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A friend retweeted a Twitter posting where a conservative supposedly defined ‘woke.’ The tweet contained nothing that any linguist would consider a ‘definition’ but rather a word-salad screed about what they considered the dangerous aspects of ‘woke’ including unsupported assertions of ‘death cult’ and the like. My friend commented in his retweeting that it is was important to know ‘the enemy.’

Now, I am not going to get into the futile and unproductive argument over what is ‘woke.’ In my opinion that term is used as carelessly as ‘fascist’ was deployed by many for decades prior to our current social political crisis.

What I am fascinated with is the term ‘enemy.’ An enemy is someone or faction that you cannot reasonably work with without degrading or corrupting your own standards. The overuse of ‘enemy’ in domestic political terms leads to a breakdown of governance.

If you want to tax high income people at a greater rate than others, that doesn’t make you an enemy. Policy, in general, isn’t the basis for enmity but rather disagreement. It is possible to have serious, vigorous, and even heated debates and arguments over policy without being enemies.

However, when you describe your political opponents as wanting to ‘destroy civilization’ and ‘end the nation’ then you make it impossible to work with them. Your very language has placed them beyond the pale of acceptability and that chains your own actions.

Look at the war in Europe. Many people on both the left and the right see the vital importance in assisting a democratic and free nation in defending itself against a brutal, savage war launched by its dictatorial neighbor. And yet that assistance to held captive and withheld because to actually do the work to get it out requires working with the ‘enemy.’

On a less critical issue, keeping an insurrectionist out of the presidency, political aid is coming from those who served with the insurrection in his previous administration. I have no love for Pence. I know that given the chance he would harm those I care about with his deluded sense of morality, but I will not label him an ‘enemy’ making it impossible to work with him.  I will accept his assistance but never forget what it is he is and what he would want to achieve.

The word ‘enemy’ is dangerous and should be applied quite carefully.

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We tend to think of ‘peer pressure’ as something that is a trouble for teenagers. A scene in a badly scripted After School movie where the bad kid Tommy tells the good kid Jimmy that if he wants to be cool Jimmy needs to take a drag on the joint. Of course, it doesn’t work like that in real life at all. It’s not so much as pressure from one or two people as much as it is the Fear of Missing Out. People are doing something, having fun, being social. It’s rare that anyone verbally chastises someone into participating but rather the need to maintain the social life, to be accepted, to be with the group instead of outside it that sweeps people along. It’s far less ‘pressure’ as it is a swift river’s current. it can be fought but it is so much easier to flow with the waters.

This applies to adult as much as it applies to teenagers. It is a major component of why so many rational normal Republicans now move with Trump.

Oh, there are the true Trumpists, authoritarians and neo-fascists for whom the dream of state power is a one that frightens the rest of us, but I do believe that they are the minority. The trouble is that to maintain their social lives, their social contacts, and to avoid being ostracized by their friends and peers far too many simply swim with the current. They have lived their entire adult lives with the concept that the Democrats are not just wrong but evil. It’s beyond their imagination and conception that they are now the anti-Americans. So, despite their criticisms of Bill Clinton for dodging the draft, breaking the law, or unproved accusations of sexual assault and grifty financial dealings, or their charges that Obama was an unready novice with over inflated ego, they have wedded themselves to Trump. The hypocrisy of their support is unseen they are drowned in the swift river of the need to be accepted by their peers and our nation is worse off because of their weakness.

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Back in the 1980s I can clearly recall several of my conservative/libertarian friends asserting with utter confidence that the people who voted for liberal parties only did so out of self-interest. That the goodies distributed by the liberal essentially ‘bought’ the votes of their supporter while the conservative electorate were motivated by principals and devotion to constitutional order.

As Luke Skywalker has said, ‘Every word of that is wrong.’

The GOP has been exposed as hypocrites on every vector of their supposed principals.

As the party lines up behind a candidate that scoffs at the law and the constitution it is clear that the only thing that motivates them is the desire to get what they personally want. Principals are for suckers.

Tax cuts for the wealthy.

Deregulation of the industrialists.

Oppression of minorities for the authoritarians.

And guns for the enthusiasts.

All other considerations secondary. Constitution expendable.

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Saturday marked the 3rd anniversary of the violent attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 US Presidential election. For a moment, and only a fleeting moment, many elected Republicans saw clearly that their party’s leader was a criminal desperate to retain power that had been duly, legally, and properly removed from his grasp. The moment passed and now the entire rotten party is as corrupt as depraved and as unworthy of the American people as their mentally addled and emotionally stunted leader.

Of course, they do not see it that way. It has been illuminating to watch ‘conservatives’ online twist, distorted and invert the traits and characteristics of their political opponents. In their projection it is Joe Biden that is the corrupt criminal, trading political access for cash. It is Joe Biden twisted and warped with anger. It is Joe Biden that is that violates the constitution and that strips the rights away from the people. Each of these imagined ‘charges’ is of course the reality of Donald Trump but the dissonance between what they want, their own selfish policies and the vehicle that must lash themselves to in order to get it breaks their minds and forces the funhouse mirror interpretation of reality, one where all their crimes are neatly placed on the shoulders of others leaving their hands clean and their morality unblemished.

But the truth remains.

It is the Republican party that has an utter disregard for the rule of law.

It is the Republican Party that strips people of their rights.

It is the Republican Party that has contempt for our two centuries of democratic rule.

It is th Republican Party that capitulates and appeases out enemies and the enemies of freedom around the globe.

They are a party of Quislings.