Primary Concern

So I watched the first Republican primary… Naturally, it turned out to be an exercise in epic self-harm. This primary is simultaneously something that must be talked about and is beyond description. In a massive lyceum in Milwaukee, frothing cross-eyed ding-a-lings held a conference to narrow down their choice of presidential nominee between eight goofy, crazy, prevaricating, ignoramuses. Ron DeSantis was my personal favorite. There is something so fundamentally strange and unpleasant about that man. He smiles like a terminator and all his answers somehow seemed prerecorded in his brain, like he decided to play these weird, almost certainly apocryphal anecdotes that vaguely matched the moderator’s question. It was comical to watch this stale robot waiting for his chance to talk about what someone named “Penny” (I think) once told him about abortion. The entire debate he didn’t challenge, respond, or interact with a single person other than the moderators. But the most unhinged lunatic, by a country mile, proved to be Vivek Ramaswamy—a multi-millionaire businessman with no experience in politics. Don’t worry in case you think that sounds eerily familiar, Vivek Ramaswamy is a Hindu and therefore stands practically no chance of winning the Republican nomination. Of course that is an appalling reason but, call me a cynic, I do not think the party that openly supports white- nationalists has transcended racism. The fact that Mike Pence stood, along with Chris Christie, on the more “reasonable” side shows you how far we’ve fallen into this conservative snake pit. Pence was the only candidate who attempted the classic politician’s spiel about his “faith” in the American people to protect righteous God-given liberties or blah-blah something inspiring blah- blah. Despite being a staunch anti-choice Christian, Pence remained the only voice of… “optimism” maybe? Unfortunately, I don’t have much optimism, because the cacophony from the crowd gave us a good litmus test on what issues conservatives care about. Whenever candidates tried to show a quasi-human side of themselves, they were swiftly met with a bluster of boos from the crowd. By far the biggest applause Chris Christie received was after he was asked if he’d deport illegal immigrants, and he calmly replied, “Of course.” The whole night had a disturbing “casually evil” tone. There was talk of “breaking the backs of teachers’ unions,” and climate change being fake, China was mentioned until the word lost all meaning, and there was a lot of petty cat-fighting befitting of toddlers, but the biggest elephant in the room was the pumpkin perp. Booing erupted when Christie said the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, and that Pence did the right thing. Conversely, Ramaswamy was met with cheery applause when he called Trump “the greatest president of the 21st century.” But the most worrying thing he said was that “the nuclear family is the strongest form of government known to man.” So-called “nuclear families” consist of a man, a woman, and typically two children of the opposite sex (they’re usually pictured blond and blue-eyed); it has long been conservative code for “straight white Christians.” Except now it’s taking on a new meaning: patriarchy. A world without gay or trans people, where women have only the freedom to be courted and made into mothers. Conservative commentators have recently been complaining about “no-fault divorce” law—which allows women to divorce their spouses without proving abuse in court. These are the new battle lines being drawn, and in the coming period, they are going to try and find out how winnable these issues are. Mike Pence said, “God is not done with America yet.” Sadly, I fear, neither are conservatives.