I feel I must belabor the obvious. Yes, it's a cult.

For most of my life, the Republican party has promoted itself as the true patriots, the people who "support the troops," will aggressively confront foreign adversaries, and spend trillions of dollars for what they define as a "strong" national defense. They also purport to be the competent party, the "grownups in the room." Now, quite suddenly it seems, they worship and adore a demented idiot who disparages and disdains the military and wants to bow down to the nation's most dangerous adversary. General Kelly, who served as white house chief of staff, has recently granted an interview to CNN.  

A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France. A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women. A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.

 

Yes, and that was when he retained a shred of insanity. Now he's gone completely bonkers. On Friday he gave a speech to California Republicans. Since the corporate media seems to have largely ignored it, I've linked to a Kos diary that lays it out for you. Some highlights.

All the currently dry canals will be brimming and used to irrigate everything, including your own homes and bathrooms and everything. You’re going to be happy, and I’m going to get it done fast. They say that there’s so much water up north that I want to have the overflow areas go into your forests and dampen your forests. Because if you dampen your forests you’re not going to have these forest fires that are burning at levels that nobody’s ever seen before.

 

Biden won the state in 2020 by 30 points, and we get this:

We’re not going to lose by 5 [points]. We’re going to win, we would win. I don’t believe it when they say it, but the state is rigged. It’s a rigged election, it’s a horrible thing, and we have to turn it back. This is a state that the right Republican can win and I think actually win easily. … No way we lose this state in a real election. If this was a real election, there’s no way. If we had a real election with the real polling booths, if you had real polling—you don’t have any polling booths. You have people signing something and dropping it in the mail, and who the hell knows what happens after that? It’s ridiculous.

 

Summary execution for shoplifting, not sure who is supposed to carry it out:

 

And we will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft. Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store. Shot!” [Bloodthirsty weirdos in the crowd scream wildly like they did back in the day when The New Kids on the Block recommended extrajudicial killings of teen shoplifters.]

 Oh yeah, he said "motherfucker":

If you don’t like somebody, or if somebody’s beating you by 10, 15, or 20 points like we’re doing with Crooked Joe Biden, let’s indict the motherfucker! Let’s indict them.

 

He's recently claimed to have defeated Barack Obama in 2016, claimed that Joe Biden is going to start World War II, and that Jeb Bush invaded Iraq, among many other very interesting comments. But the New York Times is obsessed with  Joe Biden's age.