Remember that there are two major lanes to this Republican Highway to Hell: Far-Right Religious Extremists (FRREs) and Big Business/Big Money Repubs (BBs). Neither of them can prevail on their own, but they both believe they can use the other to achieve their ends - and so far, they have been right. They have separate agendas, and they will ignore their differences as long as possible for the 'greater good' of Republican Party dominance. Intersecting with those two major lanes are the Tea Party nutballs and the Libertarians, who can share some values of both, but can throw a monkey wrench into the agenda of the two majors as well.
Big Business (with a few exceptions) has absolutely no interest in the religious or social agenda of the Religious Extremists, but they sure do have an interest in an obedient, cohesive voting bloc that will pour all of its unmatched organizational resources into doing the bidding of whatever leader they believe in, so they will spout whatever the religious wackos demand of them - and those demands are getting more and more extreme and dangerous all the time. What does matter to Big Business are lower taxes and de-regulation, and they are willing to promise whatever they need to in order to get them.
Another basic divide is between the Right Wing Elites and the Right Wing Populists, and this is where the Tea Partiers and Libertarians come in. Big Business is mostly about the Elites, and the FRREs mostly come down on the side of the Populists, but the BBs want the loyalty of the Populists, and the FRREs want the power of the Elites.
Tea Partiers/Libertarians are a big factor here as well - they share some values with both sides. They are Populists (some religious, some not), but they want the lower taxes, military might and de-regulation that the BB Elites want - only more, and they are willing to pull the whole structure down to get it. BB Elites have no interest in pulling down the structure. They like it just fine the way it is, because it is specifically structured to benefit them at the expense of everyone else.
These 3 Populist fringe factions (FRREs, Tea Partiers and Libertarians) are not all-powerful on their own but, put together, are such a sizable portion of the Republican Party today that Big Business Elites and old-style conservative Republicans have had no option but to go along and make whatever 'deals with the devil' that have to be made in order to hang on to power. Being the elitists that they are, they have looked down upon those factions as useful idiots that they can placate with promises and accessions to religious and social demands that don't affect the basic financial and corporate power structure (or so they think!). They have believed up to this point that they can control those fringe elements, but in the last few election cycles the traditional leaders of the party have lost any power they have over the religious and Tea Party fanatics, and are being pushed aside. They are still getting what they want - lower taxes, military spending and de-regulation - but the price they are paying for that is a drive straight through to Crazy Town.
And this, my friends, is what has brought us to where we are today - to Donald Trump, to Dr. Ben Carson, to Carly Fiorina. To Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee. To the complete shutdown of a working government. To the eradication of the separation of church and state, and the dominance of religious belief over the rule of law, and over scientific fact. To out-of-control mass murders every few months - in the name of 'freedom'. To racism re-entrenched and intensified. To the literal destruction of the planet we live on.
We have allowed this to happen.
At some point, we - Democrats, liberals, progressives, whatever we call ourselves - must take ownership of OUR part in this.
We have not stopped them, nor have we even made any more than a token and half-hearted effort to do so.
When every few months innocent people are gunned down in mass murder-suicides, we don't stop those responsible - the gun lobby and Second-Amendment radicals who prevent any reasonable gun control legislation - any at all - from even being considered.
When union after union is shut down and neutralized, we let it happen.
When crazy laws are made like "Stand Your Ground" that allow people to murder with impunity, we let it happen.
When Wall Street and banking greed decimated the economy, and we allowed them to skate off with nary a slap on the wrist, and actually become MORE powerful, profitable and too-big-to-fail as a result, while the rest of us have yet to recover from the damage they inflicted, we let it happen.
When there are so few elected officials who stand up for real progressive values - and, don't lie; these ARE the values that most of us believe in - that you can count them on one hand, it's because we aren't electing them.
When institutionalized racism and white privilege is the norm, we are not challenging it.
What Bernie Sanders is saying is absolutely true.
We need nothing less than a political revolution.
What we are up against is too strong to change with a few rallies, slogans and Facebook posts.
It is going to take a real political revolution. From the ground up - from us. From all the people who have watched this happen. Standing by and hoping that our politicians will change this will not work. Expecting that if we deal fairly and respectfully with Republicans, they will meet us halfway will not work. It hasn't so far.
I have been afraid for a long time that things will have to get terribly bad before people will demand a change. This is what happened during the Great Depression. It took people literally starving in the streets for an FDR to be able to implement something as radical as the New Deal. Republicans fought against it tooth and nail, of course, but the public embraced it and those policies got us out of the Depression and gave us the strongest, biggest middle class America has ever known - the very era that conservatives think of as 'the good old days when America was great', and say they want back, but their policies have destroyed.
But without the devastation of the Great Depression, there would not have been the public will for the New Deal to happen.
So I fear that things may have to get worse.
Yes, I am supporting Bernie Sanders. I am sending him money. But, as Noam Chomsky says, Bernie Sanders cannot save America. Only a true political revolution can do that. Only a willingness to stand up and confront these Republican bullies toe-to-toe, which up till now the Democrats have not done. But they won't do it without the American people demanding that they do so. That was the first thing President Obama said when he got into office: "Make me do it." Mostly, we didn't.
Until the American people say, "F*ck you, NRA. You're not killing our children any more."
Until the American people say, "F*ck you, radical "religious" Republicans - we're keeping Planned Parenthood and giving them even more money because women have a right to affordable health care and you don't have the right to deny it to them."
Until the American people say, "F*ck you, for-profit prison industry - you are not going to get rich by destroying the lives of Black Americans to fill your occupancy quotas."
Until the American people say, "F*ck you, Wall Street and Big Finance - if you steal from us, you will pay us back AND go to jail."
Until the American people say, "F*ck you, greedy Congress - full-time work should pay a living wage. Don't deny us that and at the same time vote yourself pay raises, gold-plated health care and fat pensions."
Until the American people say, "F*ck you, corporate lobbyists - our government is not for sale. We will finance campaigns, not you."
Until the American people say, "F*ck you, Supreme Court - money is NOT free speech and corporations are NOT humans."
Until the American people stand up, say it and mean it, nothing is going to change.
So, until then, progressives - enjoy the show. Because we can't just blame the Republicans. It's OUR show, too.
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