No Hell, But It Wouldn't Be Hot Enough

I've had a pleasant day doing good works and improving my community, however incrementally. So it's hard to come back to my computer and be reminded of the bottomless amorality of J.D. Vance and Donald Trump, and all the other Republicans who support them, as they sacrifice innocent people and our common good to improve their election chances.

Last night writer Adam Serwer appeared on MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes. I don't know if I've ever seen a commentator so incandescent with anger. He said,

[Haitian people in Springfield] are here legally, they're working hard, they're doing everything that Republicans say they want immigrants to do. And Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are lying about these people because they are Black immigrants. And the most cynical part about it is that the plan is to provoke a lot of criticism that they're being racist on the assumption that white voters will be insulted by those accusations and support Trump. They have failed to bait Kamala Harris into saying something that could make racism a big issue of the election this way, so they're now torturing this small community in hopes they can frighten enough white voters to win election. It's reprehensible, it's one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen in American politics, and honestly Chris it makes me enraged.

In that last sentence... his voice haunts me.

Today, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie sent out a newsletter with the title "J.D. Vance's Blood-and-Soil Nationalism Finds Its Target." This is the lede:

How much more is there to say about these Republicans and their actions than what these two writers have said?

Yesterday, Leah McElrath posted part of a Yeats poem that seems appropriate to the moment:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.