Viewpoint: Republicans have been captured

Greg Jahn

I was once a Republican back when they actually held some principled core values and “conservative” meant something. Now I’m an independent veteran horrified at the converging extremists that forged an alliance of convenience to implode democracy in the name of total control of the spoils.

Oligarchs sold the public the cruelest, most toxic brand of capitalism: neoliberalism. Reaganomics/“trickle down” was a forty year money-grab scam that created our current obscene economic disparity. It was solely designed to redistribute the stolen public treasure up to the already wealthiest elite.

GOP “leaders” simply want to seize power.  Abandoning governance through constructive policies, they’re dedicated to sworn obstruction and divisiveness to win elections at any cost, even lying and cheating. They built a new brand on a foundation of paranoia, racism, misogyny, and greed by stoking base emotions of fear, anger, and scapegoating.

This dangerous, unholy alliance now includes fundamentalist Christians doing the same as all religious fundamentalist extremists: using their fanatical interpretation of the Divine as a cudgel to foist their personal beliefs on everyone else. They betray a critical (dare I say “sacred”?) American insight: separation of church and state.

The common denominator: hierarchy, dominance and exploitation.

Republicans stoking violence as “legitimate political discourse”, perpetuating the “Big Lie”, and downplaying the sacrilege of the bloody coup attempt of Jan 6th are dangerous signs of GOP failure. They cowardly betray the sacrifice of millions of vets made in defense of this difficult, fragile, noble experiment of democracy.

Greg Jahn, Billings