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I’m tired of being told I must “reach across the aisle” and learn to work with deplorable people. I hear this lecture constantly. Oddly, nobody ever scolds the people screaming at me to look at things from my point of view.

Republicans are always handled with kid gloves. I always get a fist, and I’m expected to thank my abusers and “smile more.”

It hasn’t worked.

Why must I always be the one to compromise? Why does “we have to work with people with whom we disagree” end when it comes to progressive ideology?

Everywhere you look all you see is people trying to embrace “reformed” Republicans. A grand dragon of the KKK can throw off his hood in the morning and have a leadership position in the afternoon.

“What?” Democratic leaders whisper if you offer a hint of criticism. “He’s reformed! We take his word for it. Why can’t you? Why can’t you be the better man?”

The rest of us are expected to bend over backwards and pat him on the back and coddle him and tell him how great he is and insist we are overjoyed to have him on our side.

Meanwhile, he storms into the office refrigerator and begins urinating on all the food. If we complain, we’re the bad guy.

“You’re only going to make him more set in his ways.”

Why are we so concerned about the feelings of racists, rapists, and child predators?

Frankly, I think we’re skipping over a pretty major part of the equation. That part is the fact that absolutely everything Republicans have done for the entirety of my lifetime has ruined our society.

They’re incompetent. They deliberately destroy everything they touch. They hurt people. They only want to enrich themselves. They treat decent people with disrespect and open hostility.

Republicans leverage shame, guilt, and an undeserved sense of entitlement to always get their way. They’re abusers in every sense of the word.

Why is it the expectation that we must work with them?

Why aren’t we opposing them?

Why aren’t we deconditioning and reeducating them?

They urinate in our faces and laugh and somehow we’re the bad guy if we say we don’t want to take it?

Republican ideology has made our lives difficult. It’s an expression of complete and total cruelty. At what point will we ever see any reparations made for all the crimes of indifferent and deliberately incompetent conservatives? All Republicans do is claim the labor and victories of others for the sake of their own selfish enrichment.

We’re under no obligation to pretend that isn’t the case.

Republicans have wholly embraced rape culture. They have cast their vote for adjudicated rapists and sex offenders. They try to lower the age of consent in states across the nation. They have stolen women’s bodily autonomy. They refuse to put forth any reasonable gun control legislation that would save our children from being slain by deranged white supremacists.

Theirs is an ideology that burns books. They create huge tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of our healthcare, education, and ability to live. Why is it that all we’re ever supposed to do is appeal to them in the hope of finding some illusion of a middle ground?

There’s no middle ground with an ideology that’s committed to your destruction. There should be no decorum with hostile groups that have no respect for the boundaries of basic humanity.

That’s what we’re up against.

On top of all this, Republicans constantly engage in baseless criticism of the innocent, responsible, accomplished and diligent. They call us “weak.” They call us “snowflakes.” Those are the only words they use which are not too profane to print.

Republicans are haughty, self-righteous, and always insist they can claim an undeserved moral superiority. They speak only lies and insist they are examples of self-evident truth. If you call them out, they engage in mockery:

At what point are we going to hold Republicans accountable? At what point are we going to recognize collectively as a society that anybody who ascribed to this philosophy made a colossal error in judgment which reflects poorly on their fundamental character?

Even in the absence of the privilege of a decent education, human intuition should know it’s wrong to hurt, exploit, and oppress people. What kind of person is so obsessed with accruing their own personal fortune that they are willing to subject their fellow human beings to unspeakable torment?

Republicans always want to get out ahead of any criticism, and they do this through preemptive assaults on the innocent. They’ve transgressed against us enough to warrant a forceful response.

When are we going to wake up and deliver it?

The constant attacks by Republicans have become normalized to the point where the population accepts them as our daily reality. But the truth is that we don’t have to live like this.

Republicans have a lot of work to do in order to make up for all the misery they’ve caused.

It’s time that the general population realized we have a right to be restored. I, for one, am sick of being stuck constantly cleaning up after Republican messes. Meanwhile, these deliberately ignorant and indifferent oafs, stomp through life without any awareness of the chaos they leave in their wake.

They sow the seeds of destruction and our children are forced to reap the terrible consequences.

These transgressions will not stand.

It’s time to cry “STOP!” and place blame where blame is long past due.

It does not serve humanity for us to go blindly into the future constantly allowing our entire political ideology to be tugged further and further to the right. Now we are in need of a response. We have virtually no progressive representation in our government at any level. This is why nothing works. Our current reality is the worst anyone I’ve talked to can remember no matter how old they are.

Conservative, Republican, right-wing politics are to blame. This is the ideology of cruelty. They insist on imposing outdated and irrelevant traditions on our modern reality. This misguided industriousness inflicts agony on us all. Why do we permit Republicans to exist in the delusion of self-righteousness when they rightfully deserve to feel unbearable shame?

Let’s not reach out to them in an appeal that they might join us. Instead, let’s push them from the room so that the adults who actually care about humanity can get to work unimpeded.

Why do we have such a fixation on the redemption arc in the United States of America? Why are we so willing to look past the actions of inept and incompetent men, even as we disregard the achievements of those that are conscientious, compassionate and accomplished?

Elections are always on the horizon. As they approach, Americans have a choice. Are you going to choose yet another helping of the same misery and incompetence that has tormented us all of our lives? Are you going to be content with a so-called “redeemed” version of the same contorted mindset?

Or are you going to finally push away from the false comfort of a known failure, and find the courage to embrace an unknown possibility that offers the chance of prosperity?

It’s time to elect progressive-minded people. We need leaders who respect rational thinking. We need leaders who can look back on their lives and see a series of achievements rather than cruelty and crimes.

The only skill Republicans develop is the ability to make others take the blame for their ineptitude.

Let’s elevate a new generation of voices. Let’s rally behind a generation that’s committed to protecting human dignity and creating prosperity for all.

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