Fanatical love affair with extremism needs to end

In a random sampling of media outlets over the last six months, one finds numerous articles stating that conservatives are now distancing themselves from Trump.

Well, first: They aren’t conservatives, they are right-wing. Name-calling, lying, attacking the FBI and DOJ, smashing windows in the Capitol and smearing feces on the walls, engaging in violent rhetoric, and suggesting the incarceration of political opponents have no place in true conservative values.

Republicans are deluding themselves if they now consider Trump objectionable and somehow different from themselves. Trump is not some independent entity. He is the embodiment and the product of all the ugliness that is modern American conservatism — he is what they believe. They ARE Trump. They can't reject Trump until they first reject what they themselves have become. And that would require character, courage and conscience — qualities that the American conservative movement discarded decades ago.

The persistent claim that the election was "stolen," despite being baseless, has been endlessly repeated and supported by Trump's team, many members of Congress, and by Fox, despite recent revelations that all these people involved knew this was a lie, but that seems not to matter, just like the thousands of other lies Trump foisted upon the American public.

The GOP's fanatical love affair with Trump and with the autocratic government he promises belies a party that has completely abandoned American democratic principles.

DAN STRAYER

Bonners Ferry