Man, what the hell is happening to people? Everyone is going crazy.

There seem to be all these great crusades. Everyone is seeking to destroy and disparage. So much manufactured fear and desperation.

I think his tweet captured it accurately. For whatever reason, the dynamic changed from "Hey, let's be friends, despite our differences" to "I will smite thee!"

It's the same dynamic that is tearing my family apart (birth family, not wife and kids).

In thinking about the nature and topic of this thread, I came to the realization that I have been more upset about what Republicans have become for two reasons: 1) Because they - the partisan politicians as a whole - have definitely gone off the deep end. The growing breed of people like MTG, Gaetz, Cruz, Hawley, Cawthorne, etc. has moved from fringe to front-and-center, and 2) Because I was a part of the Republicans in the past. I have often spoken about being conservative in its original sense, where working hard is what gets you rewarded, but you also don't rig the system for billionaires. Where you don't necessarily care about what other people are doing, as long as it doesn't impinge on other people's rights. Those ideals are long-gone in modern Republicans. Seeing what they have become has upset me because of my previous affiliation to them. It's like when you see your kid misbehaving vs other kids. You act out more harshly.

This mob mentality has taken over, and it's both sickening and extremely alarming. Liz Cheney was ousted from her spot because she voted her conscience, against her career ambitions. The former president has made it his personal vendetta to go after all the people of his same party who voted in a manner in which they saw fit. Anthony Gonzalez - who I knew as a really good dude in high school - is going to leave his post because of the mob mentality. "You're with us or against us." Is that really how our voting system should be designed to work. Should we have a party who is beholden to one man? Is that what our founding fathers strove for?

You see nomenclature like RINO - Republican in Name Only. How stupid is that? It's not a gang. It's not a club. It was founded as a collective grouping of people to collaboratively forge a conservative model of governing. Now, it's a corrupted organism where its members must fall in line or they will be buried.

I bet many people have forgotten, but after Trump was elected in 2016, OCD started a "Credit Given Where It's Due" thread that actually talked about all the policies Trump pushed for and signed off that OCD and other liberally-affiliated people on the board actually praised him for what he was doing, even though they were criticizing him in other threads.

So, what do we have now from the other side? We have a "Thanks Y'all!" thread which is so mind-numbingly childish. Pejoratives like "JoKe" from the same person that brought all of us "ObumA" where discourse with any opposing view is refused. Just wants to dish it out, but can't take it. Others joined in and the frenzy is on. But you know what, that's where that side has gotten. Nobody wants to hear something that might lead them to believe they are wrong. We all just want to be in our echo chambers and hear what we want and rile each other up who think like we do.

Oh well...carry on, Republicans.