In 1962 Ronald Reagan said, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”
I’ve been a conservative Reagan Republican my whole adult life. I still am.
All along I believed that, for the most part, in just about every way the Republicans were the “good guys”. Sure, there was a range within the party, but they were my team. And more than just their views on particular issues, to me they were just BETTER PEOPLE overall… They were people of higher character and integrity.
Conversely, the Democrats were the “bad guys”. It was the case that on almost every issue, any random Democrat held views opposite mine. And as with Republicans, my view of them as the “bad guys” went well beyond particular policy issues. I thought of them as having significantly less character, decency, and integrity.
My thinking shifted a little starting in the 2016 Republican primary season when all non-Trump Republicans were added to my “bad guy” category along with Democrats.
But recent events have significantly disrupted my nice, clean picture of the political world.
And those “recent events” would easily have Reagan himself reversing his position in that opening quote. NOW he would be with me in saying “I didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Party left me.”
Ukraine: 9/11 Every Day for Two Years and Counting
The watershed issue (those “recent events” mentioned above) that precipitated this disruption of my clean, pretty little political map was the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
On February 24, 2022 Russia launched an all-out military assault on the entirety of Ukraine. Missiles, rockets, artillery, fighter jets, bombers, bombs, attack helicopters, tanks, and nearly a quarter million troops flooded across Ukraine’s borders, committing unspeakable atrocities, targeting RESIDENTIAL buildings, hospitals, schools, churches, reducing entire large cities to rubble. In every case when an area is reclaimed by Ukraine they find torture chambers, mass graves, bodies strewn along streets with their hands bound behind their backs with bullet holes in the back of their heads. They often uncovered evidence of torture, rape, and child deportations.
And most of these atrocities have been against CIVILIANS — DELIBERATELY — not some case of collateral damage, bad aim, or just the occasional honest mistake.
It is probably the most clear case of mass, industrial-scale evil committed in our lifetime (and “being committed”… IT IS ONGOING AS I WRITE THIS in March 2024).
There is no “other side” to this situation. There are no other considerations, concerns, or context that changes this basic picture.
THIS is our 1938-1939. If you don’t know what 1938-1939 means, Google “what happened in 1938 1939?” and read the first ten search results. If you don’t trust Google, do the same search using any search engine. Search
DuckDuckGo for “what happened in 1938 1939?”.
The civilized world was initially unified in recognizing Russia’s unprovoked barbarism against Ukraine, and calling it out for what it was, and coming to Ukraine’s aid with military supplies and humanitarian aid.
The magnitude of THIS event DWARFS any other. THIS is the most significant global event of this century so far. Nothing else is close, and certainly not the “invasion at our own southern border”.
The Trigger
But THEN SOMETHING HAPPENED — MOSTLY IN THE U.S. — starting a few months after the invasion started.
Gradually more and more elected politicians, media commentators, etc., ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY ON THE REPUBLICAN SIDE — PARTICULARLY FROM THE MAGA SEGMENT of the party (the “good guys”), started criticizing Ukraine and President Zelensky, and opposing sending ANY military aid.
WHAT HAPPENED? The initial reaction and response of shock, outrage, and unity behind defending Ukraine — the OBVIOUSLY ONLY RIGHT, GOOD, and MORAL POSITION — got all fuzzy.
All of a sudden:
- “We have our own invasion on our southern border, we can’t worry about Ukraine’s borders”
- “Zelensky is a dictator who bans religion, opposition political parties, critical media…”
- “NATO expansion is the reason for Russia’s invasion”
- “It costs too much”
On the worst end of that spectrum were a vocal segment that consistently criticized Ukraine and Zelensky while failing to even mention anything negative or critical at all about Putin and Russia.
Some go as far as to FAVOR Putin and Russia.
And NO, we’re not talking about random, uneducated, street-level kooks here, we’re talking Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Rand Paul, Tulsi Gabbard.
Pro-Level MAGA
The VAST MAJORITY of your typical MAGA rally attenders OPENLY and PASSIONATELY support the genocide. But they are basically “sheep”. They don’t do much thinking for themselves (and this is putting it kindly).
I imagine that if Trump and other MAGA leaders came out tomorrow supporting aid to Ukraine and condemning Russia, the sheep would follow them there too.
So THEIR evil is an order of magnitude less than that of the “Professional MAGA Class” — the “conservative” media people (think mostly Newsmax, OANN, FoxNews) and the elected politicians.
It’s evil to allow oneself to be led to follow evil, but it’s a whole other level of evil to LEAD the sheep to evil.
All the professional MAGA class…
- KNOWS that all this malinformation is FALSE.
- KNOWS that we’re talking about 0.65% of our budget, and that MOST of that is in the form of old weapons and supplies from storage, NOT CASH.
- KNOWS that there is plenty of auditing/oversight and that none of this aid goes toward Zelensky buying yachts and mansions or any other corruption.
- KNOWS that all the stories of Russian war crimes and the mass targeting of civilians are true.
- KNOWS that this is very consistent with Russia’s history.
- KNOWS that the scale of death, pain, bloodshed, and destruction DWARFS 1000X anything else going on in the world today, let alone “our own invasion at the southern border”.
These are educated people who definitely have access to the real information about these issues. Congressmen, media, etc. have research staff and other resources. They CAN find out the truth if they wish, so if they ARE ignorant, IT IS DELIBERATE.
They do not get a pass for being uninformed.
When they run to a microphone or write a Twitter/X post arguing against an aid package for Ukraine, they are COMPLICIT in supporting this genocide. And they do so KNOWINGLY.
Whether they come to their position on their own or through arm-twisting from Trump (which DEFINITELY is at the heart of much of it), THEY ARE EVIL. They are guilty of knowingly supporting pure evil in furtherance of PROFIT, POWER, POSITION, and INFLUENCE… things I formerly thought only Democrats did.
As I understand, still a majority of Republicans in the House support Ukraine aid, but even many of them are not without guilt. If even TEN (out of 219 Republicans) agreed to vote with Democrats to bypass Speaker Mike Johnson’s obstruction (the “discharge petition”), the aid package would be brought to a vote and easily pass.
TEN out of 219! And why don’t they? I’m sure there are at least ten who strongly support the cause of Ukraine, at least in word. And there are FAR MORE than ten who would vote to approve Ukraine aid if it were allowed up for a vote. Why can’t TEN of them come together to correct this evil? BECAUSE THEY FEAR FOR THEIR POLITICAL FUTURE. They’re afraid Trump will call them out, and will call for a primary challenge.
* At the time of this writing (March 2024) Trump is dominating the Republican Party, and Trump and his Pro-MAGA allies are solidly in this pro-genocide camp.
My Red Pill
At the beginning of this article I described how I used to see the political world as rather black and white, with the good guys and bad guys relatively easily distinguishable: Republicans were good, Democrats and non-Trump Republicans were bad.
And I think I’ve more than made my case above that those I formerly thought of as the good guys are the ones committing the greatest collective immorality of our generation.
But on top of that, the VAST MAJORITY of those I formerly saw as the bad guys are consistently and passionately on the RIGHT SIDE of this issue. Elected Democrats, non-Trump Republicans, liberal media, liberal celebrities, etc. SUPPORT AID TO UKRAINE.
Seemingly many of those I’ve previously LOATHED have a far superior moral compass than those with whom I previously aligned… At least on this huge, critical issue.
There are hardly any exceptions to these observations.
The MAGA Republicans have become the bad guys and Democrats and Non-Trump Republicans have become the good guys.
The Democrat Party is NOT my new political home… there are too many core issues on which we differ.
And to be frank, while the Democrats’ WORDS regarding Ukraine reflect a healthy recognition of the good vs. evil dynamic to the situation, and their words actually favor the side of GOOD, their actions are weak. Biden has been extremely slow in providing aide, always hesitant for fear of “escalation”. But as bad as that is, it’s 100X better than Trump/MAGA who can’t even identify “the bad guy” in the picture.
The realization that MOST MAGA Republicans literally SUPPORT GENOCIDE far more than offsets any other areas of agreement I may have had with them. I can’t stay with them saying “Well, they’re pretty mixed up about Russia murdering, raping, torturing, and destroying entire Ukrainian cities, but at least they oppose the woke agenda”.
But in every race for every office I will vote for the best candidate that SUPPORTS UKRAINE, no matter their party affiliation, even if it is Joe Biden. I disagree with many Democrat policies and values, but I will take a Democrat dystopia over a Republican party that sentences millions of good, innocent people to certain rape, torture, and death.
Perhaps, hopefully one day a new “Reagan” will emerge and will lead the Republican party back to the high road it occupied in the 1980s, and lead America again to be “a beacon of hope, still a light unto the nations. A light that casts its glow across the land and our continent and even back across the centuries — keeping faith with a dream of long ago” (from Reagan: Address to the Nation on United States Assistance for the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance (June 24, 1986)).