BREAKING: Republicans Are Blood-Thirsty Death Cultists
*According to a guy who makes a living hating Trump
Every once in a while you come across a political essay that is so sweeping, so stereotypical, so insulting, and so intellectually lazy, that you almost have to admire the writer’s bloated confidence in putting it out there at all.
The piece originally ran on Alternet and the scribe behind it—D Earl Stephens, author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” (and I am not even making that up)—is one I’ve lambasted in the past. If TDS had a mascot, Stephens would be a shoo-in for the position.
To wit, a quick search for some of his bylines produces these neutral journalistic masterpieces:
In this latest essay (“Republicans asked for it!”), Stephens boldly claims that conservatives—specifically Donald Trump voters—need “death, destruction, and plenty of it” to “get their cold hearts beating.” Trump, we’re told, understands what his voters really crave and is delivering it to them “wrapped cold in body bags.”
It’s quite an accusation—and yet from the comments, an overwhelming majority of his 24,000 subscribers agree.
According to this theory, tens of millions of Americans didn’t vote MAGA because of inflation, taxes, immigration, energy prices, foreign policy, Bobby Kennedy, or dear-God-anyone-but-Kamala. They voted MAGA because they have an insatiable appetite for slaughter and they knew that Trump would deliver it! No, really. That’s the argument. As if the entire Republican electorate is huddled behind Trump like fourth graders cheering on the school bully: “Come on, we want to see blood!”
Let’s test Stephens’ premise, shall we? If Republicans alone “celebrate violence and death,” as the essay insists, then we should expect Democratic leaders—those paragons of compassion—to have spotless records when it comes to conflict and the use of force. Right?
The War in Iraq that the author (accurately) describes as “senseless” was hardly a Republican pet project. In fact, dozens of Democrats—including some of the party’s most prominent leaders—voted to authorize it. Apparently the taste for carnage was bipartisan that week.
Then there’s Barack Obama—the Nobel Peace Prize President!—who oversaw military operations in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. His administration dramatically expanded drone strikes across the Middle East and Africa, reportedly holding weekly White House reviews of individuals nominated for targeted assassinations—what critics dubbed the “kill list.” According to The New York Times, when it came to authorizing lethal action against an American cleric in Yemen, Obama reportedly told colleagues the decision was “an easy one.”
It’s an odd admission from the party that supposedly recoils at violence.
Then there’s Joe Biden, whose presidency featured the deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan followed by continued military operations in Syria and Iraq and airstrikes against Iranian-backed groups across the region. But apparently the country only becomes “a nation at war with itself and everybody around us” when Republicans are in charge. Weird.
Trump’s other unforgivable offense was acknowledging a grim reality of war: people will die. Sure, Harry Truman said it. Franklin Roosevelt said it. Barack Obama said it. But when Trump remarks that conflict invariably costs human lives, his words are treated as proof of uniquely monstrous indifference.
The reality is that war has been an interparty enterprise in the U.S. for decades. Military interventions have occurred under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, often with support from members of both parties. You can argue those wars were justified. You can insist that they weren’t. But the idea that one side of the political spectrum singularly delights in human butchery while the other floats through history as a haloed moral beacon is pure—not to mention hilarious—partisan mythology.
Which brings us to Mr. Stephens’ final declaration:
“We are a nation at war with itself… because that is exactly how the Republican Party likes it. Violence, war and hate are their hallmarks, and the only things they have consistently delivered to the American public for the past 75 years. There is nothing new about any of this, except that they’ve finally found a leader who can provide all that with a smile on his face.”
There’s exactly one thing here I can agree with the author on: we are a nation at war with itself. But maybe—and I’m just spitballing here, sir—we’re a nation at war with itself because war is one of the few enterprises in Washington that reliably serves both sides of the aisle. It justifies budgets, sustains industries, and divides voters neatly and permanently into two opposing camps. When someone like you comes along and accuses millions of your fellow citizens of openly craving bloodshed while ignoring history that’s inconvenient to your embarrassing argument, you’re not exposing the problem—you’re helping keep it in place.
Before anyone rushes to the comments to inform me that I’m a warmonger or a diehard Trump fangirl, allow me to save you a few keystrokes: I am neither. War is horrific. It always has been, and it always will be. As for Trump, he may be a barbed-wire-wrapped bull in a geopolitical china shop, but I’d still pick him over Harris, Hillary, Newsom, AOC, Buttigieg, Big Mike (with Barry in the basement* again) or pretty much anyone else the Left is likely to prop up. Sue me.
What I am addressing today is the increasingly popular habit—on both sides!—of arguing every political position by declaring half the country morally diseased. (Can you imagine if I wrote a piece declaring “all Democrats are Satan-worshipping pedophiles” or “the Left is solely responsible for every act of political violence in this country”?) That may feel cathartic, but it isn’t exactly journalism.
What do you think? LMK below!
*If you’re a musician and you don’t rename your band (or at least your next album) Big Mike with Barry in the Basement, I don’t think we can be friends.
"dear-God-anyone-but-Kamala" definitely gets my vote!
Thanks for reading articles like D Earl Stephen’s, and digesting them for us, so I don’t have to.