They never want to solve issues. They have trained their voters to be loyal regardless of circumstances. The next step in that process is to hurt the other party. but if they can’t win on the issues they have another choice: make things as bad as possible. (1) People turn rightward when they’re scared, (2) repeating lies over and over creates the illusion of truth (“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately, maybe it’s true”) and (3) if everything sucks enough people give up on politics completely.

Why is the party of patriotism willing to drive the country in the ground to win? Because there is no actual patriotism when the only version of the country you love is yours. Destroying other people’s version isn’t unpatriotic because that’s not America. Better to burn it to the ground and rule the ashes.