1. You are all for the military industrial complex. You think it’s great that the U.S. spends more on defense than the next 7 countries combined. You are absolutely convinced we are about to be overrun by ISIS this year. In the past it was Al Quaeda, and Saddam Hussein with his nonexistent WMD’s and before that it was…well anyway, you believe all the war-mongering propaganda, so the uber-rich can get obscenely rich off of war, and bonus points, you get to wave the American flag and be oh so proud of your patriotism.

2. And speaking of the military you believe this country is way too broke to be taking good care of all the veterans of all the wars that you wave your flag over and feel so proud over. You nod your head when your Republican politicians claim that there just isn’t enough money to make sure veterans are adequately cared for and I’m assuming make peace with that by believing “sacrifices” must be made to keep this country safe. Because ISIS. And Immigrants. Which brings us to…

3. You believe immigrants are evil. You believe they are here to take over the country and take away everything you’ve worked so hard to build! They are nothing but takers who want a piece of the American pie and there is not enough to go around! The fact that unless you are 100% Native American, you are descended from immigrants, DOES NOT matter because YOUR immigrant descendants BUILT this country after stealing it and committing genocide against the native inhabitants. And there could never, ever, ever, be hard-working, smart, entrepreneurial immigrants now that could be awesome for our economy and country because they all come from, you know, ssshhh…”brown countries.” But you’re not racist.

4. You believe that if you believe something, then your “rights” around your beliefs are sacrosanct and you can behave as you wish because other people don’t get rights that differ from your beliefs. Ever. So you think gays are icky? And you have an ancient book that mentions gays are icky so you get to tell those icky people what rights they have and what rights they don’t have and if you don’t get to keep them from having rights then YOUR rights are being violated because remember? Icky. Oh and that book, that also says slaves are good, shellfish is bad, stoning your wife, ok. YOU get to choose which one of the rules in your book MUST be followed or oh my god you’re being PERSECUTED. Persecute: to harass or punish in a manner designed to injure, grieve, or afflict; specifically to cause to suffer because of belief. So it’s ok to injure, grieve or afflict a gay person by denying them civil rights that YOU enjoy because of your “belief” and that is not persecution, but just by the fact that you DON’T get to deny a gay person a particular right because of your belief YOU are being persecuted. UM. NO. PERIOD. See bold above. But your Republican politicians need your votes and will deny people’s civil rights happily to keep their rich overlords happy.

5. And along the same lines as number 4 you believe that “babies” are “babies” the instant they are conceived and MUST have all the protections afforded actual alive and breathing people (unless you think they’re icky, then you get to say which protections they should have) so you have the right, no the DUTY to tell a woman how she should determine her reproductive life. You’re right, she’s wrong, she doesn’t get a choice. Because your book. You know the one with shellfish is bad? And we all know doctors are just in it because, well, they’re wrong too, so there. And why leave it at abortion? You need to make sure those slutty women keep their legs together so you work to make accessing affordable birth control difficult. And if closing down health clinics to keep women from having access to abortions and birth control also makes them lose access to life saving cancer screenings and medications, then oh well too bad, so sad, they should just work harder so they can afford the 1,000’s of dollars a private practice doctor would charge. Right? You made yours, they should make theirs. Right?

6. You believe Obamacare (The Affordable Care Act) is a socialist program designed to wipe out America as we know it turning it into a disgusting, horrible place where most people (it should be ALL people, a single payer Medicare system for ALL but can you imagine? that would definitely signal the apocalypse, am I right?) can actually afford to get medical treatment for themselves before things get so bad they have no choice but to show up at the emergency room, where taxpayers have to foot the bill. It’s too bad there are laws in place that state ER’s have to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay, am I right? Because that would free up more of your hard earned tax dollars for the next war to keep you safe from whoever. But never fear, your hard-working Republican politicians are keeping red states safe from the tyrannies of affordable healthcare by refusing to take federal funding from the U.S. government to expand Medicaid in their states. I mean healthcare isn’t a RIGHT, right? You should get it only if you can pay for it, right? Or have a job that provides it for you. If your job doesn’t provide it, that just means you’re a lazy moocher, you know? And hey, keeping insurance companies from putting lifetime coverage limits on policies, denying people coverage due to pre-existing conditions, dumping people who get really ill from their insurance because they didn’t put on their application they had acne as a kid so that means they were trying to defraud the company, are all bad, bad, bad, socialist things. Because Obama.

7. You believe the 2nd amendment should be put on a pedestal and worshipped above all others. EVERYONE should have the right to open carry any gun they want, with any ammunition they want, anywhere they want, without any of that big government hassle of background checks or waiting periods, because THE CONSTITUTION! So what that 10’s of thousand die each year and more 10’s of thousands more are injured each year, many of them children because THE CONSTITUTION! I mean good guy responsible gun owners are the only thing keeping people safe! And when those responsible gun owners blow off their own heads when they feel sad, or kill their spouses when they feel mad or lose their children because the kid just didn’t LISTEN when they were told not to touch the gun laying around, or some mentally ill person shoots up a movie theater or a kindergarten classroom, it’s all just a TRAGIC ACCIDENT, or GOD’s WILL. Certainly not the gun owner’s fault. And the NRA and the Republicans are working hard all across the country to make sure there are no barriers whatsoever to gun ownership and where you can carry one so you should feel safer already!

8. You believe in the free market. You believe that the only way for this country to work is to de-regulate everything because by golly the market will work! And it does work, for the top 1% of earners. They are so happy you believe that if there are no government regulations on corporations, that if their are no regulations on the shenanigan’s of Wall Street and the TOO BIG TO FAIL banks, that if there are no consumer protections, that if taxes for the super rich are super low and even lower on their massive amount of “carried interest” because they are getting away with not calling it “income”… I could go on and on but, if you haven’t figured it out by now you won’t. You’ll sit there, proud Republican that you are, hunched under the uber-wealthy, waiting for something, anything, to trickle down to you, never realizing you are being gleefully shat upon and nothing else.

9. You are happy with the state of education in this country. You are happy to change history taught to our young so that slavery and racism in this country seem like no big deal. You are happy to deny science because your book! The one that says slavery is great! And also because your corporate overlords don’t want regulation, so no science! There’s no rise in the sea levels, because you read articles on the internet and therefore know more than scientists! There’s no proof that global warming is causing more and more catastrophic weather events around the world because you don’t read scientific articles because scientists have no idea what they’re talking about (or maybe you don’t understand them, but hey that’s just my opinion). You believe that your book is the book and any other book is just hooey so you try to have your “creationism” taught in schools and Oh my goodness, you’re actually making headway! Pretty soon, if your Republican politicians keep gerrymandering so they can stay in power despite the majority of American’s wanting nothing to do with them, you’ll have the theocracy you’ve always wanted. God’s law over Man’s law. And of course YOU’LL get to decide what God’s law means. Am I right?

10. You believe in American Exceptionalism. You believe America is the greatest country on earth! You think America has the best healthcare available. We don’t. We used to have the best educated workforce in the world. We don’t anymore. For reasons why see number 9. You think all babies are the bomb! So much so you want to force every woman to carry every pregnancy to term. And yet the US ranks 25th in infant mortality rates of full term babies. I wonder if it has anything to do with our lousy healthcare and the determination of Republicans to control a woman’s body. Just saying’. Oh and the U.S., the richest country on earth ranks 34th on child poverty. You know little kids not having enough to eat or shoes for their feet. Because once women have been forced to have those little ones, those little ones are on their own. Got to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. If they have shoes. And if their parents weren’t lazy moochers it wouldn’t be a problem, am I right? (Never mind the fact that the vast majority of the poor in this country are working poor. I mean, we wouldn’t want those corporations raking in billions of profits for their shareholders every year to have to pay people a living wage. Bootstraps don’t you know.) And we have the best infrastructure in the world! Not anymore. Nope, Republicans won’t raise taxes to pay for it, because trickle-down will start working any time!!! And we have the best tech in the world! Nope. And good grief I could go on all day.

11. You believe Medicare would work better as a voucher system, because the free market! And you believe Social Security is going broke and needs to be privatized, because the free market! Social Security is not going broke by the way, except through the thievery of the people you vote for who “borrow” from the fund to pay for war and shit and then have to convince you old folks shouldn’t get an “entitlement” that THEY paid into their entire lives so that you won’t ever realize it was stolen in the first place.

So why is the richest country in the world behind in so many areas? Well, I’ve said several times already, but it’s worth repeating. The super rich buy politicians to do their bidding. The Supreme Court made it that much easier with their disastrous Citizens United decision with a 5 to 4 majority from the conservative justices. The Republicans are the party most indebted to the 1% although there are plenty of culpable Democrats as well. And the Republicans have jumped on the Fundamentalist Christian bandwagon, knowing that will buy them that segment of the conservative vote. Because what they are doing to this country isn’t stupidity or lack of education or even “belief” in God. Most of them have more education than 99% of the conservatives in this country could even dream of. Nope, it is calculated political horse shit from a party whose soul is bought and paid for by a few oligarchs. And they will sit and watch children and old people starve, allow tens of thousands to die from gun violence. Allow tens of thousands more to lose their homes and many hundreds or thousands die from climate catastrophes. Watch as people die on collapsing bridges and antiquated rail systems. Send more and more young people off to never ending wars to be maimed or killed in order to “keep America safe” from the people their foreign policies cultivate to rage. Refuse to fund taking care of the needs of veterans of those wars. And all you Republicans, 99% who are not and never will be the wealthy that your politicians kowtow to will keep voting for them against your own self-interests and those of your parents and grandparents and children. And I will never, never, never understand how seemingly decent people are so callous to other’s pain and so ignorant of what is being done to them just so they can proudly wear the label “conservative”.