The Worm Always Turns

Anyone remember what Dante's three-headed beast was called? For some reason, this picture makes me think of that image but forget all of the details about it, as though I've somehow perfectly envisioned that beast.

I am not a Republican. I'm pretty sure I've made that clear. In my adult life, the Republican party has:

• Impeached a president for having an affair with interns (while it's own Speaker of the House was having an affair as his own wife lay dying of cancer);
• "Won" the presidency three times: once with the help of Vladimir Putin, James Comey, and the electoral college; once with the help of five Republican-appointed justices of the Supreme Court; and once "fair and square" with the help of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth;
• Pushed for deregulation of the financial industry (Bill Clinton is by no means innocent in that);
• turned a surplus in 2000 into a tax cut for the wealthy in 2001 and 2003, and a subsequent deficit by 2004;
• responded to a terrorist attack by a bunch of Saudis who had been receiving hospitality and protection in Afghanistan by invading Iraq;
• responded to a financial crisis (itself a result of the deregulation of the financial industry) and subsequent Republican bailout by (dishonestly) blaming Democrats and the Community Reinvestment Act;
• voted en masse against the Affordable Care Act, notwithstanding that it was proposed as a compromise between what Democrats had long wanted (single-payer) and Republicans had proposed a very similar plan in the early 1990s as an "alternative" to what the Clintons were going to propose (ultimately derided as "Hillarycare" . . . see a pattern here?; on another note, I believe the current Republican line on the 1993 Chafee bill is that it was a bad-faith distraction, but that tells you something too, doesn't it?);
• promised for 7+ years that they would "repeal and replace" Obamacare. As I write this, in July 2018, I have yet to see a replacement from Republicans that they can even pass, let alone one that does everything they promised it would do;
• refused to even allow a hearing for the legitimate (centrist, mid-60s) nominee to the Supreme Court (call it court packing or seat stealing, the end result is the same);
• trolled Democrats from 2008-2016 about how deficits were putting us all on the "Road to Serfdom," finding their voice on overspending, conveniently, after about an 8-year hiatus;
• Of course they proved their budget hawk bonafides when they turned a big deficit in 2017 into a HUGE future budget problem, by passing another enormous tax cut for the wealthy, to which they intend to respond by cutting social security and medicaid (I guess "deficits don't matter" when they're the result of regressive Republican tax cuts).

One can easily argue the merits of the above statements (which by no means represent an exhaustive list of the bad policy/bad faith coming from the Republican party since I turned 18 in 1995), but my characterization of these events clearly IDs me.

Some people think that liberals should respond in kind to Republicans. Perhaps I'm one of those people, I don't really know. However, to any Republicans out there who believe that "both sides do it" and "the liberals are even worse," I'd like to show you what "responding in kind" actually would look like (HINT: it doesn't involve electing centrists like Obama and Clinton):

But let's imagine .... Democrats win both houses of Congress this year. Trump struggles and is pinned down by the legal reckoning he's long deserved. Democrats sweep in 2020.

A proportional backlash would include not only a bipartisanship-be-damned crusade to enact an unapologetically progressive agenda. It would also include merciless gerrymandering in every state now controlled by Democrats. It would include anti-Republican vote suppression: the closing of polling places in white suburbs, along with efforts to identify GOP voters' habits and to create hurdles to voting based on those habits. 

Both sides don't do it. In the future they could. 

Voter re-registration requirements if you have voted from the same address more than twice? Single payer healthcare? Top marginal income tax rates at 90%? Inheritance taxes at similar confiscatory levels? Private education taxes? Income and property taxes for religious organizations? Performance and de-commissioning bonds for large commercial/industrial undertakings to ensure that money exists for the inevitable environmental clean up? Mandatory liability insurance on the sale of bullets?

Am I the only one who thinks that the current race to the bottom is a bad idea? That extreme ideas batted back and forth for little reason other than to troll the other side will invariably give us worse public policy? Am I also the only one who recognizes that unilateral concessions from Democrats for the last two decades hasn't made Republican behavior any better? Democrats haven't done any of the above things. 

Anyway, I need a drink. Enough ranting for one sitting.