What it is, is hatred.

My brother, pictured, died in Vietnam. Ran over an explosive land mine in his Jeep, before I was born. My father, an old farm boy who grew up in the Great Depression while my Grandfather had to sell newspapers to find ways to feed the family. My father feared communism and its implications, as well as Nazis, and despised our government for sending a 20 year old to die. in a war that wasn’t about us. He lamented often about the loss of his son, decades later. It never went away, the hurt.


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My father worked over 40 years in rotating shifts at the steel mills as a mechanic. His voice was so loud I could hear him call me home from 5 blocks away, commanding me it was time to get home. My mother, a member of Eagle Forum, wrote often about maintaining conservative ideology and values, particularly wholesome family values. Wrote editorials in our local paper. She volunteered for Birthright. Vouched for democracy and helped on election day. Fought against pornography, against contraceptives.


 


We went to church every Sunday.


 


None of what we see today in the Republican Party are conservative values anymore. Hatred of Americans, hatred of the press. Hatred of Democrats. Hatred of schools. Hatred of Science. What we see is hatred, what we hear is hatred and what it is hatred.