Even I, Lord Sauron, Can No Longer Support the Republican Party

I’ve been keeping my large eye on the Republican Party. Perhaps I am hypercritical – as we are both non-corporeal representations of depravity – but I think evil should be pure. When my wrath blazes across land, a flaming terror consumes all who would destroy The One Ring, choking them with fear that rises like a vast black smoke. I could be accused of many things, but a lack of authenticity is not among them.

It’s honestly difficult to choose The One Example to illustrate the extent of the ideological incoherence I’m watching. For starters, Republicans have decreed cuts to food and healthcare for their subjects, even extreme loyalists, a move that will lay waste to the populace and kill about 51,000 Mortals each year. In addition, they have deported 139,000 Mortals and plan to expel millions more. In fact, a de facto Republican advisor, Laura Loomer, has suggested the party feed 65 million to alligators. These plans sound delectable on paper – the panic, the bedlam! But let’s be realistic. First, even alligators have their limits. And second, why go to all the effort to subjugate people only to turn around and eliminate so many of them? Who will you lord over? The arthropods and were-worms? I’d never do that just to save a tiny bit on just 10% of the Mordor budget.

And speaking of the budget, I’ve admired for years the way Republicans adhere to a bloodless creed that prioritizes fiscal responsibility over their own souls. But in The One Bill, they are spending like Stiffbeard Dwarves at a masonry expo – adding as much as $5.4 trillion to the national debt. I’m normally enthusiastic about anything profligate. And the reversal might even make sense if they were spending on elite combat training for the giant spiders that guard the towers where they live. But they’re funneling these huge sums to the top 5% of their society’s treasure-hoarding, wealthy dragons. And guess what? Those beasts already have enough power to threaten Republican sovereignty, without any help at all. From where I sit, it sure looks like the Republicans now have neither supreme power nor souls.

For me, culling elderly and disabled Orcs has never had anything to do with money. It’s just something I enjoy doing. Then again, I never claimed otherwise. I mean, I don’t want to toot my own fanfare trumpet, but if I declare that the purpose of the power I wield is forged into the One Ring, where I’ve poured my cruelty, my malice, and my will to dominate all life – well, then, I’m going to stand by that. Period. I’m not going to blab on and on for millennia about fiscal responsibility, and then – when I finally have power – suddenly be like, “Never mind.”  What really burns me up is the missed opportunity – they could have struck fear into the hearts of their enemies years ago just by owning their deliciously vile predilection for killing the old and the poor. That’s terrifying.

On the other hand, it’s not all doom and gloom. The One Bill does make gun silencers cheaper and cuts off funding for Planned Parenthood. There’s an elegant symmetry in shoring up a forced breeding program while simultaneously facilitating affordable gun accessories. With a growing number of children, school shooters will need help to keep up.

Still, I miss the days when a classic Republican like George W. Bush would say to a single mom, “You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn’t it? That’s fantastic that you’re doing that.” He knew what tyranny was all about. Are you even dominating people if they don’t toil? However, it’s estimated that the The One Bill alone will lead to the loss of more than 500,000 jobs and that there will likely be thousands more job losses from a totally optional trade war the Republicans started, which again, sounds great in theory because it will be so devastating and have knock-on-effects that reverberate like a hydrovolcanic eruption beneath Mt. Doom. But exploitive labor is the backbone of oppression.  What are people going to do all day without bone-grinding work? Make crafts? No despot in the universe should want his subjects to have idle time. That’s just dangerous.

If my power could reach the world of Men, I would have trained my eye onto the Congressional Chambers before the passage of the One Bill. At my summons, wheeling with a rending cry, in a last desperate race there would have flown, faster than the winds, a storm of amendments so awesome and terrible that even Lisa Murkowski would have stood rooted and unable to cry out or withdraw her gaze from the media that she gaslights– stripped of any moderate pretense that would provide cover for her vote.

Frankly, the whole epic is tragic. What does the Republican party even stand for anymore?