From Our Future
Whom among us, upon hearing of the grave and perhaps existential threats now facing the Republican Party, is entirely immune to the siren song of schadenfreude? Who from the liberal classes can entirely resist the temptation, when reading about the bitter divisions now rending the GOP, to mutter, "Now that's a god damn shame," and then issue forth with a soft and mordant chuckle?
And as Donald Trump spirals down ever further, his descent into humiliation propelled by his own pheromonal and lubricious self-regard, what right-thinking human being can resist whispering a quaint saying of yesteryear? You know the one:
It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Any description of today's Republican right needs a trigger warning, and this one's no exception. We keep getting additional revelations of Trump abuses, each more shocking than the last. As of this writing, the latest involve new charges of sexual assault and the backstage ogling of half-dressed (or less) teenaged girls.
And as Trump dominated the airwaves, an unexplained rash of scary-clown sightings was reported across the United States. These are strange times indeed for the American psyche.
As the nation learned more about the GOP nominee, his poll numbers fell faster than the revenue projections in a Trump bankruptcy proceeding. Republicans began falling all over themselves to repudiate their leader's behavior -- even though many still endorsed his candidacy. Their motto? "Hate the sin, love the candidate."
Their professed outrage mustn't become a "get out of jail free" card for their own misogyny and bigotry. Trump is not an aberration in the Republican Party's history. He is its culmination, the poisonous fruit of a foul plant. He is his party's sniffling, lascivious id.
Parties, like people, eventually get the face they deserve. The Republicans deserve Trump's -- a face that took on so many hostile expressions in the last debate that they could have illustrated the Big Book of American Scowls. His is the face of the true GOP, the red, angry, babylike yowling face of the American right.
They're Dorian Gray, and Trump is their picture.
Some Republican donors who contributed to the Trump campaign are now reportedly asking for their money back. They've forgotten the old capitalist maxim: You break it, you buy it.
Meanwhile, many of the male Republican politicians rejecting Trump said his behavior offended them as "the fathers of daughters," a posture that's patriarchal and possessive -- not to mention hypocritical.
Where was their concern for America's women -- their daughters or anyone else's -- when their Republican colleagues in Virginia were trying to force women to undergo the invasive procedure known as a transvaginal ultrasound as punishment for behavior they didn't like? Trump may have spoken of grabbing women's bodies, but they tried to do the same thing with their legislative authority, rather than their hands.
Where was their concern for the women of America when the Republican attorney general in Kansas was attempting to pry open women's most private medical records?
Where were they when the Republican economic agenda began disproportionately harming women?
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