and fuck everyone who keeps trying to tell me we should just try to “understand” how Republicans got to where they are.

One can have compassion for a victim and still recognize their danger and the need to protect oneself from that danger.

I feel that a large number of Republicans are victims of a lifetime of propaganda, and threats. This is important to understand if one is trying to understand the big picture. If literally 1/2 of humans are inherently shit it would benefit the planet if our species went extinct ASAP and that is eco-fascism. The long-term goal needs to be to prevent the those with power and wealth from turning their victims into their idiot army.

When it comes to how to how to treat them on the short-term or individual level, treat them as the mortal danger they are.

I enjoy seeing you around here. Agreed.

I expected worse.

Here's the thing.

Mitch McConnell spent decades cultivating the GOP into the party that isn't there to govern, but to just be against anything the Democrats do purely for the sake of contrarianism. It doesn't matter what the Democrats do; the GOP must take the exact opposite position at all costs. However, this was largely just GOP ideology, which often did take a back seat when push came to shove. At the end of the day, they'd hem and haw over it, but at the end of the day, a deal would always be struck.

Donald Trump came along and turned what was previously a GOP ideology that could at least be reshaped when push comes to shove and turned that into a cult-like dogma that can never be disobeyed under any circumstances, consequences be damned. Logic be damned. Truth be damned. And he managed to get 70 million or so people to follow him, forcing the rest of the party to either fall in line and push the MAGA agenda or see the end of their political careers. No price, in his eyes, is too high a price to pay (mostly because he's not the one that has to do the paying). And that's GOP dogma now. How does the saying go? "Many of you will die, but it's a price I'm willing to pay."

And that's where we are now. Pick a subject, and the GOP must be against it. Try to say that doing so will affect something else, and they'll suddenly be against that too. Trying to reason with them about their position being too extreme only causes them to get more extreme. Try to tell them that exceptions must be made for the good of society, and they'll gladly tell you what they think of society. Because that's what their 70 million voters have been conditioned to want, even when it's against their own best interests. As long as it's hurting "them", no price is too steep for them to pay. If the only way to defend your position is to argue in favor of something that is irrational, illegal, nonsensical, heartless, and hurtful, then you still take that position, because GOP dogma must be maintained at all costs.

You know why the GOP are suddenly against exceptions for rape or life of the mother? Because the Democrats showed that these reasons are a need for why abortion care is necessary in the first place.

You know why the GOP are suddenly all sorts of interested in restricting interstate travel? Because Democrats pointed out that blue states will continue to provide abortion care, even to those travelling from out of state.

The answer to the question of "Well, what do we do about this?" or "What do we do about that?" isn't to reflect and adjust their position as the evidence guides them. It's just "Ban that too!". And if that causes even more problems? Keep swinging the banhammer. Don't address anything inconvenient. Ignore it. Sweep it under the rug. Forget about it. Ban it. The fallout? That's a future generation's problem. Dogma must be preserved at all costs, including the cost of the lives of you and your loved ones.

And that's where we are now. Because Democrats want to shore up abortion rights in their states, the GOP must be on a crusade against it. It is required. It is dogma. And anything that goes against the dogma must also be eradicated. Exceptions for things like rape and viability of the mother are no longer acceptable, because a woman might be able to use that reason to actually get an abortion. And their hard-line stand on the subject means that whenever someone like Kate Cox or the 10 year old rape victim from Ohio comes along and offers themselves as proof of why abortion care is necessary, they are literally treated as collateral damage. A sad statistic that can be dismissed 5 seconds after you read it. Because anything else would be an acknowledgement that they were wrong. It would poke a gigantic hole in what I very loosely refer to as their "logic". It would go against the dogma. And that is absolutely not allowed. If it's a choice between going against dogma and saving the woman's life, or letting both the woman and fetus die anyway in order to not break the narrative, they'd rather just let both of them die for what they consider the "greater good", even though their version of the "greater good" is basically a script from the Handmaid's Tale.

This is where we are now. The GOP are on one road, and they must stay on that road under any circumstances. If you come between them and their ideology, you will be run over. You will be made an example of. Even if it means you die. Never mind the fact that the fetus they're supposedly trying to "save" is going to die too. That part is conveniently ignored because it doesn't jive with their dogma. But their dogma must be preserved, defended, and advanced at all costs. Today's GOP will accept nothing less.

It's Jesus, basically.

You have to understand that these women are whores. If they didn't want to be pregnant, they should have kept an aspirin between their knees. The ones that have legitimate medical issues are collateral damage. Unfortunate, but they too have to suffer because when you start to write exceptions to rules, well then, some whores might be able to lie their way out of it, and we can't have that.

Whoring and lying are sinful. In their eyes, most of these women are sinners of the worst kind: whores, liars and remorseless at that - even potential murderers!

Because they are Christians, just like their Abrahamic cousins the Muslims - these people are all in the business of punishing sinners. It couldn't be more obvious. If this looks like "evil" to you, then you're likely one of those kinds of sinners they haven't got to yet. Don't worry, they will.

The issue is that most states (yes, even Republican states) are pretty purple when you look at the straight numbers. But many states are gerrymandered to hell, and liberals are less likely to vote (for a variety of reasons, including everything from apathy to outright disenfranchisement,) so the conservatives are able to keep a hold on the states even though they rarely hold a popular majority.

There are a lot of liberal people who didn’t vote for this, who are essentially trapped with no way to escape. They’re the ones stuck in a daily grind; too poor, no marketable skills to allow them to find decent work elsewhere, no outside connections to rely on, etc. They don’t deserve what the state is doing to them, but they’re powerless to stop it.

Sure, there are some states that are just hard conservative. But most states are comprised of highly populated liberal cities, surrounded by huge swaths of rural conservatives. And those cities have their voting districts broken up so much by gerrymandering, that they don’t get any decent representation.