On the eve of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, American politics has gone completely batshit crazy. Where the Republican leadership spent millions of dollars only a few weeks ago pillorying the highly flawed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in Senate primary, they are now falling over themselves to support him. It no longer matters that he has been investigated for securities fraud, been impeached by his own party and that is wife is divorcing him over his adultery.
On the Democratic
side leading Democrats continue to support Graham Platner, their preferred
Senate candidate in next week’s Maine primary. Those leaders choose to ignore
the fact that Platner is a Jew-hating neo-Nazi who has a habit of sexting a
half dozen women while still being married. Several years ago, Anthony Weiner’s
New York City’s mayoralty campaign collapsed over his infamous dick-pix.
What is going on? It
seems that the hatred of MAGA-Republicans for their Democratic counterparts overwhelms
any sense of decency and the Democrats hatred of the MAGA-Republicans, if
anything, is greater than the Republican hatred of them. Of course, the
polarizer-in-chief, Donald Trump has set the tone for the divisions in our
land. However, I would caution to note that Trump is the product of something
that has been brewing in our politics for a long time.
My guess is that the infighting
we are now witnessing is reminiscent of the religious wars of the late Middle
Ages. Thus, if we are in a religious war where politics has substituted for religion,
compromise is impossible. Recall that our founders wanted to separate religion
from the state, but the fanatics in both parties are now making that difficult
causing our founders to turn over in their graves.
