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Patrick | Complex Simplicity's avatar

They stole a Supreme Court seat like a gang of thugs in a back alley, shoving democracy against the wall, rifling through its pockets, and grinning as they walked away, daring anyone to stop them. They attempted to overthrow the government—not in secret, not in whispers, but in the full light of day, draped in the American flag as they smeared blood and bile through the halls of Congress. They installed a diseased conspiracy theorist as the head of public health, ensuring that mass death became a partisan litmus test. They put a known foreign asset in charge of national security. They placed a frothing authoritarian in charge of the FBI, a man who promised to turn the power of the state against its own citizens. They have put a convicted felon—fake-businessman turned autocrat, a syphilitic wound on the body politic—in the White House, again, where he openly vows to dismantle the nation in retribution for daring to hold him accountable.

Yet, Bill, you ask where the Republicans are? You wonder if they might finally recoil at the sight of a deranged billionaire casually tossing around the word "treason" to smear a U.S. senator for the crime of standing with our allies? I have news for you, Bill.

Really bad news.

They aren’t coming.

They aren’t going to defend Mark Kelly, not because they fear Musk, but because Musk is them—an arrogant, gilded grotesque who believes that wealth is intelligence, that cruelty is strength, that democracy is something to be mocked, not upheld. The Red Party will not correct him because they do not believe he is wrong. They have no loyalty to truth, no fidelity to the Constitution, no interest in the republic as anything more than a vehicle for their own unchecked dominion.

This is not a party in decline—it is a suicide cult for democracy, a feral, collapsing machine that now exists only to consolidate power and punish those who refuse to submit. The rule of law is dead to them unless it can be twisted into a weapon. The Constitution is not a sacred document but a crutch, waved in performative reverence as they grind it to dust beneath their heels.

So no, Bill, they are not going to do the right thing. They cannot do the right thing. Their movement is beyond saving, beyond reasoning, beyond any last vestige of honor.

This is it. The death spiral is upon us. The question is no longer whether they will return to sanity. It’s when we stop pretending they ever will.Because this—this endless, pathetic waiting for the Red Party to wake up, to remember what a conscience feels like, to suddenly morph back into Republicans instead of an authoritarian death cult—isn't just lunacy. It’s self-inflicted delusion. Writing columns like this, as if moral shame could pierce the hide of a party that sold its soul for power long ago, isn’t just a fool’s errand—it’s the political equivalent of begging a mugger to give back your wallet out of the goodness of his heart.

They are not coming back. Let's stop pretending we think they are.

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Nick's avatar

Andrew hit the nail on the head. There is no economic plan, there was never an economic plan other than make America great again. It’s all reactionary.

My concern is that if the economy spirals and we enter into a recession or worse, Trump will make things 100x worse and will offer no real plans for recovery - see Covid response. Unfortunately I think this is the most likely outcome.

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