There is a phylum of parasitic worms (Nematomorpha) that have a particularly horrible reproductive cycle that reminds me a lot of American politics. These parasites live out their adult lives in standing bodies of water but need a host to gestate their young. A single parasite female lays millions of eggs in her aquatic home, and those eggs gestate into millions of larvae that swim about in the water. If they don’t find a host, the larvae will eventually die, but usually a healthy insect host comes along and drinks from the infected water, ingesting one or more of the larvae in the process.

The larvae burrows into its host’s guts and gorges itself on nutrients, and there the parasite stays until it matures into an adult worm, often 8 to 14 inches long. Though the exact mechanism of the parasite’s control of the host’s behavior isn’t clear, the host, with its abdomen bulging from the writhing worm within, single-mindedly seeks out a body of water and throws itself into a watery doom. As water seeps into its host’s body, the worm bursts out from the anus or mouth of its dead or dying host, before swimming away to mate in the watery depths with which to create another horrific brood of parasites.

Much like this nightmare fuel parasite, the desperate paranoid delusions of a wholly corrupt sociopath has permeated the turbulent pool of right-wing politics and so infests the Republican Party that it is completely unrecognizable as the party of just a decade ago. Gone is the forward looking and optimistic conservative renaissance of Reagan. Absent is the benign, albeit flawed, compassionate conservatism of Bush. All that is left is a single minded propagation of the parasitic nationalism that drives the party toward violence and destruction.

In the chaotic months since the November 2020 elections, our nation has been infected by a mass hysteria gorging itself on feverish political histrionics of historic proportions, amplified in a social media cesspool that marries ignorant working class voters to the misinformation propaganda of the media pimps and grifters that feed off of them, culminating in the historic violence at our nation’s Capitol and revealing the incestuous relationship between the political class Republicans whoring themselves out to the parasitic rubes that have taken over the party.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, itself a political armpit of well meaning but ultimately misguided tyrannical policies remains a real and present danger to the personal liberty of every American, but who will stop them? In what universe can the Republican Party be seen as opposition to the socialist insanity of the Democratic Party? Do the Republicans care about the federal debt? Almost US$8 trillion was added to the United States federal debt in just four years under Trump. Do Republicans care about market freedom? They gleefully supported trade tariffs and draconian immigration policy to keep foreign goods and foreign labor out of the US market.

They defend taxation of private incomes (theft), demand government subsidization and protection of domestic industries (socialism), and support federal stimulus handouts (welfare) out of the same mouths that they claim to demand smaller government and support capitalism. Hypocrites, even hypocrites that are too stupid to recognize their hypocrisy, cannot oppose anyone for any reason. So, since the Republican Party, now laboring toward a watery grave as it is, can no longer function as political opposition to the Democratic Party, then who?

Who stands for liberty?

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Liberty is For The Win!