My Last Day as an Accomplice of the Republican Party

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

colonCapitalDee

24 points

14 comments

thebulwark.comOtherstory

calmnegative

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Republican PartyConservatismPolitics and Identity

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Republican Party

Conservatism

Politics and Identity

The author reflects on their decision to leave the Republican Party, sparking a discussion about the complexities of party affiliation and ideological identity.

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01Story posted
Oct 20, 2025 at 6:27 PM EDT
3 months ago
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02First comment
Oct 20, 2025 at 6:56 PM EDT
29m after posting
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11 comments in 0-3h
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04Latest activity
Oct 22, 2025 at 6:32 AM EDT
3 months ago
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Discussion (14 comments)

Showing 14 comments

sema4hacker

3 months ago

2 replies

I think the likes of Stalin and Hitler had the intelligence, cunning, and control to actually lead their misguided followers. What worries me about someone like Trump is how an immoral and unethical grifter can keep fooling roughly half the population, while the puppet masters behind him push their agenda. I'm worried we're moving into an era where presidential candidates will merely be a personality, incapable of any significant train of thought, and unseen controllers will actually be calling all the shots. At least Mile Bruner came to his senses and has decided to do the right thing.

SlightlyLeftPad

3 months ago

As a luddite, is this basically what became of British royalty?

dragonwriter

3 months ago

> What worries me about someone like Trump is how an immoral and unethical grifter can keep fooling roughly half the population

If he could keep fooling roughly half the population, his support would be near constant, which isn’t what the actual evidence shows.

alextingle

3 months ago

1 reply

It doesn't matter where he's coming from. If he's doing the right thing today, then I applaud that.

_wire_

3 months ago

1 reply

Beware of any Republican political operative, beyond an ordinary voter, who is making a crossing away from the disaster of a party they've created.

The GOP has been a party of organized destruction of the commonwealth for more than 50 years, completely consciously and intentionally.

Operatives jumping ship now have a simple goal to survive to keep wrecking the commonwealth in pursuit of personal profit under the corrupt ideology that manifested Trump, and their intention is to survive to wreck for another day.

Any of them claiming to be too stupid or misinformed to be culpable for the travesty that is the GOP are at best useless idiots and more likely to dangerously insane, while those aware of the monstrosity they've been building and nurturing will bring their appetites for destruction wherever they go.

Do not offer acceptance. Let them earn it, and throw down as many challenges as possible to their objective to reach a lifeboat.

According to their own ideology, you risk losing nothing and can only gain their respect, however meaningless.

alextingle

3 months ago

No. Unless you accept people who change their minds with open arms, you can never win. It's tough to forgive people who've been so shit, but it's literally the only way fascism will lose.

chasing0entropy

3 months ago

2 replies

Trump is the lump that appears once the cancer has already taken root. A slim majority of the American populace reject the progressive status quo of the past 30 years and demand radical change. The only non-violent avenue which has net that radical change is Trump; he is the sign of much deeper societal malcontent with the facade of a 'democratic republic' which represents neither the interests of the people or the laws presented to it.

api

3 months ago

According to voter turnout about a third of the country don’t care enough to vote. Of the remainder you seem to be correct. So it’s really something like 35% who strongly disagree with the direction we have taken in the past 30+ years.

But of those I’m sure you could break them down further. It’s not a monolithic bloc.

techblueberry

3 months ago

In fairness, I think that most of the people who voted the other way did so in rejection of the status quo of the past 30 years as well, so there’s that.

And actually - I disagree with the premise, I think Trump ran as an old school Democrat, and people who voted for him equally if not more so rejected the conservative status quo of the past 30 years.

techblueberry

3 months ago

1 reply

1. I think if you were to ask people what brought about the downfall of America, I guess it would be two things, NAFTA, and essentially the bush presidency(they may not call it that but reaction to 9/11 + 2008.). Sure there is some sense of an elitism and abandonment of the working class + woke during the Obama Years, but I think that’s secondary to the other.(“It’s the economy stupid”

2. In some sense I might say where we’re at is a retreat of conservative leadership. No shining city on a hill, no American exceptionalism. Elitism without the elite, without the personal responsibility. I think part of the problem with America is the absence of optimism usually associated with Conservatives.

3. But yeah, it’s interesting you seem to get all the negative impacts of a Republican presidency with none of the positive ones.

api

3 months ago

I 100% agree about GW Bush. I think he’s the worst president of the last 100 years at least. He’s worse than Trump because he created the conditions for a Trump.

If Trump actually becomes dictator I still might not revise that, since again: none of this would have happened without the damage Bush did.

I also have a lower opinion of Clinton these days. I think he just got handed the most “easy mode” presidency since WWII. A brick could have had a great presidency in the 90s.

The greatest mistake of Bush Sr and Clinton was not going into the former USSR with a Marshall plan rebuild. Instead we let it languish and be looted by “shock doctrine” creeps and then looted again by home grown creeps. If we’d done that Russia might be like Germany and Japan.

Obama was IMO a better smarter less corrupt Clinton. Had he been elected in 1992 he would have been amazing. His problem was that he was elected in 2008 and governed like it was 1992. He was handed the keys to a burning house which he then remodeled with a nice new bathroom and kitchen.

megamike

3 months ago

1 reply

“ The republic which sinks to sleep, trusting to constitutions and machinery, to politicians and statesmen, for the safety of its liberties, never will have any,” Wendell Phillips 1850 born in 1811 Boston Massachusetts he graduated Harvard law School when he was 16

sema4hacker

3 months ago

...and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.

~ Benjamin Franklin, Closing Speech at the Constitutional Convention (1787)

BizarroLand

3 months ago

It's important to note in the midst of all of this self revelation that there are undoubtedly tens or hundreds of people all around you who have been saying what you're just now figuring out for years.

If in the future you encounter many people mentioning the qualities of a thing, it might be a good idea to consider the wisdom of the crowd.

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ID: 45650226Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 1:51:04 PM

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