun ownership or even Donald Trump. They just use those issues because they know they’re hot button topics that they can exploit for garnering votes so they can stay in power.
Republicans no longer represent America or Americans. They’re terrorists who are in it for power and money. I’ve said it many times before and I say it again: Republicans must go. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.