The Republican War on America Claims More Victims
The murder of elected officials are the inevitable outcome of GOP lies, division, dehumanization and hate targeting Democrats
The Republican war on America has claimed more victims. State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, murdered. State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, fighting for their lives after being shot multiple times.
Governor Tim Walz calls it out plainly, this was a "politically motivated assassination." A targeted act of political violence. But, this isn't an isolated tragedy— it's the rotten, inevitable fruit harvested from decades of Republican cultivation – a deliberate strategy of division, dehumanization, and stochastic terrorism that Republicans embrace and Donald Trump has turned into an art form. Division, after all, is the only thing the Republican Standard Bearer is good at.
The GOP’s Long War on a Unified America
As a young person, and not yet fully politically aware, I remember seeing Limbaugh’s countdown clock to the end of Clinton’s presidency and feeling a mix of confusion and amusement. “America Under Siege,” it blared. “Under siege from what?” I thought. The attempts to balance the budget, or the push to ensure Americans didn’t die for lack of healthcare? My young, naïve self couldn’t yet grasp the unpatriotic assault I was witnessing. But over time, I came to see it for what it was—the Republican propaganda machine churning out the grievance and hate, stoking the fires of division that Limbaugh and his imitators have perfected into an art form.
Anyone with a clue came to know that Limbaugh’s show wasn’t about honest debate or the parties sincerely challenging each other on the field of ideas. It was about poisoning the well and tearing America apart. Limbaugh was a master at creating a permanent state of outrage, giving cover to Republican policies that weren’t designed to build a strong, upwardly mobile working class—the backbone of any functioning democracy—but as weapons to hobble the New Deal-created working class. Limbaugh existed to keep the American people divided, distracted, and disempowered. A relentless assault on the very idea of a united, economically vibrant America is Limbaugh’s true legacy.
Limbaugh was the first conservative since Father Coughlin to effectively peddle the GOP’s product as grievance and “othering” of anyone who wasn’t straight, rich and white. His shameless mendacity and divisiveness were interspersed with the Republican standbys of cruelty and bigotry that only clueless racists would find funny. “Barack the Magic Negro” and his “I Ain’t Got No Home” “parodies” sure must’ve wowed ‘em at the local Klan rally.
Thanks to Limbaugh, the conservative voter once again had permission to nurture their hate like babies suckling their binkies. This is the kind of hate Trump admires so much he rewarded it by draping the Medal of Freedom around Limbaugh’s neck. Forever disgracing and denigrating an honored symbol of American sacrifice and service by bestowing it on a charlatan who built a career tearing the nation apart.
Drinking America’s Tears
“E Pluribus Unum” is anathema to the modern GOP. Their mission to "Own the libs." "Trigger the libs” or "Drink liberal tears" says it all. While Democrats are busy trying to ensure Americans are paid living wages in decent working conditions and can retire in dignity and security, Republicans treat the anguish of fellow citizens as an elixir. One may think that only America’s foreign enemies like drinking the tears of their fellow Americans, but no. America’s domestic enemies savor them too.
Wrapped in the flag and armed with cruelty, they cheer when Americans lose health care, when teachers are demonized, when government workers are needlessly fired, when LGBTQ kids are bullied, and when immigrants are scapegoated. This is the opposite of patriotism that we must continuously call out. A celebration of division and pain from a political bowel movement that thrives on cruelty. But history shows that America’s real strength comes from coming together, lifting each other up, and remembering that “we stick together, we win”—a lesson the right fears more than anything because unity interferes with their mission to drag us back to the system the founders fought a revolution to overthrow.
A Republican Vote is a Vote for More Needless Death
The consequences of the Republican war against America can be measured in more than just “crossed lines” or “shattered norms” but in a literal body count. Studies consistently show the human cost of Republican governance is seen in “deaths of despair". Red states, perpetually propped up by the economic engines of Blue "maker" states they despise, suffer the most under the very leaders they elect.
These so-called “representatives” build their political careers on funneling wealth upwards while systematically poisoning their constituents on every level. They don’t just harm them economically, but environmentally, morally, ethically and spiritually. They divide and stoke fear along every conceivable line— skin color, immigration status, gender identity. Freedom, to them, isn't the right to live authentically, see a doctor when sick or retire in dignity and security— it’s the “right” to be awful to others and control how they live. “E Pluribus Unum” is too “DEI”. The Republican motto is "Let Them Eat Hate."
The Deep Roots of Republican Divisiness
It’s well-past time to call it out. The Republican cries of "Real America" is a fabrication designed to undermine unity and cooperation. You will never hear a Democrat stoop to the same tactics. While Republicans go on about “real America”, “Massachusetts liberals” and deride “New York values,” Democrats run on inclusive rhetoric. We recall Barack Obama’s famous, “There’s no ‘Red States or ‘Blue States, just the ‘United States’”—even as the data screams the catastrophic failures of GOP governance in those states. Promoting the General Welfare is too “woke” for them, apparently. Republicans promote only division and lies. Hating immigrants in a nation built by immigrants is the ultimate “tell” that they hate the very idea of America itself.
If only Republicans were merely incompetent rather than are actively destructive. For example, in 2009, while America celebrated the end of the disastrous Bush years, key Republicans gathered in a D.C. restaurant backroom for what infamous became known as the "Caucus Room Conspiracy." There, they made a pact to sabotage President Obama at all costs. Filibuster everything. Obstruct relentlessly. In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the first Republican Great Depression, Pete Sessions' called on his fellow domestic enemies to employ "Taliban-like" tactics to cause more harm to the American people for political gain. Their constituent crying out for help be damned. The Republican plan was to deepen the economic crisis caused by Republican policies, hoping suffering citizens would blame the new president and return power to the architects of the disaster.
The violence isn't accidental— it's encouraged.
Republicans have not only stoked violence—they openly celebrate it. When Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was brutally attacked in their San Francisco home with a hammer, Republicans didn’t unite in condemnation. Instead, they mocked the assault. Donald Trump, speaking to a cheering crowd, coldly joked, “How’s her husband doing, anybody know?”
The crowd laughed along as Trump turned a violent attack into a punchline, signaling that for many in the GOP, political violence is a source of amusement, not outrage.
Trump has been stoking violence against AMericans since he slithered down the escalator, and began his campaign to help Putin divide and conquer America.
Trump routinely labels Democrats "SCUM." Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, suggests California Governor Gavin Newsom should be "tarred and feathered" and Senator Alex Padilla should be censured for trying to ask a question
Meanwhile, puffy-lipped puppy and goat-killing sociopath, Kristi Noem, claims she’s in California to “liberate” them from its duly-elected government. She says this without a hint of shame, of course, given that South Dakota receives significantly more in federal funding than it pays in federal taxes, and is kept afloat with the aid of Blue State tax dollars, many of which are generated from California, now the world’s fourth largest economy.
Then, of course, Republicans can't even utter "Democratic Party" correctly, perpetually using the grammatically incorrect "Democrat Party" – a petty, intentional slur one might expect from juveniles, not grown-ass adults in the halls of American power.
Make no mistake. This is fascism in practice. It’s the deliberate creation of an "us vs. them" where "them" are not just wrong, but evil, subhuman, deserving of hatred and, increasingly, violence.
The Minnesota assassinations are not an aberration, they are the inevitable result of generations of hate mongering Republican rhetoric.
Republican violence is a sign of their failed ideology
Trump is a profound failure. Always has been, always will. His first term left a landscape of mass graves and economic ruin, culminating in a violent insurrection he incited. His current term is a four-month blitzkrieg against the Constitution, decency, and American lives. The murders in Minnesota are blood on his hands, blood on the hands of every Republican who amplified the hate, who refused to condemn the violence, who stoked the fires for personal gain.
The mass protests that sweep the nation from sea to shining sea were a testament to the failure of this Republican “leadership.” The founders purposely created a government that promotes the general welfare so we could build the infrastructure of freedom and democracy that allows us all to enjoy our lives. There are so many things we all would rather do than spend our Saturdays protesting against a fascist coup but Republicans have given patriots no choice. Protesting the Republican war against America is the defiant heartbeat of American democracy in action—a necessary part of the response to a party at war with its own country.
Trump is a convicted felon, a traitor, a pathological liar, a waste of human DNA destined for the ash heap of history alongside all the other fascists he admires. Stopping him, dismantling his hate machine, isn't just politics. It's the solemn duty of every American who believes in the Republic. The cost of failure is measured in blood. Minnesota is paying it now.
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