Extreme Opposites

The extreme opposites in the title can apply to both the extremely polarized political landscape in the United States, as well as the distance between the opinions offered by one of the parties and reality. Let's explore...

Elon Musk has been a lifelong Democrat. Or at least so he says. That's recently changed though, and If you're as into politics as I am, I'm sure you've seen the meme he tweeted as an explanation why he's switched over to the Republican Party; the meme shows himself, the left and the right positioned on a horizontal line representing the political spectrum over three years starting in 2008 and ending in 2021. I've linked the tweet and the meme is depicted above; according to Musk, as well as the right-wing media, the political left has become more and more extreme over the years. Musk stays in the same place, not changing his political opinions, but the radical move to the left has brought the political right towards him, as opposed to the other way around...

That meme, blaming the polarization in American politics on the "extreme left," brings us straight to the first example of how Republicans have completely lost the plot, lost all touch with even a semblance of reality. The claim that the American version of "leftism" has radicalized can only be explained by utter ignorance or willful malevolence. The truth of the matter is the exact opposite; it's the Republicans and the right-wing that have taken a flight to the most extremist positions possible. The way conservatives and Republicans sell the precise opposite of reality would have been funny if it wasn't so devastatingly evil and dangerous. The correct version of the meme is shown and explained in the first linked video.

The GOP is the self-acclaimed party of "law and order," but they're the ones fighting against the serving of justice when it comes to the January 6th criminals. They're the self-proclaimed "pro-life" party, but they're only willing to fight for the unborn while not caring one iota for the living and breathing, and fight tooth and nail to keep as many guns in the hands of as many people as possible. They're the party of faith, often refer to the Constitution as a "divinely inspired" document and worship the ground their Founding Fathers walked on, but in truth they only care about the reverence, hierarchy and the cult of leadership these historical facts provide. They don't actually care about the freedoms enshrined in the founding of the nation, as their Supreme Court is showing us right now.

Their reverence for "law and order" does shine through in one aspect though; while they shy away from mentioning, even remembering the failed attempted coupe on January 6th, 2020, they are now succeeding at their second attempt at a coupe through the powers invested in their Supreme Court. And the only difference between the two is their legality; while January 6th was illegal, the mass-overturning of protections and freedoms by SCOTUS is, technically speaking, completely legal. It's undemocratic, it's giving hands and feet to the fascism already apparent in the Republican Party and many of their voters, but no law is broken. That's even scarier and infuriating. An authoritarian, fascist theocracy is the direction they're taking the country, slowly but surely demolishing democracy and the separation between church and state.

Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and domestic terrorism; these are all fruits of the extremist far right. Political ads with candidates shooting guns, showing how they are the strong man, or woman, the people need to "set things straight." What needs to be set straight? Well, gay people, transgenders, women, non-binaries, critical race theory, "cultural Marxism," climate activists, rainbow coalitions, anti-fascists and any other scaremongering meme conjured up by these frigid white supremacist Puritans, Mormons and Evangelicals who find themselves left behind by social, cultural, technical and political progression. In their decades long fight against progressives the GOP has been a rabid attack dog, while Democrats acted, and still act like a tame lap dog. Make no mistake; the reactionary right-wing is the side that radicalized and widened the gap between the political extremes. That's the reality. It should come as no surprise though that the party that houses the near entirety of the QAnon cult, almost all climate change deniers, the majority of evolution-theory deniers and Bible and Constitution literalists will also deny that reality.

As a final example of the extreme opposites, the humongous cognitive dissonance present in the radicalized right-wing in America, feast your eyes and ears on the below linked video. Jerone Davison, a Republican who is running for congress in Arizona, put out the most insane political ad of all-time. It shows Democrats in Ku Klux Klan outfit to start with and it was directed by a certified QAnon influencer who had his share of run-ins with the law. Amazing how the "law and order" party manages to fit in so many criminal elements...

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