By now, you’ve all gotten used to my periodic diatribes against Republican arrogance, ignorance, and economic elitism, so it won’t surprise you that here’s another one.

One of the most fundamental flaws in our legislative process is the ability to put any sort of rider on a bill, relevance to the primary bill being a non-issue. And so it has been that the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, to which any more moderate leaning Republicans kowtow, has blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security by insisting on a provision invalidating President Obama’s recent actions on immigration. Never mind that that action was taken because Congress has consistently failed to address immigration. The Republicans have no plan (and even appear overtly hostile toward immigrants), and the Democrats are wimps who seem to stand for nothing and certainly aren’t actively, vocally supporting the President. The Republicans have thus shown themselves to care more about immigration than the overall security of the United States against all forms of threat, including terrorism.

With that position, Republicans are batting a thousand on general irrationality and the willingness to put the nation at risk. Here are some other areas where the Republicans are actively seeking to destroy the country:

• Health insurance: No plan of their own but hostile to the Affordable Care Act. If they succeed in getting it overturned, millions will end up uninsured again.
• Minimum wage: They’re opposed, fully invested in keeping the economic underclass down
• Abortion: Almost universally opposed and would be happy to see women dying in back alley abortions as they strive to legislate against responsible pregnancy termination and choice.
• Gay marriage: Oh, yeah, they think it’s a religious abomination and want to impose their views on you, too.
• The environment: Absolute opposition to environmental protection, instead favoring ecologic devastation by big business. Maybe they think the Rapture will save them, and damn everyone else.
• Hostility toward, and general disbelief in, science: The earth is 6000 years old? Evolution is just a “theory”? The scientifically ignorant don’t understand the actual meaning of the word “theory” as applied to scientific fact. Worse, some of their ignorance seems downright willful.
• Separation of church and state: Republicans have become an American Taliban, eager to impose their own notion of the U.S. as a Christian nation and ignoring the Founding Fathers’ firm stance against precisely what these historical dopes are promoting.
• Global climate change: Idiots like Senator James Inhof, totally ignorant of science and the considered opinion of every reputable climate scientist on Earth, fail completely to understand and/or accept the reality that is observable to anyone who isn’t a moron. Overall, the planet is warming, oceans are rising, and disaster is becoming a looming certainty.

I could go on, but the essence of current day Republican philosophy is its absolute reliance upon a stratified class system, with a permanently disadvantaged underclass, a contracted middle class, and a small but dominant upper class that can’t see beyond the end of its own economic nose. The Koch brothers et al. have essentially bought Congress, and we are now living in a corporate nation with rapidly eroding social mobility and freedom. Environmental destruction is already occurring and, under incompetent and self-interested leadership, appears headed for much worse in the relatively near future. Voter suppression, continuation of policies that prevent social advancement, and the use of religion and unbridled chauvinism to justify all manner of bigotry and in-your-bedroom legislation are destroying the ideals we, as a country, have in the past and (at least many of us) continue to espouse.

If we don’t wake up to the reality of the situation soon and militate for change, it’s going to be too late. When totalitarian repression becomes too great, people revolt, and I fear the day this could happen in what is supposed to be the land of the free and home of the brave.