Many historic events can be compared to a great phoenix that rises from the ashes. The phrase itself originates from ancient Greek folklore, in which the phoenix is a long-lived bird that regenerates - or is reborn - by rising from the ashes of its predecessor. Some legends say it dies in a show of flames and combustion, others that it simply dies and decomposes before being born again. Its first appearance was in the 6th century B.C. and it has since come to our modern culture in a variety of ways, being applied to San Francisco's rebuilding after the 1906 fire and Swarthmore College's newspaper - appropriately named The Phoenix - following the fire in 1881.
Even today, the city of Phoenix, Arizona came by its name because it was a rebuilt city on the ruins of a previous civilization at the same site.
In that vein, it is time to rebuild one of America's institutions of democracy: the Republican Party, first founded in 1860 by Abraham Lincoln. Before a sane, responsible political party can rise like a phoenix from the ashes of today's dangerously unhinged GOP, there must be ashes from which to arise. The nation is going to have to destroy the Republican Party if it wishes to save it.
Parties reform and rebuild themselves after suffering massive, scorched-earth defeats. Since Republicans decided to follow Donald Trump and Fox News into the dystopian hellscape of white supremacy, paranoid conspiracy theory and know-nothing rejection of science, they lost control of both chambers of Congress and the White House. Yet, it has become obvious that those defeats are not nearly enough.
You might think the violent and deadly January 6 insurrection at the Capitol - an unprecedented attack on our democracy, incited by Trump's election-fraud Big Lie - would snap the GOP back into reality. Unbelievably, though, you would be wrong, as another attack was predicted on Inauguration Day and another one earlier this month.
If anything, the party is heading deeper into the wilderness. Look at how the two most powerful Republicans left in Washington behaved recently. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to bend the knee to Trump. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky questioned whether Trump's second impeachment trial was even constitutional.
What had looked like a flicker of sanity earlier, when McCarthy said Trump, among others, had some "responsibility" for the Capitol riot and McConnell said Trump "provoked" it, was nothing but a mirage.
No one should have any doubt: The GOP of 2021 bears no resemblance to the party of Abraham Lincoln. It is now the party of representatives who believe in the hallucinatory QAnon conspiracy theory: who have suggested that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is a child murderer; and who think 2018's California wildfires may have been ignited by a giant space-based laser somehow controlled by Jews. Also, high-speed rail is involved somehow.
Do mainstream Republicans still believe such nonsense? No, but down by only 10 votes in the House and with a tied Senate, they do believe they are within striking range of regaining control of both the House and the Senate in next year's midterm election, and they are choosing power - or its prospect - over principle.
For the sake of their party and the nation, those hopes must be utterly dashed.
The 2022 midterms have to be more like 2002, during President George W. Bush's first term, when his party gained seats in both the Senate and the House. That uncommon result was generally attributed to a groundswell of solidarity following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. But the nation - right now - should be equally traumatized. In January, the United States lost more than 95,000 people to Covid-19 - the equivalent of a 9/11's worth of death every single day. Just a couple of months ago, we saw the Capitol sacked for the first time since 1814. And a majority of the Republican rank-and-file clings to the lie that the election was somehow stolen from Trump, even four months later - and despite evidence to the contrary.
GOP House members who have the integrity to stand against the party are under withering attack from their fellow Republicans. The warning to Republicans is explicit: Effectively purge Trump from the party at your own peril.
The GOP will not or cannot reform itself. So, we must help the party by crushing it.
The fact that dozens of major corporations, such as Walmart, Google and AT&T have announced they will not give campaign donations to Republicans who voted to decertify the 2020 elections results is a start. But we consumers need to demand that corporate America go further by insisting that trade associations follow suit - and that companies at least ask their executives to refrain from giving to GOP Super Political Action Committees, the dark-money realm where donations are not statutorily bound by tight limits.
The choice is binary and stark: If you do not believe in Jewish space lasers, you cannot vote for Republicans. And if you loved the old Republican Party, you cannot have it back until you smash today's GOP to smithereens.
Thus, the Republican party needs to rise like the phoenix from the ashes.
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