An Extraordinary Populist Delusion and the Madness of the Republican Crowd

The overiding delusion of Republicans, who are now supporting a populist president no matter his obvious incompetence, is that they are somehow victims. They believe they are the injured ones--downtrodden and disenfranchised. They WERE disrespected, I will allow, but reasonably. Being racists, they construed the disrespect as existential when it was only circumstantial and behavioral. 

If they had stopped the behaviors--the paranoid, combative, divisive, war-mongering insanity--the disrespect would have ended. We would again have been a relatively united country and people. Instead, they maintained the entrenched and dysfunctional delusion, giving their souls over entirely to corruption. They disenfranchise their antagonists and abandon democracy and decency.

Republicans have controlled everything for decades and still feel persecuted. They rage about "taking back the country" when it is a reflection of nothing but them. They want to "make America great again" not realizing they are longing for the days of Democratic control or, at least, a time of balance and compromise. Republicans are lost and compulsively seek redemption in continuing depravity.

That, really, is madness.