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Loving your country only when you win - a profile of the fundamentally un-American Republican party [1]

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Date: 2024-06-04  

“You can’t love your country only when you win.”

President Biden made that simple observation less than three months ago, during his annual State of the Union speech to Congress on March 7. The same speech that made a mockery of the right’s incessant depiction of the President as a feeble, drooling, barely breathing nonentity who simultaneously, remarkably also manages to be an omnipotent, omniscient mastermind and puppeteer who viciously uses all of the vast array of tools of the “Deep State” to target and persecute his incessantly whining, conspiratorially deluded opponents. Never understood how exactly one manages to square that circle while managing to retain any self-respect. But I digress.

The President’s point, of course, was referencing January 6 and the right’s violent attempt to overthrow the results of a free and fair democratic election. But it is emblematic of a common theme which pervades the entire putrid, rotting cesspool that is today’s Republican — a.k.a. rabid Trump cult worshipping — “party.”

Today’s Republican party very much does “love this country” only when it wins. If you can call its hypocrisies, culture wars, anti-democratic instincts and goals, and pursuit of power at all costs, regardless of means “love of country.”

But this very, very selective — i.e. warped and twisted — application of self-proclaimed “patriotism” extends across a wide spectrum of our most important institutions and traditions.

Beyond the issue that President Biden was talking about — that Republicans love — and respect the outcomes of — free and fair elections only when they win, recent months and weeks have also of course confirmed the following:

Republicans love — and respect the outcomes of — fair trials and our entire judicial system — only when they win;

Republicans love free speech — but only when it applies to speech they approve of;

Republicans love books — but only when they contain content which doesn’t offend their oh so delicate sensibilities;

Republicans love freedom of religion — but only for their preferred branches of Christianity;

Republicans love the right to protest — but only for causes they support by folks who happen to look like them and who happen to protest in their pre-approved ways;

(Some) Republicans love the right to vote — but only for certain (read: non-minority, non-Democratic) groups of people;

Republicans love the notion of self-defense with guns — but only for white people;

Republicans love the idea of accountability — but only for everyone else.

The more I think about it, the more I could go on and on and on….

It truly is breathtaking how sweeping their selectiveness is, across our biggest and most basic institutions and principles. And how much contempt their entire party has for traditions and principles which have for two and a half centuries have helped define who we are as Americans.

Since we know you can repeat some lines from year to year (i.e. "the state of our union is strong”) I would suggest a simple edit for President Biden’s State of the Union next year:

“You can’t love your country only when you win. Scratch that. MAGA Republicans, you DON’T love your country. At all.”

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/4/2244620/-Loving-your-country-only-when-you-win-a-profile-of-the-fundamentally-un-American-Republican-party?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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