The oddness of the GOP
No nation lasts forever. History is replete with examples of states and empires which have come and gone, their time under the sun fleeting as chaff in the wind.
But, our world right now is filled with nations which have lasted hundreds or even thousands of years. And there's no reason that the United States can't prosper as a free and democratic state for decades and centuries to come. (Until we meet the Vulcans and become United Earth, at any rate.)
If the US does in fact endure as a free and democratic republic, and doesn't split into its constituent parts, this phase in its history will fill thousands of tomes. Historians will marvel at the utter degradation of one of the two main political parties.
They will wonder at how this transpired. At how a party of conservatives allowed itself to become a radicalized fascist party. How a party which built its electoral program on a strong defense against and a robust confrontation of the state's enemies instead became one which traduced traditional allies and uplifted those enemies.
Of course, the rot had set in long ago. The party went from the party which freed the slaves to the party which acceded in the repression of those freed men and women. The party whose first president had a healthy respect for labor and whose incumbent at the beginning of the 20th century busted monopolies became little more than a means to funnel greater and greater wealth to the super-rich.
They will wonder how a movement which had some intellectual gravitas devolved into one which instead valued ignorance. It became a movement and a party which discounted expertise, looked down on education, reviled any sort of abstruse knowledge.
Historians will debate over the cause of this rupture in American politics. A two-party system, by definition, needs two parties. However, both parties have to operate within the same realm of accepted truths. When one party negates a shared reality, then the system simply cannot function. To turn Clausewitz around, politics have become an extension of war by other means. This party doesn't seek to find common ground with its opposition. Most of its members are convinced that their very existence is imperiled. When existential fears enter the political arena, then politics become disjointed. How can you compromise with an enemy who wants to eliminate your way of life? How can you compromise with fellow citizens whom you see as degenerate and dangerous?
This is a political party which was born to hold together the Union; now its leading lights talk about a "national divorce". This was a party which was born in opposition to the oppression of a different race; it then took in the descendants of those same oppressors.
This time in our history will serve as a signal lesson, should we survive it. Education matters. Morality matters. Empathy matters. A political party devoid of those things is nothing but a nihilistic cult, seeking only to serve its own will to power. It gives its partisans nothing of material worth; but it gives them voice to their animus, to their hatred. They may wind up living in the gutter, and that's fine, as long as "they" have it worse.
If we do survive this trial, it will be because we are made of sterner stuff than we assumed. But that's always the case. Enemies have underestimated us to their terminal peril. They are about to again.