Republican Evil

Bush's legacy continues. We all know he started the Iraqi civil war when he dismissed the Iraqi police and military, all Sunnis. This freed the majority Shiites to rebel, with the help of Shiite Iran. Then we tortured Sunni fighters, leaving them desperate and humiliated. In response, they started ISIS and destabilized the entire mid-East.

Meanwhile, Iraq is run by mainly Shiites, organized into factions. The country is corrupt and in February there were protests with over 500 killed. The pandemic has made oil prices drop and poverty has risen, worsening the effects of the rampant corruption. There was an uprising again today.

This is the legacy of the Republican Party- including Libertarians. They elect incompetent leaders using childish philosophies and false stories about Democrats, scaring their base into supporting them. They've done incredible damage to humanity and America.

The Republican Party is evil. They show this constantly in the lies they tell.

Trump is the biggest liar, telling whoppers daily. As a narcissist, he has no ethics, no morality- he's capable of any evil. And he's stupid. He sued his high school to ensure they never showed anyone his grades. He hired someone to take the SAT for him. He threatened U. Penn to neither release his grades or his SAT scores. He doesn't read or even listen to intelligence reports.

Any halfway decent president could have run the Coronovirus epidemic better. Trump even has a well respected doctor on his staff that knows how to do it- protect nursing homes, increase testing, ensure workers and teachers take sick time the moment they feel bad, ensure there are plenty of PPEs (personal protective equipment) and cleaning supplies. Ensure the expensive drugs that saved Trump's life are mass produced and available to everyone for low or no cost. And set an example of safety by social distancing, wearing masks, and avoiding groups.

Now he's also attacking the upper echelons of the government, the civil servants who've protected us by keeping much of the government running while Trump has been in front of his shit-show.

A few Republicans understand this evil and no longer support him. They now see the evil that's come from their lies. 70 Republican national security officials endorse Biden.

But most of them are still evil. They haven't yet admitted how they helped form this culture of evil. They haven't admitted that Bush's lies were part of it. Or that Gingritch's power-at-any-cost strategies forsake morality and corrupted democracy. Or that during Obama's years, McConnell's main goal was to stop any good legislation to ensure Obama was a one-term president. p>They cling to their evil by ignoring it. They haven't yet apologized. True remorse is shown by convicted criminals who when released, spend their lives speaking in public to make amends. Republicans have caused thousands of people, hurt millions of people, tortured thousands, both in Iraq as well as immigrant parents and children. They cling to their evil by rationalizing it.

Anti-Trumpers haven't yet apologized. Though they see the evil in Trump, but they don't yet see the evil in their own simplistic ideas and the lies they tell about democrats, liberals and progressives. They can't see that their generalizations and way of speaking are false, wrong. They don't study the ramifications of trickle-down economics. They don't see that while they name-call "tax and spend democrats", they themselves are "borrow and spend republicans."

Republican tax breaks and wars have given us incredible debt. To maintain the stock market, they've created a system where only the wealthy get wealthier.

And now their stupidity has saddled us with Trump who has weakened America in every sense.

Trump's lies are everywhere. Remember the tariffs with China that every decent economist told him not to do? Any competent president would have put programs in place before-hand to cushion the blow to America's small farmers and businesses. Trump did not, so many went bankrupt. After months of failure, Trump did a deal that was just a little worse than its predecessor, and called it a huge win. His stupid supporters believed him.

The problems with China meant we couldn't powerfully support Hong Kong. Of course, Trump doesn't care about them, just like he has never cared about any of our allies.

In the debate, Trump said Obama told him a war with North Korea was likely. The bit of truth in this is that it's because either we'd need a war with North Korea to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon. Trump bungled this and North Korea has made progress towards nukes.

Similarly, Trump voided the deal with Iran, and they're also much closer to having nuclear weapons.

Trump's drone attack in Iraq on Qassem Suleimani was naive. It was stupid. It also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was holding together the Iranian militias. With his death, there was a fight for control. There was also a shift from these militias being corrupt, even anti-Iraq, to them protecting Iraq from American plots. Bush destroyed Iraq. Trump has stupidly added to its instability.

The Democrats aren't good. But they're okay. Their party has continually supported staying in power rather than reform politics. We need to pass the Anti-Corruption act to end the conflicts of interest in Congress, a phrase meaning "corruption". We need to switch to use approval-voting, or at least instant-runoff-voting, so the two parties don't have a lock on power.

But they try. The Democratic party admitted that the party support of Hillary against Sanders was wrong. Obama admitted that he had failed to unite the country. Yes, Biden defended himself by telling told us that his 1995 crime bill had bipartisan support (true- see below.) But he also said that we all learned it was a mistake.

(No, Hillary never admitted to the many accusations made about her by Republicans. Almost all of these were mostly lies or pure lies. She did admit she shouldn't have used a non-government email server. And Republican committees found her not guilty of any crimes, just as they found Joe and Hunter Biden not guilty of any crimes. Trump continues to lie about both.)

Real people admit mistakes. Good people admit mistakes. Trump almost never does. When caught, he either says they were jokes, denies he said them, or, usually, just repeats the lies. Then Republicans in Congress and the Senate also repeat his lies because they value power over morality. The Fox network and other conservative media also repeat the lies because they value money over morality.

Democrats themselves aren't a group. They consist of a wide range of people. Yes, there are a few socialists and even a few communists among them. But the vast majority are completely different from the way Republicans paint them. Most are moderates.

Yes, most believe in freedom and liberty so could be called liberal. Yes, most want America to fix the country's problems, so could be called progressives.

In contrast, Republicans want to go back to a time when the problems were just beginning, so were not yet known. Or back to a time when the problems were there, but hidden. Many want to return to a time when they were children, ignorant about the huge injustices in America, the festering problems, and the evil of lying. Many are so desperate that they deny the huge evil their supporting.

Rand Strauss. I've been a registered Democrat, Republican and independent. I am mostly non-partisan, critical of both parties. Like America's founders, I believe political parties are inherently bad. I write about an alternative on blog.peoplecount.org

The 1994 Crime Bill: The original bill was introduced by Joe Biden in late 1993. After a series of amendments, the house took it up as House bill 3355, and passed it by voice vote. Then it passed 95-4 in the senate. After resolving differences, it passed 235-195 in the House and 61-38 in the Senate.