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The decline of the GOP and its moral rot is comprehensively addressed in Stuart Stevens book "It Was All a Lie".

At this precarious juncture, I'm grateful for any ally, whatever their history.

Even now, I don't think most people grasp the depth of the abyss we're facing.

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Trump's hold on the general public is nothing more than a reaction to the unfettered corruption and sweeping overreach of the Liberal Governments around the world, who took liberties with human rights over every facet of their lives during the pandemic and in all other manufactured 'crisis'. The people have seen through the media fabricated narrative and are fighting back. It's as simple as a stock market correction. It's happening and it had to happen, because that's how human nature works.

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It would be very convenient for anti-anti-Trumpers and reflexive critics of liberals to be able to blame Trump's popularity on anyone but the right. Unfortunately, reality doesn't present them with such an off-ramp. At this point in the game, we know why people like Trump, and in large part it has nothing to do with what liberals did or didn't do.

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Nothing happens in a vacuum, and the last 3-4 years, over the pandemic, we've seen the greatest Government overreach, censorship of free speech and violations of human rights in the West since World War 2. You can't excuse the unreasonable behavior of the Left no matter how you want to spin it. What has happened has been nothing short of shocking, and all justified and propped by corporate agendas, lobbyists and a brainwashed unsuspecting the public. The pendulum HAD to swing the other way, and it's going to swing hard.

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This piece is an example of how to exacerbate the culture war.

It was going really well until we get to the "Lizzy Come Lately" section. Is it really necessary to address her in such a familiar and condescending manner? Perhaps this was an attempt at being cute. If so, it fails miserably. This is also a tactic Trump uses all the time - call his detractors names.

Further on in that section we come upon "(s)he was not above crude and dishonest smears..." Gun control is one of those issues where there are strong passions on both sides. You're never going to come to any kind of compromise or consensus if you stoop to calling sincerely held opinions on the other side "crude" and "dishonest." As a first step, you should assume those you disagree with are being honest and acting in good faith until they prove you wrong.

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On the contrary, the culture war is propagated by unthinking absolutism, the kind that imposes an us vs. them binary that never admits of degrees of complexity. Culture war thinking is: "Liz Cheney did this thing we like, and she is useful to our broader perspective on Trump now, so we will cover her as though we cannot say a single thing about the fact that she played a role in enabling his rise to begin with." Liz Cheney's post-Big Lie/Jan. 6 convictions about Donald Trump are laudatory, and this piece devoted most of its space to praising them. But if it would have ignored her past enabling of Trump, her enabling of him at a time when it wasn't exactly a mystery how historically dangerous Trump could be for the country, it wouldn't have served readers and it would've kept us from appreciating the precise danger of this threat: which is that he relies on a pliable political class to successfully carry out his plans.

Sincerely, though, thank you for reading.

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She should. Like Tim Miller did.

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