Politics has always been a nasty business. Here are few examples from history:

“… a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor, whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any?” Thomas Paine’s insult to George Washington.

“Filthy Story-Teller, Despot, Liar, Thief, Braggart, Buffoon, Usurper, Monster, Ignoramus Abe, Old Scoundrel, Perjurer, Robber, Swindler, Tyrant, Field-Butcher, Land-Pirate.” Harper’s Weekly editorializing about Abraham Lincoln.

“He has a bungalow mind.” Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), 28th American president opining on Warren Harding (1865-1923), 29th American president.

    And so it has been, and so it is and may always be. Those who long for the good old days are simply ignorant of what they were really like. And that’s not to mention the lack of indoor plumbing.   Well, the point of all this is that now, mired in the spectacle of Republican scrambling for the party’s Presidential nomination, we’re starting to see vitriol and hypocrisy once again entering high gear. The most obvious manifestation of this has been the oral dribblings from Donald Trump’s stunted brain.

By now, you’d have to have been somewhere off-planet not to have heard Trump’s comments about John McCain. Of course, Trump was right, sort of. McCain is not a war hero because he was captured and became a prisoner of war. But that is a straw man easily taken down by the fact that McCain truly is a war hero because of his conduct while in captivity. Trump’s failure to acknowledge this is despicable enough, but even more despicable is the hypocrisy oozing from the pores of the other Republican hopefuls.

All but Ted Cruz seem to have jumped on the bandwagon to defend McCain’s honor, as well everyone should, regardless of whether they agree with McCain’s politics. (I don’t, but I respect the man.) But this outpouring, no matter how justified, reveals the abjectly pathetic level of these guys’ hypocrisy. How, you ask? Simple. Where were they when John Kerry suffered the same defamation during his campaign for the Presidency? Yes, remember how he was “swiftboated” during his campaign for the Presidency? So, it was hunky-dory to lie about Kerry, but unacceptable to put down McCain. It reeks.

And then there’s Ted Cruz, demonstrating not hypocrisy but, in fact, his own rotted soul, siding with Trump.

Yes, politics is a dirty business, and what makes it worse is that there are so many bigoted sheep with deficient education in this country willing to listen to and believe the verbal vomit coming from these guys. Why else is Trump leading in GOP polling? Why do people still think President Obama’s birth certificate was forged? That he’s actually a Muslim? That the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy? That the second amendment guarantees every private citizen the right to bear arms individually instead of as intended, namely, as part of a “well regulated militia”?

I am frightened by the level of ignorance, bigotry, and religious superstition having an impact within our government. Add to these factors the simple fact that we now have what is essentially a corporate bought and owned Congress, and things could hardly be on a worse track. The only answer is for rational, objective, empathic humanists to vote the rascals out. But it had better be soon, because right now it looks like we’re headed for big trouble.