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The modern GOP has degenerated into a group of people who have agreed to tell each other and believe impossible but reassuring things, to the point that the willingness to eagerly believe all those impossible things has become the glue that holds a crumbling party together. 1/10
A wall paid by Mexico? Climate change, a conspiracy among scientists to get rich? We'll raise more revenue by cutting trillions in taxes? Trade wars are easy to win? Our most oppressed minority is white Christians? Impossible, but if you believe it, then I'll believe it too. 2/10
It wasn't always like this. GOP leadership once understood that such things were nonsense, that you might say them but never act upon them, and it governed accordingly. But over time, those who knew such things to be basic nonsense were RINO'd out by those who do not. 3/10
That's how they've ended up in the grasp of Trump, a man unrivaled in his ability to pitch the impossible. He has zero interest in whether the product he's selling can actually work; his sole concern is whether he can get you to buy it. So a perfect match of conman and mark 4/10
The GOP has also created a formidable media machine to enforce that belief in the impossible, to ensure no doubt or skepticism can creep in. Hannity, Coulter, Limbaugh, etc., act as powerful thought police, much as political commissars in the old Soviet Union once did. 5/10
Tenaciously, ferociously, they police each other's thoughts and statements, because again, it is their mutual willingness to keep believing the nonsensical that binds them together, that gives their movement meaning. If that falters, it all collapses. 6/10
And today, it is faltering. The responsibilities of actual governance have proved to be incompatible with continued belief in the nonsensical, putting the country in danger. And we find the perfect embodiment of that conflict sitting in the Oval Office. 7/10
Republicans have agreed among each other to believe that Trump is a mighty leader literally ordained by God to rebuke the libs and lead them out of the wilderness. That belief has become central to the GOP identity, and none dare publicly question it. 8/10
Yet every day, and practically every waking hour of every day, we see proof that Trump is morally & intellectually incapable of even the basics of governance. Most Republicans who admit that to themselves are not yet willing to admit it to each other, because ... what then? 9/10
Well, when the responsibilities of governance have proved to be incompatible with continued belief in the nonsensical, isn't it possible -- difficult, but possible -- to drop that belief in the nonsensical and look again with clear eyes? Isn't that the start? 10/10
