Rich Logis, Salon

Taking a pre-mortem liberty with the five stages of grief, from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' "On Death and Dying" — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — what one will notice about Republican voters and elected officials is that they currently, and confusedly, occupy numerous stages.

Yes, we will continue to see Republican candidates, who will cite heroic dead presidents (but no living ones), and will prattle on with their usual myths (which I'll get to in a moment).

But the GOP is a soon-to-be spectral political party. What rendered the party sickly beyond cure? Its illness are its politically traumatizing mythologies, as old as our country itself.

The Republican Political Traumatization Mythologies Meter is as follows; there's some overlap from one phase to another, but differences may be overt, rather than implied. The higher a Republican politician is on the meter, the more politically traumatizing he/she is:

• 1-2: Garden-variety partisanship; standard-fare fear-mongering;
• 3-4: Utilization of trigger words and phrases, such as, but not limited to: "culture," "values" and "parental rights"; these are often incorporated into rhetoric about sex, LGBTQ and "states' rights";
• 5-6: Overt yearning for when America was "great," i.e. the 1950s or early '60s, when the ruling class was Caucasian, heterosexual (at least outwardly), male and Christian; undermining the value of education and science, especially from the Ivy League-educated;
• 7-8: Whites are being replaced by brown and Black foreigners; law enforcement is weaponized against Republicans; Big Tech "censors" Republicans; teachers are making our kids gay; Democrats are coming for our guns; citing of Barack Obama by name;
• 9-10: Elections are rigged, unless won by Republicans; political violence is legitimate political discourse, warranted when Republicans lose; use of guns, as the preferred holy war weapon, to intimidate; Christian theocracy and nationalism; and the will of God.

No Republican can win 270 electoral votes without moderate (levels 3-6), to heavy (7 and above) traumatizing; and the number of states a Republican running for statewide office can win is likely shrinking with each passing election cycle — hence the GOP's worsening hostility to democracy.

Unprepared for death

Given that around 44 percent of voting-age Americans voted in the 2022 midterms — with Democrats doing well both federally, and in numerous gubernatorial and state legislative races — many Republicans, perhaps even most, have undoubtedly further realized that the market for the politically traumatizing mythological product has indefinitely dwindled; this is probably the depression stage for many of them.

The irrefutable fact is: the Republican Party appealed (habitually, I talk of the party in the past tense) to those who think moving backward is moving forward. Whether that means looking to an imaginary version of 1776, the "Lost Cause" of the Confederacy, the 1950s as America's apogee of greatness or relitigating the 2020 election, the entire GOP product is backward-facing. I know this oh so well, having been politically traumatized myself, by the GOP's offering; and having spent considerable time, for years, among similarly traumatized fellow Republicans, convinced I was one of the "real Americans" prepared to water the trees of liberty with the blood of my mortal enemies. Everyone had better understand what "make America great again" really means.

As Catesby remarks in Shakespeare's "Richard III": "'tis a vile thing to die... When men are unprepared and look not for it."

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The GOP, of course, withheld the diagnosis of its terminal political illness from its voters; you may debate among yourselves when the irreversible malignancy metastasized within the GOP. I am of the belief that it accelerated fatefully with the election of Obama, and reached the irreversible stage with Donald Trump. Never in our history were successive presidents as starkly contrasting as Obama and Trump, whether as leaders or as decent human beings.

Republican voters are mostly unprepared for the imminent death of their party; most are probably stuck in the Purgatory between denial and anger. Republican politicians are scattered across the bargaining, depression and acceptance stages; one notable acceptor is Sen. Josh Hawley, who has stated in unambiguous terms that the old GOP is dead, thus necessitating a new GOP.

The new GOP that Hawley envisions, however, sounds an awful lot like the old one; his reborn party must be more zealously supportive of the Second Amendment (9-10 on the mythologies meter), "parental rights" (3-4) and placing a sword of Damocles over the tyrannical heads of "Big Tech" (7-8). Hawley's new GOP will likely convince candidates from various disadvantaged minority groups, such as the recently defeated Herschel Walker, to run for offices any relatively objective person can see they are wholly unqualified for. In Walker's case, white Republicans supported him because they've been politically traumatized into believing the mythology that a Republican is always preferable to a Democrat. I wanted Walker nowhere near the Senate; but he's been exploited by those who would have attended Jim Crow minstrel performances in 1950s America.

At least Josh Hawley understands that the old GOP is dead. The new party he envisions, however, sounds an awful lot like the old one: Second Amendment, "parental rights," a sword of Damocles held over Big Tech.

The GOP has not been an active or proactive political force for years. It is reactive and reactionary — it adopted the politically traumatizing, hysterical and paranoid mythologies disseminated throughout the right-wing infotainment system, often crafted in the deepest and darkest bowels of the rabbit-holed internet, and then regurgitated them.

No politically traumatizing pundit on the right ever said, "As Ted Cruz" — or Marjorie Taylor Greene or Donald Trump or whoever else — "so eloquently put it"; rather, the so-called "leaders" of the GOP simply inhaled the vapors of the politically traumatizing Murdoch/Breitbart/Alex Jones propaganda abattoirs and responded accordingly.

Though I will not excuse ignorance, politically traumatized Republicans have themselves been failed by the liars, grifters, carnival barkers, faux-constitutionalists and insurrectionary apologists they've supported — all because they were convinced that any Republican is always preferable to any Democrat. What a pathetic political life to lead; again, I once led such a life, enraptured by make-believe bogeymen, and can attest to its dehumanizing misery.

Progress and existential struggle

In 2024, Republican nominee Donald Trump's third attempt to resurrect the "good ol' days" will be met with the same nonviolent show of voter force he received in his second attempt. The GOP cannot vote its way out of its Trump problem, because no cult leaders ever willingly steps aside for another. (Lookin' at you, Ronnie DeSantis!)

In Trump's case, it goes even beyond the cult: He would burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes.

I do not believe anyone who voted for Trump should be judged for doing so; and in a free society I do not believe voters need to defend their votes. But any Trump supporter who has not yet exited via one of the myriad available off-ramps will never do so; my guess is that 90 percent of those who voted for him in 2020 would do so again tomorrow. Such voters are stuck at the bargaining stage, quite a soulful distance away from accepting that "make America great again" is a reverie in permanent abeyance of reality. Slowly and surely, more and more Republican voters will graduate through the five stages of grief.

Any Trump supporter who has not yet found an off-ramp will never do so; such voters are stuck at the bargaining stage, a long way from accepting that "make America great again" is a damaging reverie.

Trump, DeSantis, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, et al., peddle identical politically traumatizing mythologies, because the myths are effective — albeit for a shrinking segment of the electorate. The mythologies are a form of identity politics; forging a diverse and varied coalition of Americans, as the Democrats sometimes do well and sometimes poorly, is much more difficult than politically traumatizing identity politics. This is why those who genuinely recognize the frailty and fragility of democratic order must continue to form ideologically diverse alliances, as occurred in these past midterms, including the Georgia runoff; this is not a want, but a must. America's next Sodom and Gomorrah moment is coming; progress and existential struggle are inextricably linked, and always will be.

I find no pleasure in all this morbidity; and I don't want a single-party political party system. I much prefer the candid, pragmatic optimism and stout leadership of Obama to the apocalyptic dystopia of the GOP, in which Republicans are victimized because of their extolled morality and piety (paid-for abortions for mistresses, wives and daughters aside). We cannot fully eliminate the right's politically traumatizing mythologies, but we must stymie and reduce them. Building diverse pro-democracy alliances, and telling original, inspiring and challenging stories about our national mythologies (the good, bad and ugly ones), can begin to heal our nation's political traumatization. The continued perfection of our Union demands it.

I voted for Donald Trump four times and Ron DeSantis twice, counting Republican primaries and general elections. I used to be an in-demand political pundit for Republican/conservative media; my work and writing appeared on sites and radio shows listened to or read by millions of Americans: Fox News, the Federalist, Real Clear Politics and elsewhere. I had frequent public speaking engagements. I was writing the obligatory hyper-partisan, fire-breathing book that was expected of somebody in my position. It was going to get me my own prime-time TV opinion show and professional podcast. I had a publisher interested in my manuscript.

This article first appeared in Salon.

That has all changed. Now I will solely vote Democrat, in the national interest of mercy-killing the Republican Party. How, and why, did I get here?

To be clear, I am not a registered Democrat. In Florida, where I live, I'm a registered NPA — No Party Affiliation, or independent. Millions of us have an opportunity to make history in November, and beyond, by forming unlikely but necessary alliances to defeat Republicans in every election at every possible level — from Congress to governors' mansions to state legislatures, county and city offices and school boards.

Does this mean I agree with all the Democratic Party's policy positions? Absolutely not, and that's exactly the point — this moment of necessary unity will require those of us to come together who have legitimate disagreements on policy, but who concur that the GOP is leading our beloved country, and numerous of its states, to the slaughter.

Our nation has a long history of unprecedented partnerships, all of which were considered requisite in the continued pursuit of perfecting our Union and maintaining our position as the greatest bastion of liberty in the world:

• Alexander Hamilton convinced his fellow Federalists to vote for Thomas Jefferson over Federalist Aaron Burr in the disputed 1800 presidential election — a decision that cost Hamilton his life;
• Abraham Lincoln decided to crush the Confederacy with four years of gruesome bloodshed, although he desperately wanted to preserve the Union at any cost. That agonizing decision to wage total war against fellow Americans brought the slavery era to an end, saved America from irreparable damage — and also resulted in Lincoln's assassination;
• The U.S. joined forces with the Soviet Union in World War II — an almost impossible alliance between opposed ideological forces that was necessary to conquer the Nazis;
• Many Republicans in the House and Senate supported President Lyndon Johnson's signature achievements, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, over the objections of many racist Southern Democrats;
• Bipartisan support for the resignation of President Nixon: Ultimately it was his fellow Republicans, led by Sen. Barry Goldwater, a conservative hero, who made clear that if Nixon did not resign, he would be impeached and removed in a Senate trial;
• Many Democrats rallied around President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — even if some of them would like to deny or forget that now.

I believe our current epoch presents us with a moment similar to the aforementioned historic events — a moment in which America faces yet another existential challenge.

* * *

I supported Trump — really and truly. I believed a Hillary Clinton presidency (and, four years later, a Joe Biden presidency) would mean the end of America.

I supported Donald Trump. I really did, and without much reservation. I believed the fallacy that a Hillary Clinton victory (and, then, four years later, a Joe Biden victory) would mean the end of America and the start of permanent Democrat rule over our nation. I was attracted to Trump because he incurred almost equal levels of ire, at least at first, from both of our major parties. My first-ever vote in a presidential election was in 2000, for Ralph Nader, and I saw in Trump some of those same maverick qualities.

During Trump's presidency, I adopted — and vigorously preached — the right-wing gospel: Democrats were importing foreigners to win elections forever; leftists were coming for our guns; nationalism was patriotism; there was a shadowy network of censors whose teleological purpose in life was to suppress Republican or conservative points of view; predatory men were using women's bathrooms everywhere; and, of course, Barack Obama was the worst president in history and made Jimmy Carter look like George Washington.

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I'm here to tell you that I was wrong. I was wrong about all of it. Acknowledging my errors in judgment was the start of my own personal healing process, after I came to realize that my extreme partisanship and dehumanizing of Democrats were the results of my own self-inflicted political traumatization.

For the first year after the Jan. 6 insurrection, I was in the camp of, "Yeah, it was bad but it's being overblown." Then I began to look at the event more objectively, started to learn more about how many of the participants were radicalized, and continued to witness Trump traumatize the nation with his stolen election lies. I say — with no qualms and no fear of being hyperbolic — that Trump is the most politically traumatizing figure in American history. His "rigged and stolen election" is the new version of the Confederacy's "Lost Cause."

There was another event in my journey, however, which acted as a kind of healing accelerant for me, once the shock wore off. When COVID hospitalizations for children began to skyrocket here in Florida last summer, during the delta surge, I told other Trump and DeSantis voters that our governor would divorce himself from the COVID-deniers and the spreaders of vaccine disinformation. As you probably know, he didn't do that. Instead, DeSantis quadrupled down on undermining the vaccine and undoing health precautions.

Up until that point, I'd had a favorable impression of DeSantis; he seemed like a mostly drama-free purple-state governor who was genuinely interested in the hard work of governing and policymaking. The "new" DeSantis shocked me. I came to realize that he had sold his soul to keep those in the thrall of the GOP's pandemic nonchalance, hysteria and paranoia stuck in self-perpetuating and self-exacerbating cycles of unhealed political trauma. As a father of two young daughters, I found DeSantis' Molochian offering — to propitiate those with little to no regard for life or the suffering of others — behavior unworthy of anyone's vote. Such a spectacular failure in leadership is rare, from any political figure of any party.

My new organization, Listen. Lead. Unite., is dedicated to healing America's political trauma by bringing together communities and elected leaders to collaborate on nonpartisan economic, educational and quality-of-life solutions. There is an immense amount of work ahead of us, and I say this with no pleasure: Our nation is about to endure the kind of tumult none of us has ever lived through, and the best time to commence trying to heal is right now.

We Homo sapiens are a binary species; I believe Americans deserve a healthy two-party system. But the bedrock foundational principles of a functioning two-party system must include the rule of law — in the famous formulation, we are a government of laws, not of humans — and the peaceful transfer of power, not just from one president to another, but at all levels of elected office.

In my view, the Democratic Party is relatively healthy, although it has two major blind spots: It takes for granted many historically Democratic voting blocs — such as religious minorities, LGBTQ citizens and Black and Latino voters — and it almost entirely ignores rural America. In contrast, the Republican Party is terminally ill, and its leadership knows that; that's why they have staked a path forward that is, well, backward, with increased emphasis on everything male/Caucasian/Christian and heterosexual.

The question before us now is whether, after 246 years of incremental and sometimes painful progress, we begin to cede ground and go backward. Or will we continue to shape our destiny in the vision of our founders, whose blueprint for our republic made clear that the maintenance and expansion of a free nation was rigorously difficult, but was both our birthright and our mandate? That will require cooperation, flexibility and sacrifice.

We must heal our nation by re-establishing a resounding majority in favor of democracy — a majority that leaves no doubt that, when history calls, Americans of diverse views and backgrounds will answer the call by conjuring the better and braver angels of our nature.

As I said above, America needs and deserves a robust two-party system. But to get there, and to carry on our blessed experiment in self-governance, one of our current political parties — the one I supported for many years — must be put out of its misery.

*******

Rich Logis is the founder of Listen. Lead. Unite., a born-again human being and a happily married, small-business-owning dad who is committed to healing America’s political traumatization by bringing together communities and elected leaders to collaborate on nonpartisan economic, educational and quality of life solutions.