The Lesson
Four years ago today, I learned a very important lesson.
I remember sitting in our Florida campaign office with my regional organizer director and two staff members from the state Democratic Party. I was brought before this team of three to learn the results of an internal investigation that was brought before me due to a published video from Project Veritas, alleging misconduct on our campaign. The video included an undercover reporter who "admitted" that he had destroyed Republican voter registration forms who then turned to me to ask what the repercussions would be. My answer was that this could not happen again and that I would be reporting the incident to my superiors. Of course, in their patented editing ways, my response was selectively edited to say I wouldn't be telling my superiors at that exact moment, implying that no future action would be taken. Taken as a whole, the story Project Veritas attempted to sell was that the Florida Democratic Party was intentionally destroying Republican voter registrations, which was an obvious lie.
But the damage was done.
The right wing blogs and media picked up Veritas' story as they do and immediately mobilized. Within 24 hours of the story hitting social media, there were two dozen Trump supporters causing chaos outside our campaign office, harassing volunteers and making life a living hell for local patrons to nearby restaurants. The campaign office was forced to hire permanent security because nobody knew what these Trump supporters might think of doing next. Seeing all this unfold and yet knowing I had done nothing wrong, I still offered to resign from the campaign to help restore a sense of normality. As I sat in that meeting, I very much expected the campaign staff to take me up on that offer and to ask that I quietly resign, which I would have done. The last thing I wanted was to have somebody get hurt on account of the video.
As the meeting began, I was mentally preparing myself to leave the campaign but I promised myself to hold it together. When the phrase "The results of our investigation show" was spoken, I was on a razor's edge. When the phrase "no inappropriate actions on your part" was spoken, I breathed an audible sigh of relief. Although I knew this to be true, I did not know whether or not that would be the same conclusion reached by my superiors. Of course, knowing that my face was now visible to right-wing media and cultists, there was one repercussion for the video: I was no longer allowed to personally handle voter registration forms. The campaign did not want any right-wing media to have even an opportunity to imply that there was still "inappropriate" activity going on at our campaign office. For the final three weeks of the campaign, I was told to keep as low a profile as possible.
I learned an important lesson that day, one that has stuck with me. It is one that drives my current professional life as well as the volunteer work I am doing on the Biden campaign. It also, in large part, drives the work I do for this blog. It is a lesson that I keep coming back to as it helps me day after day understand the current political situation in this country. It is a lesson I learned thanks to Project Veritas and their incessant need to paint Democrats as enemies of democracy. What Project Veritas and the right-wing reaction to their manipulated video showed me was something that explains each and every thing that is going on politically in this country. It is a simple truth that explains everything:
Republicans are fucking evil.
That's it. That's the tweet. It's not just the assholes at Project Veritas who ruin lives to tell their twisted version of the truth. It's not just Breitbart, the media outlet that trained Project Veritas' own CEO, James O'Keefe. It's not just Fox News, that has created an echo chamber over 30 years that has turned well-meaning senior citizens into brain-dead zombies, unwilling to accept truth and facts and science. It's not just Rush Limbaugh and Hannity and Tucker Carlson and Judge Jeanine and Glenn Beck and Alex Jones and Tomi Lahren and all those right-wing media personalities who expunge the truth to support their twisted political agenda.
That's just the media arm. Republican elected officials are much worse. Over the past half-century Republicans have been on the wrong side of every single issue that would improve the quality of life in this country. Addressing the AIDS pandemic. Trickle-down economics. The War on Terror. Tax cuts for the wealthy "job creators" who never create jobs. Republicans have been against the Affordable Care Act. Against marriage equality. Against humane immigration reform. Against climate change. Against an increased minimum wage. Against gun violence prevention. Against women's rights. Republicans are against any policy that challenges the status quo and are in favor of any and all policies that keep straight White men in power for the foreseeable future.
Other countries have major political parties on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. But Republicans have now become the greatest threat to world peace and prosperity in the modern world. Their presidents have been reckless when it comes to foreign wars. Their religious ideologues have spread hate both home and abroad through their Dominionist and anti-LGBTQIA+ views. Republicans believe in isolationism in a world that requires collaboration. They see NATO and the United Nations as unnecessary. They don't see how and why the United States should be in an international climate agreement. They go so far as to undo nuclear disarmament deals because they weren't the ones who made the deal in the first place. Nowhere in the world do we see such a blatant blurred line between a major political party and its intertwined relationship with private companies invested in the business of war. The Republican Party is literally a rogue state firmly within the boundaries of the United States of America.
Yet perhaps the party's most damaging work is done right here at home. The Republican Party in its current state exists to sow chaos. It does not believe in democracy. It wants to pack the courts (yes, actually pack the courts) with unqualified, extremist judges. It wants to limit and in many cases completely suppress the votes of people of color in this country. It turns a blind eye to the very White supremacists it knows it needs to intimidate said voters of color. It wants to privatize schools so they run like a business rather than a public service. It wants to take away rights for women to have autonomy over their bodies. It wants to weaken unions so that bosses and CEOs can trample hard-won rights that provide basic workplace protections. It wants to deny transgender men and women the opportunity to serve in our Armed Forces, thereby marking them as permanent second-class citizens. It wants to cage refugee children and limit legal immigration from all nonwhite parts of the world. And the Republican Party certainly does not want any kind of police reform that would disrupt the current culture where black men and women are forced to live in perpetual fear of those sworn to serve and protect them.
Over the past seven months, we've seen the Republican Party for what it is: a death cult. The Trump Administration and GOP governors have willfully ignored the science behind COVID-19 and now infections and deaths are rising exponentially in red states. There's now reporting that the Trump Administration is considering pushing for herd immunity that would potentially kill 2 million Americans if it is successful. Nobody would think less of Republicans if they wore masks or listened to scientists. But at this point, they are too far down the rabbit hole. Donald Trump isn't a symptom of the modern Republican Party, he is its leader. Republicans take their cues from him and they willingly fall into line. Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, Susan Collins, all of them. It doesn't matter how Trump treats them personally, they all put party over country and acquiesce to his every demand. At this point, they are all Herman Cain without the end result...yet.
Knowing all this is what has driven my work these past four years. These people have no souls and no conscience. They are irredeemable. They are vile and vicious and vindictive. At this point, I expect to get told to fuck off by Trump supporters when doing voter contact and they never cease to disappoint me. The Republican Party built that. It is who they are and it is who they will continue to be. What we're seeing today is the culmination of the southern strategy. We've seen an unholy alliance between the religious right and the racist right. What we have now is an entire political party that hates the "other" whether the other is women, immigrants, refugees, gays, or people of color. I have seen this in my work when even in a blue state where we have extreme Republican members of the state legislature. Republicans are a virus on this country and the only way they will even consider changing is by being on the business end of a resounding loss in November.
I, for one, am more than happy to make that happen.