SOUND OFF!

Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican.

Not just the politicians in office, but the hordes of MAGA hat wearers. The last few years have elegantly proved this.

They howl about the expense of universal health care and the Green New Deal, but don’t bat an eye at the trillions we squander on “defense.”

They shame people who receive public assistance, calling them “parasites,” yet see nothing wrong with corporate welfare or giving huge tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy.

They holler for a wall along the US-Mexico border, conveniently forgetting about our thousands of kilometers of coastline. Those seeking to get into the USA would go over that wall, or under it. Since long before Trump proposed his boondoggle of a wall, people have been digging tunnels under the US-Mexican border. If you still think that walls work, talk to the Germans and the Chinese. Their walls didn’t work, either.

They refuse to raise the minimum wage even a quarter an hour, let alone to a living level, even though it has been stagnant for more than a decade while the price of almost everything has steadily risen. They answer demand to raise the minimum wage with propaganda about $20 tacos and robotized fast-food joints – conveniently ignoring (or forgetting about) Australia, where the minimum wage increases every year automatically, and places here in the U.S. that have increased the minimum wage without suffering.

They fiercely defend embryos and fetuses, yet refuse to improve the lot of children who have already been born. They bellow “Abortion kills children!” but are strangely silent about war, gun violence, hunger, and lack of affordable health care, all of which kill children. And fetuses. Also – where are they for mothers-to-be who lack access to affordable prenatal care?

They think that outlawing abortion will stop it altogether. In fact, to hear some of them face-fart, abortion started with Roe v Wade, and will end when it is banned. Yet they think that gun control won’t keep guns out of the wrong hands.

Many of them refuse to wear masks or socially distance in the midst of a global pandemic, mocking those who follow common-sense rules as “sheeple” even while they brainlessly follow ignorant, incompetent leaders. They refuse to “take one for the team” and spew male bovine feces about masks being harmful. Then they wonder why more than 550,000 US residents have died, while many other countries have a much lower per capita infection and death rate.

They thump their chests about being “rugged individuals,” but become sheep every Sunday, flocking to church to swallow camels after straining at gnats the other six days of the week. They think that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, even though neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions Christ or Christianity.

They shriek about the “evils” of socialism – which they frequently confound with Communism – while benefiting from many of those “evils.” Take away everything that could be regarded as socialist, and those bugnuts wouldn’t survive a week.

They break their own rules for Supreme Court appointees. They stymied Obama’s efforts to replace the late Antonin Scalia with Merrick Garland by making a rule that the President could not nominate a new justice during an election cycle. Then they rammed through Amy Coney Barrett right in the middle of an election year – and against the final wishes of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

They believe that “trickle-down economics” works even though history has clearly shown that nothing trickles down. If giving tax breaks to big corporations really did create jobs, the unemployment rate would be at rock bottom and we’d be begging immigrants to come here. Most jobs that mega-corporations create are in overseas sweatshops, in countries where workers have scant protection and wages are extremely low.

They stamp the label “tax and spend” on Democrats when they do the same thing. The difference is they spend on subsidies for companies that are already raking in profits hand over fist, and unnecessary foreign deployment of our armed forces. Defense contractors get the gold mine, while veterans in need of mental and physical therapy get the shaft.

When right-wingers harp on the shortcomings of Democrats and the Left, they are pots calling the kettles black – when the pots are a lot blacker. OK, so Democrats are no prize, especially these days. OK, so the Left isn’t right on everything. But that doesn’t mean the Right can get away with demonizing its enemies and spewing out-and-out lies.

Republicans howl about smaller government, but want to regulate our bodies to the hilt – especially our reproductive organs. Especially those of women. Their deregulation has led to numerous power vacuums, which profits-über-alles Big Business quickly filled. All they do is substitute one bureaucracy for another, and furthermore, for one that is concerned with only the Bottom Line.

And they wonder why Biden won in 2020.