Letters to the Editor

Letter: The future of politics

Steve Haycox’s interesting commentary asks what the new synthesis of political ideology will be. I believe a sharp punctuation is necessary.

For the past 40 years, the Republican Party has been moving steadily rightward. Like the proverbial frog not realizing the water around him has been rising to a boil, Republicans, sticking with their tribe, seem mostly unaware that compared to historical standards, to what is ideologically possible, and to the rest of the Western world, the GOP is now an extremist party, not too far from the far right German ADF and the French National Rally. Of course Republicans accuse Democrats of being the extremists, but it is a standard propaganda technique to accuse opponents of what you are most guilty. Europeans laugh at the idea that Joe Biden is a socialist or extreme leftist.

The reductio ad absurdum of America’s rightward shift has been Donald Trump, a lying, corrupt, inept, ignorant clown who, non-stop, spews baseless claims, many accepted by a majority of Republicans, including the party’s top leaders.  How do you synthesize this? How do we return to reasoned, factual analysis, and a healthy conservative party that does not pose a threat to organic and democratic life on the planet?

Should we elect leaders that only tell hundreds of lies instead of Trump’s thousands, and elect a president who speaks to us at the seventh-grade level instead of the fourth-grade level, as Trump does? Or maybe the GOP can agree, like the queen in Alice in Wonderland, to only believe impossible things before breakfast, rejoining the reality-based world for the rest of the day?

What the U.S. needs is a profound restructuring of the GOP, or the creation of another party that represents conservative interests in an intelligent, constructive, reality-based manner.

— Phil Vermeyen

Trapper Creek

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