What we are seeing in the last few months of this administration is not the traditional Republican party. Trump has hijacked the Republican party much like Hitler hijacked the Nazi party. There is no more Republican party- it’s the Trump party.

I'm in my mid 50s, as context.

I:

• just missed being old enough for awareness of key events in the civil rights movement, but:

• grew up in a very racially diverse area, surrounded by people who lived those events

• Lived through through/witnessed:

  • the Satanic Panic
  • the Tipper Gore, 700 Club/Pat Robertson heyday
  • the pre- and post- dont-ask-don't-tell period in the military
  • the AIDS Epidemic and homophobia feedback loop that came with it
  • the steady progression as it became more and more acceptable over decades for gay people to be open about their sexuality
  • the beginnings of the same thing happening for trans people
  • and more changes to and challenges to our social norms than I will possibly remember to list here, all along with each and every step of progress continuously made against the strong opposition of conservatives.

• then watched as the entire Republican party gleefully worked to destroy and roll back all areas of progress the very moment they had enough power to do so. They are shitting up the place and destroying as much as they can, as wantonly as they can.

From the rank and file infiltrating and twisting local school boards and libraries all the way up to the whitehouse, they are making things as shitty as they can as fast as they can for as many people as they can. And it didn't start 2.5 months ago, you could feel it from the moment Trump took office the first time, though even then it was just a louder version of what was already clearly under the surface for decades. We are literally headed towards some freaky blend of WWII Germany and Gilead.

Everything being done now is something conservatives and Republicans I've known have been preaching to a greater or lesser degree for as long as I can remember. They were just better in couching it behind nice words back then, and less of them were comfortable being vocal about it. As far as I can tell, Trump has hijacked nothing and no one.

Resistance to him by Republicans at any level has been weak to undetectable the entire time, coming from a tiny minority of (now ousted) Republicans, and that is precisely what gives the lie to this idea that he hijacked a damn thing.

The commenter saying to line them all up is being ridiculous, of course, but they aren't getting any disdain they haven't earned, and in any case they aren't interested in having unity with anyone not like them anyhow, so I don't see any point whatsoever in this idea that we're supposed to talk nice and mollycoddle them into some kind of class-aware coalition. That ship has sailed.

a great many edits