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Twenty years ago, I used to believe that stories like this were outliers, and that Republicans in general were decent humans like the ones I know.
But they're not. Republicans who aspire to leadership seem to be universally narcissistic, unable to empathize, greedy, and unconcerned with the wake of disaster they leave behind them. That they are as a group all of those things simply cannot be argued against in light of our current state of affairs. But they also appear to be shitty people as individuals.
Today I truly believe that if everyone assumed that to be true, and were ready to pounce on the behavior they know they're going to see sooner or later, we would have to kick the weed-sellers out of jail to make room for them all.
Social scientists have already agreed upon a term for Republican politicians. They are "double right-wing authoritarians," and in the broad strokes they are indistinguishable from the politicians who bolstered Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Stalin, the Kims, Duvaliers, and so on. Today's politics define them as "Republicans" here, but history is replete with their ilk going back to the dawn of records, across all political spectra.
Our society will never recover from the damage they have caused until we find a way to contain them, perhaps by identifying them early, watching them closely, and busting the snot out of them the first time they behave in accordance with their base nature, rather than letting them quietly rise through the ranks to positions where they can cause major damage.
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