Nothing expresses the angst of contemporary Republicans like this U. S. News article, published just a day or two ago. The first sentence says it all: "Republicans hold a dour outlook on the country. . . . Just 30% of all Republicans say the country's best days are still ahead of it." No doubt, their Party leaders have also read this article and surmise that Republicans mostly feel afraid. I wonder what their leaders will say about it. First step: give the voters some reassurance.
More than anything else, present-day Republicans need a sense of collective engagement, in order to secure their future. This presents a problem for them, because few words outrank "collective" for arousing the witch-hunter in us. Few Republicans who really believe in their political philosophy should doubt that Democrat collectivism presents a problem for the nation by devaluing individual achievement, an individual's conscience, and his ego strength.
By the same token, we need to bring our collective strength to the convention hall and make a few things crystal clear to our leaders, that we cannot go any farther with the Democrat agenda, without compromising our basic integrity. Here, we run into another problem: our Republican-Party leaders. We may like the Party, but for them, it's a job. They have put in years of hard work pitting us against the Democrats. To tell them we want to leave all that behind and govern ourselves in our own country, puts much of the Party's apparatus at risk of becoming redundant.
For years, we average-Republicans have kept politics at arm's length. Most of us have an inkling of our philosophical roots; we just don't like proselytizers. Such engagement as we have with politics has the character of a college football game. Knowing Republicans as I do, I'll bet the Party leaders host the best parties money can buy.
But Democrats will discuss their gripes with the Republicans in a second. They always know about the latest Republican skullduggery and moralize endlessly about it. If you have enough Democrat friends, you should note their use of verbal-markers that reveal their group-think mentality and help help them find each other in a crowd.
Republicans have plenty of reason to feel afraid. Their Woke adversaries work out of a cultural and historical void.
They do not advertise political philosophy, except in superficial, window-dressing terms, and have little sense of how to govern a country. They know next to nothing about history, and they couldn't care less. They operate mostly from a moral imperative, and more concretely from a desire to dish out payback and to legtitimize their lust for loot.
Not for some time have I heard Blacks and other minorities expound on the need for "Separatism," or "Self-determination," or "Autonomy." But if Republicans start talking along those lines, they will get plenty of push-back from the Wokes, who say that the Republicans are greedy and heartless; but a need for separatism is not really optional for Republicans, now. They must pursue it through hell and high-water.
Little by little, all of my Republican friends have switched off Facebook. I have cruised Facebook for almost two years and believe I understand why. There are lots of angry people out there in FB-land, and they want stuff—money, valuables, payback. Lots of payback. I compiled images of the angriest of the angry, in order to make the point that Republicans to get off their butts and request their own country. They will get nowhere with these people.
If the Woke-people believe Republicans burn down libraries, they will believe anything.
