On Republican "Epiphanies" (or It’s All Fun And Games Until Someone Loses an Eye)

“It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye!” The time-tried admonishment by parents when their children are doing something inherently unsafe that could bring about dire consequences; like playing with a BB gun, like voting Republican.

The author of the most recent “I used to be a Republican” article fell on very hard times and saw his political party in a new light. That “new” light has been on for the past 40-plus years. Like just about 100% of all of these “epiphanies,” the now-former Republican met with hardship and found himself out of the Republican fold. That person now has to has to stand next to and/or live near “those people,” the people that Republicans focus all their negative attention on. He now has to use the social programs that his former political party has been trying to end, or cut to the point of being useless, or post so many roadblocks to access that no one can use them. He sees the light, has a change of heart, and stops voting Republican. Then, as always, the concluding statement: “I didn’t leave the Republican party, it left me.”

As a member of the demographic group that the Republicans bash on a regular basis and use for campaign material (see the recent Mitt and Ann Romney interview) I look at these “epiphanies” with a cynical eye. I put “epiphany” in quotes in these cases for a reason. Not because the person has fallen on hard times and has seen the light, but that it took such a fall for him to see the light.

People of color in general are behind in every social category, yet we have a political party that ignores those facts and castigates them as being a drain on society, only wanting “free stuff” and to live off the government. Ignorance, in this case voting Republican, can only function in the absence of truth and the darkness of lies and hatred...