I haven’t been writing as many posts recently.  I haven’t been especially motivated.  Plus, I suspect you didn’t want to read those kinds of articles.  But it’s time to stand up.

My idea behind this blog was the same a lot of people: use sunlight to cure bad behavior.  Governments aren’t exactly pure of heart, but the cure is to show the broken places so that we can fix the worst parts.  If it becomes obvious that, say, someone isn’t competent, or they’re behaving unethically, or violating their oath of office, or even breaking civil or criminal laws? Then it was our job was to point out those mistakes.  Most people try to hide their screwups because they’re embarrassed.  When their behavior becomes clear, I thought, either they would stop out of shame, or someone in authority will force them to stop.  We insist we’re a country of laws, and that’s what that means.

What I didn’t anticipate was a more fundamental failure.  What do you do when a swath of people insist that the ideas of shame and honor don’t matter to them?  The current administration and the corrupt GOP that props them up have shown disdain for any of that.  Almost every Republican official in power now has made it clear that they’ll sacrifice anything for the smallest partisan advantage.  There is no corruption they won’t excuse, continence, or plain deny.

Trump profiting from office?  They don’t see any of that.  Not so much as an investigation of what happens just down the street.  Undenied self-dealing by his cabinet?  Why not?  Nepotism?  Doesn’t everyone?  Openly communicating with our enemies for personal advantage, to the detriment of our nation?

Look somewhere else for outrage.

Honestly, the Republican party has been barreling down this path for decades.  I’ve written about so many examples that I’m already bored hearing each new outrage.  “Oh, lookie!  Another round of hypocrisy about deficits.”  I try to make each newly-issued lie seem obvious and exciting, but it’s so routine we all shut down.  Me, too.  We’ve seen too much nonsense disguised as principle.  After a while, we wonder if everyone lies.

But even I’m shocked at how indifferent the modern Republican party is to open criminality.  They’re unrestrained by any sense of duty, honor, or service.  And it’s not only self-serving veniality; it’s stupid.  They know they’re committing political suicide with each new outrage, but Republicans can’t find the will to rein any of their excesses.  What do you do when someone can’t deny themselves so much as the smallest of temptations?

So writing another screed about criminality won’t help.  We know it already.  Should I point out how little Paul Ryan believes in… well, anything he used to profess?  McConnell?  Do I need to mention the state-level GOP support abusers and child molesters?  Please, not again.  Should I mention anything someone says on Fox News, ever?  No.  Nobody will be surprised.  Is it still a problem when Republicans lie about their political enemies or destroy federal workers – non-partisan, career employees – just for speaking the truth?  Old hat, son.

We get it, already!  Their dishonesty has been on the table for a while now.

But where do you go when one of the only two parties in America have shown themselves to be a criminal enterprise, unable to govern our nation or even survive their short-term desires?  Can our checks-and-balances cope with that much corruption?  Not when Republicans hold majority positions in the Executive, the Legislature, and they’re stacking the courts as we sit here.

So what do we do?

We vote them out of office as soon as we can; in every election, every office, and every chance.  There isn’t time to half-step this.  The Republican party is complicit from the top down and can’t fix itself.  We’ve given them every opportunity to act decently.  And the silliest part is that we’re stupidly easy to fool.  They could achieve it all, even their oddest conservative nonsense, if they only pretended a little harder.  Republicans don’t even bother to feign honesty.  Trump isn’t an aberration; he’s their natural leader.

It’s nasty underneath, too.  While we weren’t looking, Republicans have broken a lot of the stuff we trusted into their hands.  We’re looking at local, state and federal offices and functions they’ve torn out wholesale.  We need to fix our voting system so that everyone who should vote, does.  How can any American support voter suppression?  We’ll have to unwrap generations of partisan Gerrymandering, local, state, and federal.  We need to find ways to dim the influence that money buys the rich and powerful.  We need our government to stop lying to us about what they’re doing and what they know.  Lies matter.

Most of all, we need to deny all these idiots who insist that there is no common good in America.  We need to look at every selfish, Ayn-Randian sociopath and remind them that society means living and working together for our common good.  That’s literally the definition of ‘society.’  They snort derisively, saying kindness is a dope’s game and insist that cooperation and support are for suckers.  That’s because they’re empty and hollow people.  Real men don’t grab pussies.  Real men are easily brave enough to welcome LGBTQ people as our children, parents, husbands, wives, friends, and neighbors.  People who are brave don’t strut and posture.  Honest people admit they don’t know all the answers but are willing to work it out with other people.

America can survive this Republican debacle, but we’ll have to do this ourselves.  There is nobody else who can protect us.  As much as I like his work, Robert Mueller can’t save us from the Republican majority.  We have to say ‘no’ to all of that ourselves, loudly and clearly.  No one else can do it for us.

We have to say ‘no’ when Trump fires Rod Rosenstein and then Robert Mueller.  It’s not like the Republican party hasn’t been greasing the skids for his launch.  We have to say ‘no’ when Trump lies about immigrants and refugees.  (Lying about immigrants in an immigrant nation is bad enough, but refugees, for god’s sake!  How evil do you have to be to demonize refugees!)  Republicans have broken Syria, Iraq, and half of Europe, and they’re still breaking Puerto Rico.  They’ve broken the schools and our teachers.  Push back, and they’ll deny, ignore, then pretend to be offended, stiffly and loudly swearing that anyone who questions them is unpatriotic and an enemy of America.  They’re a generation of vile patriots.

Stand up.  We know what to do.  The Stoneman Douglass kids have shown us the way.  Stand and be counted.  I’ll be there, too.  I think you’ll have a good time.