It is time to recognize reality. The Bible-thumpers, reactionaries, racists, and miscellaneous paranoid morons comprising Red America are not our fellow countrymen. They voted for Trump largely because he would “own the libs” and inflict pain on us. They are our enemies, they hate us, and they are actively waging aggressive war against us. I have nothing in common with this horde of gibbering barbarians.
I dislike “are not our fellow countrymen,” though I can’t say exactly why. Certainly, Albert the Pious et. al. are affirmatively hostile to the Enlightenment ideals that undergird the nation’s founding and have made plain through the years that they don’t much admire Thomas Jefferson. Nor do I really like “They are our enemies,” though I know and have documented that much of the Evangelical Right view people like me as the enemy.
But, though I feel a bit squeamish about some of the language even as I endorse the sense of it, I read in this the same thing I’ve said countless times through the years: There will never be any reasoning-with, or accommodating, the loonies from the fever swamp. They must be defeated — humiliatingly defeated — and pushed out to the margins of our shared public life.
The Birchers and the KKK were once universally understood to be sick fringe characters … sad, screwed-up little men, not to be taken seriously. Famously, William F. Buckley, Jr., spearheaded the effort to drive them from the GOP. They’re back and, thanks to Donald Trump, they are the GOP.