Hispanic Fanatic

Fortunately, the United States has survived the insidious plot of liberals to instigate a second civil war, and we all enjoyed Independence Day without bloodshed — well, without any more bloodshed than usual, because after all, we are Americans here.

In any case, everybody is talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old Latina who defeated a 10-term Democrat in the primary election for a House seat in New York.She was a bartender a year ago, but now she’s headed to Congress.

Ocasio-Cortezis young, educated, female, and of course, Hispanic. As we all know, none of those four traits line up well with the GOP. So put them all together, and it’s possible that Republicans will burst into flames if they enter the same room as her.

Now, we heard a lot about voters in New York wanting a representative who “looks a lot more like the constituents in the very diverse district” than the “56-year-old white man” who has been in Congress forever.

That’s true, of course, which seems to bother people if we’re talking about Latinos or black people. After all, ethnic minorities are supposed to shun “identity politics.” But white evangelicals, for example, can offer record support to loudmouthed moron who shares none of their values, and it certainly can’t have anything to do with their shared race — nope.

Regardless, demographics were an important factor in Ocasio-Cortez’s victory, which is all fine and good. Butkeep in mind that Ocasio-Cortez also won in neighborhoods that were not heavily Latino, implying that her progressive ideas won over lots of people who don’t have a z in their names.

One could argue that in addition to proving the electoral potential of Latinas, her win “proves that people are ready to move away from out-of-touch, establishment Democrats.”

But of course, they wouldn’t be establishment Democrats if they weren’t hand wringing nonstop. We’re hearing from many liberals that electing bona fide progressives is impossible, and candidates like Ocasio-Cortez will turn off independent voters. Their thinking is that it’s better to play it safe and go with moderate, establishment candidates because that has so worked so well…

No really — that is their thinking.

Those of us who are progressive might mention that moderate Democrats have jack-shit to show for their timidity, and giving the people more Hillary Clinton clones is the essence of head-in-the-sand denial and the surest path to irrelevance.

Much of this attitude comes from the skittish nature of the Democratic Party, combined with its incredible talent for fucking things up and losing elections that it should win in a damn landslide.

But most it is because the Democratic Party remains enamored of the white working class — even though the WWC has made it perfectly clear that it is all in on Trump. Moderate Democrats keep insisting — despite mountains of statistical data and acres of anecdotal evidence — that if they avoid saying the word “liberal,” long enough, millions of Trump voters will suddenly abandon their hatred of Latinos and Muslims and immigrants in favor of… what exactly… expanding Medicare?

It’s interesting to note that Republicans don’t concern themselves with appealing to moderates, and they keep winning elections, despite the fact that most of America hates their agenda. Yes, conservatives can nominate a lunatic right-wing child molester and still almost win. Clearly, they play to their base, and they freely insult anyone who doesn’t agree with them, while Democrats flail pathetically and shriek, “Why don’t you like us? Pretty please?”

And speaking of agenda items, keep in mind that most of Ocasio-Cortez’s supposedly radical philosophy consists of ideas that most Americans approve of.

Still, it hasn’t stopped conservatives for attacking her for being a socialist (that’s Democratic Socialist to you) and for wanting to give all our money to gay terrorist undocumented immigrants and for, I don’t know, living in a house or something. Who can tell anymore with all the insanity from the Republican Party?

The bottom line is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could be the future of the Democratic Party.

Well, it’s either her or 78-year-old Nancy Pelosi.

Hey, I know who I’m betting on.

It looks like we can relax now.

After all, the Trump Administration is no longer splitting up families at the border and… what’s that? Thousands of kids are still missing, and there is mass confusion about how to reunite devastated families? Oh, and the United States is now officially banning visitors to our country based on nothing more than their religion, and the Supreme Court is soon to be even more reactionary than ever?

Yeah, this week was not a net win.

Before America descends completely into a jingoistic theocracy, it’s worth addressing the people who made all this happen.

No, I’m not talking about a septuagenarian racist with delusions of grandeur and an army of sycophants. I’m talking about the Americans who supported him, and continue to support this overt madness.

You see, when kids started being ripped away from their parents at the border, more than two-thirds of Americans disapproved of the policy. But well over half of Republicans thought it was just fine. This indicates one of three things:

1. Many Republicans are so selfish and indifferent to others that they’re fine with suffering as long as it doesn’t affect them.
2. Many Republicans are so filled with hatred for Latinos that they actively delight in the agony of Hispanics.
3. Many Republicans are so weak-willed that they will follow their almighty leader on whatever crazed path he takes next, and if Trump said every American had to wear a purple hat on Thursdays or be locked in jail, they would shout, “Yes, whatever you say, Mr. President.”

Or maybe it’s a combination of all those things.

To be clear, you can be conservative on the issue of illegal immigration without being a total asshole. But you cannot support locking up innocent kids — for no discernable reason, no less — without revealing to the world that you are a seriously flawed human being. You simply can’t.

And now that the policy has been reversed, the conservatives who shrieked that this cruel tactic was absolutely necessary to save our nation are now saying, “Eh, no big deal one way or another.”

Of course, the total absence of a clear goal, plan for success, vision for the future, and exit strategy was all in keeping with the GOP’s long-running tradition of just winging it.

Hey, it worked in Iraq!

So again, why did conservatives line up to zealously defend a heartless policy that did nothing to achieve its goal, and as far as I can tell, actually cost more time, money, and effort to undertake, and that nobody — really, nobody outside this White House of fanatics — was advocating for? Was it so difficult to say, “I’m for tougher border control, but this is mean-spirited and pointless,” or to admit that the GOP was wrong on this one?

Apparently, it was, because although no reputable conservative advocating for locking up kids way back in 2015, it has now become a GOP baseline.

In today’s world, with obedience to the mad king the top Republican value, we had conservatives focusing on the ubiquity of chain-link fences, in a truly dazzling display of obsessing on meaningless details in hopes of allowing yourself to sleep better at night. By the way, there’s air in those facilities, and there’s air in churches, so that makes it ok, and why do liberals hate air so much?

We had Fox News insist that these aren’t our kids, and presumably, they are not worthy of basic compassion.

We had rich white people make grotesque comparisons to summer camps.

We had cabinet officials who are apparently robots incapable of anything other than fealty to a muddled, contradictory agenda based on lashing out at the defenseless.

We had a guy make the phrase “womp womp” a catchphrase for sociopathic indifference.

It doesn’t matter that religious leaders from across the theological and political spectrum condemned it, or that major business leaders condemned it, or that a few principled conservatives spoke out against it.

No, we had Trump supporters who got angry and demanded that we all “quit trying to make us feel teary-eyedfor the children.”

Well, we all should apologize most profusely. We briefly thought Trump’s base might not be composed of ogres who lack basic empathy. As such, we should never again try to make them feel the slightest bit of compassion for anyone ever again.

Perhaps my favorite justification of the administration’s policy came from those Americans who think of themselves as kind-hearted decent people who would never — and I mean never — endorse cruelty to kids and Nazi-like tactics. They often said Americans had no choice but to support the president.

Well, here’ a brief history of that type of mindset:

1850: “I feel bad for the slaves, but it’s the law.”

1940: “I feel bad for the Jews, but it’s the law.”

1960: “I feel bad for the blacks, but it’s the law.”

2018: “I feel bad for the kids, but it’s the law.”

Yes, that all makes it ok.

It was our old friend Bill Shakespeare who wrote, “The worst is not/ So long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’ (King Lear).

I’m not a Shakespearean scholar, but I think this phrase means that in life, you can’t recognize the low point until you’re past it. The nadir is visible only in hindsight.

Indeed, how many times have we said that our team can’t keep losing, or that we can’t drop any farther into debt, or that the neighbors can’t blare their horrible music any louder than they do?

And then all those things just keep happening.

On a cultural level, how often have we said that gun violence can’t get any more horrific before a real change in our laws occurs? And how many times have we shouted that the blatant racism so many Americans endure cannot be tolerated any longer?

And then all those things just keep happening.

So it’s worth considering if Trump has reached the limits of his repugnance. Does ripping children away from their families, and then locking those kids in cages, constitute the worst thing that he has done?

For a man whose stomach-churning misdeeds are too plentiful to count at this point — and whose behavior at times seems like a heavy-handed liberal satire of an evil Republican — well, yes, this seems to be the worst thing so far.

But remember, we also said that about Charlottesville, which seems almost quaint in retrospect.

In any case, it’s difficult to imagine a more inhumane, sociopathic, un-American act than the administration’s policy of separating families. More than 2,000 children have been yanked from their parents, an action that many doctors say can lead to lifelong trauma.

And for what purpose, exactly?

Apparently, it’s the White House’s way of getting tough on illegal immigration (despite the fact that native-born Americans are a bigger threat than undocumented people). Or it’s an effective deterrent (despite the fact that it’s not).

Or it’s a negotiating tool, which is mind-boggling in its cynicism and indifference to human life. Or it’s all the fault of the Democrats, a pathetic excuse that volleys between grotesque lie and a feeble passing of the buck.

No, there really is no good reason for this change in policy. It is nothing more than the Trump Administration’s wild careening toward increasingly far-right policies, combined with an urge to appeal to its nativist base, mixed with the president’s well-documented hatred of Latinos, all topped off with Trump’s disdain for compassion, decency, or any of those weak, crybaby emotions.

It is exactly what many liberals feared back in November 2016. And it is exactly what so many rage-filled bigots voted for. And it is the absolute worst.

Which all means that the worst is yet to come.

Now in its fourth century of existence, the United States of America has withstood the birth pangs of violent revolution, a bloody civil war, the enslavement of millions of its residents, the brutal forces of racism and xenophobia, the Great Depression, multiple recessions, the murder of some of its most brilliant leaders, two world wars, Vietnam, Iraq, and the September 11 attacks.

But you know what we can’t possibly endure? You know what would break our back and destroy the nation?

That would be the impeachment of Donald Trump.

Yes, according to many commentators, impeaching the lunatic of Pennsylvania Avenue would be bad for the country, even a “grave injustice.” And plenty of Trump supporters have threatened to “begin a second civil war in the U.S. if President Trump were impeached.”

Even our old friend Nancy Pelosi said “pushing Trump out of office would further ‘divide the country’ and suggested it could do more harm than good.”

Oh, I know that two other presidents have been impeached — one just a couple of decades ago. And nobody ever suggested that trying to remove Bill Clinton from office might result in America’s collapse. Although to be fair, that was all about a blowjob, which is far more of a crisis than silly things like selling out the nation to a homicidal dictator of a hostile country. I mean, it’s about priorities.

And I know that this nation has endured warfare, natural disasters, civil rights outrages, drug epidemics, economic collapses, rioting in the streets, and even the rise of disco (that one really stung). But clearly, we’re just fragile princesses when it comes to the strain of a Senate trail of the president.

It’s best to just avoid the whole thing and go about our business.

After all, we wouldn’t want to upset Trump’s hardcore supporters, who as we know, are a minority of the population, have had their every concern or insecurity elevated to national prominence, and are driven primarily by racism, hatred, fear, and ignorance. No, let’s just kowtow to them even more than we already have.

It’s just a good thing that we’re not implying that if a subsection of America threatens violence, we’ll all give in — oh wait, that’s exactly what we’re implying. Never mind.

Well, at least we’re not saying that corruption, incompetence, and neo-fascist tendencies would actually be rewarded, rather than punished, which is horrifying in both the present and because of its ramifications for future presidents. Check that — I guess we are saying that too.

And we’re certainly, most definitely not saying that all the talk about the rule of law, and the importance of checks and balances, and the sanctity of the Constitution, and the strength of America’s institutions, and the integrity of its very culture — all that is meaningless. Oops, wrong again — we are not just implying that but screeching it from the rooftops.

But still, whatever horrors the Mueller investigation uncovers, we should all just ignore them. Yes, only good things can come from denying reality and appeasing madmen.

We should do this, you know, for America’s sake.

As I’ve mentioned before, my mom emigrated from El Salvador. She’s been a US citizen for decades now and has never regretted her decision to leave Central America.

We all know, of course, that the United States is a nation of immigrants (ok, not all of us know that).

Still, the only reason that this nation exists as a major world power is because, over the centuries, millions of people, originating from just about every country on Earth, took huge gambles and endured hardships to come here for a shot at a better life.

It’s the American Dream, right?

Well, maybe that’s no longer true.

You see, a recent article in Bloomberg asked the completely logical question “Why do Americans stay when their town has no future?”

Yes, the article is a look at our favorite fellow citizens — the white working class — and an examination of why they refuse to leave their dying small towns in search of better opportunities. After all, they are the descendents of hearty immigrants who crossed oceans for a new life. So why do they insist on sticking around decrepit mill towns and desolate farm communities, when in many cases, all they have to do is drive to another part of their home state?

The article, which makes for extremely depressing reading, quotes one low-income blue-collar worker as saying, “The American Dream is kind of to stay close to your family, do well, and let your kids grow up around your parents.”

Personally, I found that statement jarring. The article’s writers apparently agreed, calling the quote “a striking comment” because of the fact that “not that long ago, the American Dream more often meant something quite different, about achieving mobility — about moving up, even if that meant moving out.”

Let me mention here again that my seven cousins and I grew up together and were tighter than many nuclear families. That’s common among Latino families. In adulthood, we’re still close, but many of us have moved to other states to pursue the best lives for ourselves. Right now, we’re scattered around the country. In spite of having stronger bonds than most families (not a boast, just the truth), we also knew that all of us living in the same city for our entire lives was unlikely. Our parents came from other countries, so the concept of moving just wasn’t scary to us.

Contrast that to the residents of rural Ohio profiled in the Bloomberg article. They seem petrified of ever leaving their bleak environs. And this reluctance to move is “all the more confounding given how wide the opportunity gap has grown between the country’s most dynamic urban areas and its struggling small cities and towns.”

Economists are perplexed at this phenomenon. But keep in mind that these are the same people who wondered why so many Americans threw logic out the window during the Great Recession and held onto their underwater houses. One would think that economists would now have plenty of proof that Americans don’t make purely objective financial decisions and that emotions play a huge part in their behavior.

So I guess I’m saying that maybe it’s the economists who are clueless here.

In any case, “Americans have grown less likely to migrate for opportunity.” The statistics back this up. We see that “fewer Americans moved in 2017 than in any year in at least a half-century. This change has caused consternation among economists and pundits, who wonder why Americans, especially those lower on the income scale, lack their ancestors’ get-up-and-go.”

We would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that the situation has “a stark political dimension, too, given how much Trump outperformed past Republican candidates in those left-behind places.”

What many experts don’t want to admit is that the fear of moving is related to the fear of change, which in turn is related to the fear of immigrants, and so on down the scale of anxiety. The basic factor here is the terror that the white working class feels about a changing world, and its members’ strong sense of entitlement that they never have to change a damn thing in their lives because everything must to be altered to maintain their status.

Many people in these depressed areas feel that America owes it to them to make their towns boom again, regardless of the cost to the rest of the country. However, “it’s hard to argue that, say, a town that sprang up for a decade around a silver mine in Nevada in the 1870s needed to be sustained forever once the silver was gone.” That would be ludicrous. But “if all of southern Ohio is lagging behind an ever-more-vibrant Columbus, should people there be encouraged to seek their fortunes in the capital?”

Um, yeah — they should.

In essence, “America was built on the idea of picking yourself up and striking out for more promising territory.”

What’s changed?

Only the specter of crippling fear.

Don’t act so innocent.

It’s not like you’ve never lost 1,500 children.

Oh, wait… you’ve never lost almost 1,500 children. Neither have I.

Neither had anybody, really, until this flaming oil spill of a presidential administration managed the truly impressive feat of misplacing 1,475 immigrant kids who were housed with adult Americans.

The administration says that the kids aren’t lost, per se, just “unaccounted for.” So that should make us all feel better.

But really, is it any wonder that an administration that yanks children away from their parents (and then blames Democrats for the idea) is unconcerned about what happens to minors put in its charge?

There is no question that the Trump team’s sociopathic indifference to humanity, complete disdain for Latinos, and jaw-dropping incompetence have combined to create a situation where we have to ask, “So hey, whatever happened to those kids you nabbed at the border? You know, like well over a thousand of them? Any guesses?”

Of course, the other horrifying statistic that came out this week was the actual death toll of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. No, it wasn’t 64 people who died in the storm, which is the Trump Administration’s official tally. A new study says that the number is just a little, tiny bit higher — more like 4,645.

Yes, that is more Americans than died in the September 11 attacks. It is more Americans than died in Hurricane Katrina (i.e., the last time a Republican president fucked up the response to a natural disaster). In fact, it is almost as much as September 11 and Katrina combined.

But again, we’re talking about primarily Hispanic victims here. So it’s not like they really count or anything.

These are just two numbers, just two sets of stats that display the Trump Administration’s contempt for any human who isn’t white.

They are numbers that make you weep.

In my last post, I asked a simple question: What’s behind Republicans’ strong drive to halt immigration and, by extension, to stop economic and technological progress?

Well, it’s clear that the point is not — nor has it ever been — to make America great or to make sure we’re number one on some imaginary list of the world’s greatest countries.

No, the GOP’s motivation is to make sure that white people in general (and white Christian men in particular) continue to enjoy the cultural dominance they have enjoyed for a couple of centuries now. All other goals in the modern Republican Party are subservient or incidental to this top priority.

It is the reason that Latino immigrants, black NFL players, and Muslim gold-star families are all the enemy, along with many other demonized subgroups. Trump’s embrace of white nationalism cannot be denied, and efforts to do so are increasingly delusional.

This disturbing moment in history is pivotal because it offers one of the few clear-cut moral choices that defines the nation and its people. Will you support a man who is clearly a hate-filled bigot, peddling soft-core racism? Or will you, at the very least ,object to this charlatan who has made xenophobia acceptable?

It’s a pretty clear choice.

You may have noticed recently when a member of most incompetent, corrupt administration in history started talking trash about who does or doesn’t have skills.

Yes, our old friend, White House chief of staff John Kelly, said he believes that “the vast majority of undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border into the US do not assimilate well because they are poorly educated.” Kelly — whose boss is a sociopathic ignoramus who is historically unqualified for the job of president — went on to say that undocumented immigrants “don’t have skills.”

And he did this without any sense of irony, grasp of hypocrisy, or inkling of shame.

But it wasn’t just Kelly who says undocumented immigrants are too dumb to fit into America and refuse to learn English, damn it.

Noted right-wing babe Tomi Lahren said, “people who don’t speak English or who come from poverty shouldn’t be allowed to immigrate to the United States.” She insisted that “you don’t just come into this country with low skills, low education, not understanding the language and come into our country.”

Of course, it took a journalist about nine seconds to do a little research and find out that Lahren’s ancestors did exactly that, proving that “people like Lahren continue to push a specious agenda that suggests today’s immigrants are somehow wholly different from previous ones.”

Indeed, it can be pointed out that “nativists can’t keep trying to back up their argument by saying ‘the country doesn’t work this way’ when clearly it does, and has, for their families. So why do they *really* not want these people here?”

To answer that question, let’s look again at the fabled white working class (i.e., the salt of the Earth) that forms the base of Trump’s support and the emotional underpinning for conservative thought in this country.

These non-immigrants are struggling to keep up because (in theory) Latinos have stolen their jobs, the coalmines have shut down, and the assembly line has moved to China.

And it’s supposedly going to get even worse soon, as self-driving cars will eliminate millions of jobs from truck drivers who are overwhelmingly white and uneducated.

So what has been the response to these issues?

Well, most Republicans and many Democrats have sought to assuage the fears of white working class people by telling them that their low-skill jobs are coming back (any day now!), and that they don’t have to change a thing. Nope, they don’t have to take a computer class, learn a trade that’s actually in demand, or (heaven forbid) learn Spanish.

The implication, sometimes stated outright, is that too much change is happening, too fast, and we as a nation will make sure that these big mean machines don’t take anybody’s job.

So if you’re keeping track, this nation cannot accommodate immigrants who risk their lives to come here, work like demons, and often perform essential tasks that Americans don’t want to do.

However, we can slow down our economy and move our entire society backward to make things a little easier for people who refuse to even acknowledge that it’s the twenty-first century.

Interesting.

But I have a question.

Has a society — any society anywhere at any time — willfully stopped progress because the elites were afraid of how it would affect the least-skilled members of that society? I’m not being snarky. I honestly doubt this has ever happened in human history.

Remember that the Luddites failed to stop the machines from taking their jobs. In fact, their doomed insurgency is only remembered today for giving us the adjective for a backward, fearful person who is terrified of technology.

Modern blue-collar workers will not fare any better. Republicans are stoking discontent among the white working class, but at best the GOP is being disingenuous about its ability to stop the acceleration of automation. At worst, Republicans are telling overt lies while laughing their asses off about the gullibility of small-town types.

Because Republicans cannot and will not stop the self-driving cars from coming. By the way, those self-driving cars will most likely “see farther and react faster, so it makes sense to bake computer control into big-rigs, to make them safer and more efficient,” thereby reducing the grim statistic that “crashes involving trucks kill about 4,000 people on US roads every year.”

Or we could just sabotage the computer programs and make sure big-rig drivers can continue to be less efficient while killing more people on the road. Because otherwise they might have to, you know, learn a new skill.

Sounds like a fair trade to me.

Oh, and one more thing: all those kiosks that fast-food outlets have created to take the place of burger flippers? Well, conservatives love to imply that it’s because some cities have raised the minimum wage. But isn’t this just capitalism in action? After all, no company exec would say, “Yes, a machine can do this task more efficiently and for less money, but I really want a bored teenager to do the job.”

Where does all this GOP concern for workers come from, all of a sudden? I would think that conservatives — with their supposed love of the free market — would be thrilled with the idea of creating more efficient systems rather than subsidizing a low-skilled worker to do a worse job.

So again, what’s behind this sudden love for halting immigration and, while we’re at it, stopping economic and technological progress?

Well, I’ll talk more about that in my next post.

If you’re some kind of softy Nancy boy who wears his bleeding heart on his sleeve, then you might get a little emotional at the sight of, for example, screaming children being ripped out of their mothers’ arms.

But if you’re a true patriot like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then you know full well that the only way to protect America is to rip families apart and put children in jeopardy.

You see, The United States will now“take a stricter stance on illegal crossings at the Mexico border by separating parents from children, rather than keeping them together in detention centers.”

The goal is to terrify people into not even trying to cross the border without 47 forms of ID. It’s an interesting theory, especially when one realizes that many people who are trying to enter the United States are fleeing oppressive countries where death is a constant presence, and that traveling to America is already a desperate choice where getting killed en route is a chance many people are willing to take. But hey, why not make things more hellish for them?

Sessions says, “We are dealing with a massive influx of illegal aliens across our Southwest border” despite the fact that immigration — both legal and undocumented — is down, and that nobody except angry old white men actually still use the term “illegal alien.”

No matter, Sessions unveiled the zero-tolerance policy “with the goal of a 100 percent prosecution rate for all who enter the U.S. illegally.”

Quick aside: It’s interesting how conservatives are big fans of zero-tolerance policies when it comes to, say undocumented immigration and marijuana use. But they are all about forgiveness and mulligans when it comes to civil rights violations and illegal campaign payouts to porn star mistresses. But I digress.

Sessions sums up the new approach with a curt “If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”

Well, that settles it then. The Trump Administration’s policy can surely be nothing but an effective, but still humane, approach to complex problem — right?

Oh, and by the way, more than 700 children “have been separated from their parents since last October,” and “almost 1,500 migrant children went missing after federal officials put them in the homes of adult sponsors around the country.”

Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?

Never say that I am not helpful — even to people who hate me.

I’m talking about my old friends in the Republican Party, who are currently projected to lose 4,000 seats in Congress during the next midterms. Of course, if the 2016 election taught us anything, it was to not trust the polls completely. But things look pretty bleak for the GOP right now, even if the economy is defying the odds by continuing to chug along, and North Korea may actually refrain from nuking us.

Still, the Trump Administration has been, for the most part, one long nightmare for most Americans. And the polls reflect this.

So I’m offering some advice to conservatives that they can use in the next election. Here are some helpful hints for you Republicans that will help you make your pitch to voters over the next few months.

For starters, drop the whole party of morality thing. I’m not sure who ever believed this. But it’s clear that after embracing Trump and endorsing Roy Moore, the GOP has absolutely no credibility when it comes to judging ethical behavior. Republicans can talk all they want about virtue and the importance of family, but let’s be honest, after the tenth story of a Republican congressman resigning because he threatened his mistress, it gets a bit laughable.

Along those lines, conservatives really have to let get of their image as the bastions of decency. Getting all huffy about what is proper and dignified just doesn’t fly when you gleefully cheer for a guy who boasts about sexually assaulting women and denigrates ethnic minorities. And yes, that means you can’t feign outrage when a comedienne uses vulgarity to describe the most vulgar man to ever be president.

Another concept you Republicans can ditch is your image as so-called fiscal conservatives. I mean, did you even read that deficit-busting tax bill you passed a few months ago? Don’t answer that — I know you rushed it out the door and didn’t even bother to check for typos (or huge, glaring loopholes). But take it from me, nobody is going to take you guys seriously ever again when you scream that spending is out of control or that the budget needs to be balanced or that we can’t afford to fund public education. Clearly, the GOP doesn’t care about the budget, and most likely never did.

Finally — and I know this is going to be the most painful for you conservatives — let’s have no more talk of conservative values or the GOP agenda. You have no values beyond the naked pursuit of power and winning at any cost. You have no agenda beyond making sure that white, straight men are perpetually on top. This is why you guys are very good at campaigning and finding a way to control the government — but not so good at the actual governing part.

So that’s my prescription for the GOP.

Of course, a natural question is to ask is the following: Who am I to offer this unsolicited advice? After all, I don’t have a degree in political science, nor have I ever worked on a campaign.

But that’s the beauty of the Republican Party. The GOP has made it clear that expertise in a given field is irrelevant. Hell, it may even be detrimental.

According to conservatives, you can’t believe those egghead scientists who use data to prove global warming, or those studies that say more guns equals more violence, or those pundits who use fancy facts and actual numbers instead of anecdotal evidence and conspiratorial rants to prove a point.

Hey, one of Trump’s biggest selling points to his supporters is his total lack of governmental experience and ignorance of policy. And that’s worked out great… except for the constant chaos erupting from the White House and the rampant corruption engulfing the administration.

So take it from me, dear GOP, this is advice you can use.

Trust me.