“The madness of the GOP is the central issue of our time.” This recent quote from Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner for Economic Science, applies to all levels of the GOP including right here in Freeborn County.

It is not now possible to have a rational, civic-minded conversation with a GOP leader.

Pick any major issue of the day. Climate change deniers. President Obama is not an American citizen. The modest attempt at new financial regulation, the Dodd-Frank legislation, is a government takeover. We need to spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to build a wall, seemingly modeled on the Great Wall of China, plus train thousands of quasi-military personnel to watch the wall. Shutting down the federal government is good because we do not need the federal government for anything. Millions of people not now able to afford or even qualify for medical benefits do not in fact need those benefits. Tax dollars, to pay for food, going to the economically poor, disabled and elderly Americans, is stealing from taxpayers who can afford to buy enough food to feed themselves and their families. Disenfranchising mainly Democratic Party voters must be done to avoid nonexistent voter fraud. Americans are doing just fine on the current minimum wage. What infrastructure problem? The wealthy need all of their tax loopholes including schemes to avoid paying any taxes because they are the job creators. We should be allowed to shoot and kill anyone who makes us afraid of their hoodie, or saggy pants, or loud language or the color of their skin. American citizens must be denied civil and human rights simply because they are gay. We are not supposed to trust women to make decisions about their own bodies; rather the government should make those decisions. And then there is all of the GOP demonizing of teachers, postal workers, those of us protected by unions, the economically poor, those of us receiving Medicare and/or Social Security benefits, college professors, women who have taken a morning-after pill, and this practice of demonizing a specific group of Americans is what the GOP does.

The GOP leadership’s refusal to recognize the chaos they have created makes their madness the central issue of our time.

 

Ted Hinnenkamp
Albert Lea