A theory of Republicans' hatred of America

I suppose if one wished to be philosophical about Republicans' orgiastic debauchery imbued in the appalling Bigass Ugliest Bill Ever, now sliming its way through the Reichstagsbegäude's Senate chamber, one could write off the whole hideous scene as determinism — its concept in motion.

In short, they can't help themselves. If these Republican pols once had souls, they long since peddled them to the lowest bidder — an act of predestination, the effect of causal sociopathy, an innate, incurable disorder of the human spirit conspicuously epidemic throughout the party of Donald Trump, King of the Sociopaths.

I once read a scholarly study of the spiritual malady. Its most interesting finding, or maybe I should say "informed conjecture," was that roughly 5% of top corporate CEOs were likely afflicted; it was that which allowed them to blithely order mass layoffs of workers and devastate thousands of families so that Wall Street would look kindly upon their overhead-slashing hatchets. The percentage estimate seemed too conservative.

But what congressional Republicans are attempting is anything but conservative. Their customary take-that-you-liberals cynicism compelled them to name the legislative monstrosity the "The Big, Beautiful Bill." The only thing beautifully big about it lies in the eye of the most radical reactionary, a profoundly anti-conservative personality.

The bill's provisions, condensed into Dantean circles, would give even Lucifer pause. Its thrust is a Leviathan of wealth's upward redistribution: larger and forever-fixed deductions for pass-through income; also a permanent, higher bar for the estate tax (set at $30 million for couples); a lower marginal tax rate for incomes of $600,000+ (single filers) and $751,600 (joint filers); for the neediest of the filthiest rich, the top 0.1% of taxpayers, an average income boost of more than $120,000.

But not to worry, America. The poor, the disadvantaged, the unprivileged and disabled have it covered, for there's the beauty of Republican sociopathy: reductions in student loans and Pell grants; food assistance cut by historic measure; abolition of expanded subsidies for suddenly unAffordable Obamacare (gotcha, Sen. McCain); incomprehensibly byzantine rules and rococo paperwork to meet Medicaid's new requirements — in toto, about 16 million Americans' loss of healthcare.

And there's more good news from the department of BBB nightmares. "People want to know, will [the bill] add to the deficit? The answer to that is No," says the ghouls' Senate leader, John Thune, who goes on to explain that gutting lower-income Americans' standard of living and ballooning the unspent income of the nation's wealthiest will produce "economic growth," thus rendering huge tax cuts additional, huge tax revenue.

One more addition: Mr. Thune implores us to ignore that thrice-empirically debunked lie trotted out with every GOP bathtub drowning; ignore, too, the bill's factual $4 trillion swelling of the national debt over 10 years, interest included, as well as $2.4 trillion in unpaid taxes by mostly the even luckier few because of the legislation's assault and battery of IRS staffing. Republicans' truth-workaround: extending 2017's reckless tax cuts by 10 years costs the government nothing since they're already in effect.

In closing, bear with me. This at first will seem off-topic.

Paul Krugman reflected this morning on "Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York’s Democratic primary," noting that it "has created panic in MAGAland." He quotes Stephen Miller: "NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration." Also Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: New York is to become "Caracas on the Hudson."

"And Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama," he continued, "basically declared New York’s voters subhuman, saying: "These inner-city rats, they live off the federal government. And that’s one reason we’re $37 trillion in debt. And it’s time we find these rats and we send them back home, that are living off the American taxpayers that are working very hard every week to pay taxes."

Observed Krugman, "So racism and bigotry are back, big time. Who’s safe? Nobody." Concluded Krugman, "Everyone who cares about keeping America America needs to take a stand against the resurgence of bigotry. Because the truth is that we’re all rats now."

Indeed we are, in that his observation and conclusion can be enlarged beyond Republicans' resurgence of bigotry. They're out of control because their inbred, deterministic sociopathy has free rein — and all but the favored minority, wallowing in extreme wealth and unearned privilege, will inherit its torrential blowback.