Susan J. Douglas hates Republicans and wants you to know about it.
When Douglas is not busy working as a professor and chair of Communications Studies at the University of Michigan, she writes a column for In These Times, a progressive news magazine which receives financial backing from labor unions.
It was there on Monday that Douglas dropped a hate-bomb aimed squarely at the modern-day GOP.
“I hate Republicans,” Douglas writes in an article entitled “It’s Okay to Hate Republicans.”
“I can’t stand the thought of having to spend the next two years watching Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Ted Cruz, Darrell Issa or any of the legions of other blowhards denying climate change, thwarting immigration reform or championing fetal ‘personhood.'”
Douglas, a molder of young minds and author of such titles as “The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Undermines Women”, claims that her attitude towards Republicans has changed over the years. In the 1970s, she worked for Fred Lippitt, a Rhode Island politician and lifelong Republican.
He was the type of Republican — a “moderate,” she calls him — who she would have contemplated marrying.
Such an honor she would not bestow on the Cruz’s, McConnell’s and Issa’s of the world.
“Today, marrying a Republican is unimaginable to me,” Douglas says, before going on to cite statistics which show a growing political divide over time among parents when asked if they would tolerate their child marrying a person of the opposite political persuasion.
“What’s noteworthy is how entrenched this mutual animus is,” Douglas writes. “It’s fine for me to use the word ‘hate’ when referring to Republicans and for them to use the same word about me, but you would never use the word ‘hate’ when referring to people of color, or women, or gays and lesbians.”
Of course, to Douglas, who also wrote “Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work Is Done”, claims that the escalation of mutual hate and distrust is all the fault of Republicans.
“How did we come to this pass?” Douglas asks. “Obviously, my tendency is to blame the Republicans more than the Democrats, which may seem biased. But history and psychological research bear me out.”
Douglas goes on to review “Republican rhetoric and strategies” stretching back to the 1980s which she claims shows “an escalation of determined vilification” – specifically mentioning the creation of Fox News in 1996 as the beginning of a new hate-filled era.
From ex-Vice President Spiro Agnew to Rush Limbaugh, “the Republicans have crafted a political identity that rests on a complete repudiation of the idea that the opposing party and its followers have any legitimacy at all,” Douglas writes.
“According to researchers, the two core dimensions of conservative thought are resistance to change and support for inequality,” she continues, arguing that those “lead to a desire to deride those not like you—whether people of color, LGBT people or Democrats.”
“So now we hate them back,” Douglas concludes.
(h/t Charles Murray)