Would You Vote for a Republican?

That question is neither morbid nor cynical. The question, in fact, is almost philosophical, like “To cry like a man must you feel like a man?” It may pose a problem for babies and pine trees, but an ordinary man and woman with insomnia or merely a 10th-grade education would find the question amusing.

The Republican presidential primary explodes the question into a thousand tiny bomb shells that we may be able to easily reunite into a defining whole.

Consider, for example, the following primary Republican presidential candidates: the buffoon, the two Cuban crackers and the Uncle Tom.

All four espouse a platform in which bigotry, racism, hate and discrimination are untouched by pleas for just and fair equality for all, a platform in which those devils of the nightlife are immune to the whispers of love or the mornings of  a black homeless child crying for a bowl of oatmeal.

All four preach a gospel as delightful to those shouting hallelujahs from the pews of lesser evils as it is damnable to the ears of the Greatest Good. While the Greatest Good welcomes everyone in, those four demand the building of walls to keep Latinos out.

The Greatest Good reveres Muslims as human beings and his children; those four want to erect an iron policy that bars them from the shores of America or huddles them into concentration camps of hate and 24-hour surveillance. The Greatest Good is a glass of warm milk or cup of hot mint tea during a snowstorm; those four are creeps.

All four attract to their candidacy the worst in humanity’s toilet. Racists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, haters of women, white Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals, gray-haired, blue-eyed grandmothers yelling “God hates you!” and “Go back to Africa!” in front of a plywood Southern Baptist Convention church.

As a result, to some people of color, it is better to be born in a ditch in Bangladesh than in a hospital in America. To others, not to be born is better than to be born. And a few solemn others answer both with an even more somber sentiment: Death is sweeter and kinder than not to be born at all.

So who are those four? What are those four? What are the qualities that comprise those four?

One is a demagogue and a Hitler; two despise blacks and hate brown- and dark-skinned Latinos; and the other is an idiot and pathological liar. All four would lock blacks in chains and handcuff Latinos to a universal steel cage if they had the opportunity.

And as what is true of the parts is, in general, also true of the whole—if you would not willingly die for a Hitler or perish for the KKK or commit suicide for a slave owner or take a bullet in the heart for a police terrorist—is it reasonable to vote for a republican?

True, some republicans are not racists and some are not Uncle Toms. But if leaders of the Republican Party, if its presidential candidates, despise blacks, Latinos and other people of color, why would you vote for its candidates if only a few of its members are not racists?

The answer is as simple as one’s response to an anecdote I once heard: If a wealthy businessman sails his yacht into a cruise ship while drunk and high on cocaine, think what he would do if he rows your canoe down a fast moving river full of rocks and huge boulders. For your canoe he cares as little as for his own yacht.