John Werth
2 min readApr 25, 2022

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It's not that I believe the right has no agenda, only that you can't believe anything they say. As far as I can tell, the plan is to prove Karl Marx right: turn over every dollar and lever of power to the wealthy and well-connected, and use religion to control the serfs.

But they can’t really come out and admit that, which is why you can’t believe what does come out of their mouths. That’s just whatever they have to say to win power. And given that conservatives are by nature hierarchical followers, once the path is chosen they all fall in line.

Talking about the “left” is a bit ambiguous, because of the weirdly split nature of American politics. For instance, at this moment in history the Democratic Party represents everybody from the far left to the center-right. The GOP is controlled strictly by the far right.

The GOP is also almost entirely white and almost entirely Christian. Three fourths are both. Nothing out of a Republican’s mouth means what the words say, because everything is in code.

The left is much easier to understand - as a coalition of very disparate constituencies, they can’t speak in code or even a unified voice. When Bernie Sanders says he wants a $15 per hour minimum wage, that’s what it means. When Ron DeSantis says they want to ban Critical Race Theory in textbooks, CRT has nothing to do with it at all. (Almost nobody knows what CRT is, anyway, and those few are on the left.) It means “conservative white Christians should run the country, and we have to stop the ungodly liberals, minorities, and gays.” That’s also what “build the wall” means, as does “Make America Great Again”, “takin’ our country back”, “states rights”, and any number of other things. But taken as words, it’s all meaningless without that code.

As for the Bill of Rights, your optimism is adorable. For instance, the intent is for Christianity to be the official religion, that’s why the right works so hard on judges. If the GOP came out tomorrow and said only Christians can be citizens, it’s OK to run over liberal protesters, Black people can’t own guns, and the Bible can be used to nullify any election, the only surprise would be they said it out loud all at once. That’s the intent, Bill of Rights be damned. (See https://medium.com/bigger-picture/theres-not-a-civil-war-brewing-in-america-it-s-much-worse-8a17138a8bab)

If you think they have any intention of honoring one word of the Constitution, you aren’t paying attention. They say they believe it, but we know what that’s worth. They’ll hold up anything that supports the goal of the moment, or throw it overboard without a thought if it doesn’t.

Maybe you’re younger than I and haven’t been watching this building for the last forty years.

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John Werth
John Werth

Written by John Werth

Musician and conductor, repairer of woodwinds, owner of dogs, band director, lapsed mathematician, and scribbler of thoughts on humor, politics or both at once.

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