To everyone dismayed that our state legislature could vote to increase their own meal reimbursements while simultaneously denying free school lunches for low-income students – you should absolutely be mad. You should be astonished, confused and hurt. But we shouldn’t be surprised. This is what the Republicans have become, and it’s becoming clearer by the day that there is no reconciling with their world view.
Republicans are no longer interested in the values and tenets of conservatism. Rather, they are interested in imposing their twisted social order on others, and even more interested in maintaining it. In their world, children don’t get to question their elders, men don’t get to question God, women don’t get to question men, and nobody gets to question the police or the president (but only when the president is Republican).
In their fantasy world Columbus discovered North America, pilgrims really did make paper turkey feathers with the Native Americans, and the United States has never done anything wrong. It’s OK to blindly devote yourself to your country simply because you were born in it. Being anything but a straight, white Christian is immoral and, in most cases, punishable and illegal.
In their world, poor people are poor because they deserve it, and rich people are rich because they deserve it. It takes too much effort for them to think about it or try to help fix it, because that would suggest they actually think about anyone but themselves. Just look at how Senate Majority Leader David Hogue responded when asked why he voted to give himself more lunch money while denying children a free lunch – “I don’t have a good answer for you." We know what the answer is, he just didn’t have the guts to say it.
Kurt Kopperud lives in Fargo.
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