There’s an election coming in less than two weeks, and before you go cast your vote, I’d just like to remind you of a simple fact, which is that Republicans hate you.

Even if you don’t think they hate your guts, I have a surprise for you: they do. Go look in the mirror. You seem nice enough, right? You just want to enjoy your life, get through your day with a minimum of fuss, and maybe do right by the people you love, yeah? Well, Republicans hate all that.

They don’t even WANT you to vote a week from Tuesday. They hate voters and they hate voting. They have worked with a religious fervor to game voting tallies in Missouri, and Tennessee, and North Dakota, and Ohio (we can thank the Supreme Court for that), and Florida, and North Carolina, and most notably in Georgia, where elderly black people were literally pulled over for trying to vote, and where Republican gubernatorial candidate and current secretary of state Brian Kemp purged over 300,000 people from the voter rolls. They don’t want you voting, and they don’t particularly care if it’s fair or not. And if you happen to resist, the president already tacitly endorsed violence against you.

This is because Republicans hate a true representative democracy. And if they hate that, then they hate America. And if they hate America, then they hate you. I know Republicans say they LOVE America. They love it so much they wanna marry it. But that’s not true. They only love using America, mostly as a means of engineering hate.

But they hate so many other things, too! They hate black people. They hate Muslims, and have no problem if the Proud Boys go hunting around Manhattan for women to assault. They hate Native Americans. They’re getting their sea legs back when it comes to hating Jews. They hate hate hate Mexican and Central American and Puerto Rican people, to the point where they’re playing a demented game of Oregon Trail with a group of desperate Central Americans currently situated a literal thousand fucking miles from the border, waiting for them to arrive at our doorstep just so they can persecute them. You’re a billion times more likely to die from tripping over the sidewalk than some from supposed caravan gang member. No matter. Republican hatred of immigrants is the priority. They rip immigrant children away from their parents and stick them in concentration camps and bend over backwards to make sure those families can never be put back together, all in the name of hatred.

They hate gays, too. They hate bisexuals. They hate trans people, to the point where they would rather that such people don’t even legally exist. They really hate women. If you’re a woman who’s brave enough to step forward and publicly recount a deep-seated pain you’ve been harboring for years and years, Republicans are ready to laugh right in your face.

They hate the poor. They hate victims. They hate the elderly and infirm. They REALLY hate sick people. Can you believe all these gross sick people, lying around and wasting productivity? Let’s saddle those people up with hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospital bills so that they can die penniless and afraid. Unions? Republicans hate those. People asking for a raise in the minimum wage? Yeah no, sorry. You’re on the hate wagon, too.

They also hate your kids. If they liked your kids, they would support paid maternity leave, free health care, free child care, better public schools, and they would do everything in their power to enact stricter gun control laws so that schoolchildren don’t get routinely slaughtered en masse. They hate all of those ideas. They even hate teachers. You ever meet a teacher? They’re fucking saints, man. It doesn’t matter. Republicans hate them and would rather die than pay teachers a living wage.

In fact, they don’t just hate your kids, they hate your grandchildren as well. If Republicans gave the thinnest of shits about your grandkids, they would act with incredible haste on every Defcon 1 climate report that says we’re doomed if we don’t stop humping carbon to death. But they don’t. They hate the Earth, they hate the future, and they HATE any report that might dare ask them to take a break from pillaging the lands. Those reports go right into the shredder.

And they hate reporters too. Of course they hate reporters. A reporter just got kidnapped, tortured, and dismembered by Saudi Arabia (the country that was home to the majority of 9/11 hijackers, mind you). Did Republicans give a shit? Of course not. This is because they hate reporters. They get so much mileage out of hating reporters, it’s almost impressive. Why, it’s as if breeding hate and resentment is the only thing they do competently! They hate facts. They hate whistleblowers. They hate the truth. They don’t even like QUESTIONS. How dare you ask a Republican a question? That’s really rude. The president thinks you should be body slammed. If Republican leaders liked answering for shit, they would hold more town halls. Instead, they fuck off back to their home states and huddle up with their donors.

The troops? Republicans hate the troops. They love war, but hate the troops. If they really supported the troops, they wouldn’t render them disposable heroes in for-profit wars, and they would use the hundreds of billions we spend annually on defense on mine detectors, a better VA, and other basic military needs. Ask yourself: Where the hell does all that money go if it doesn’t go to the troops?

What about investors? Now there’s one sector of America that Republicans have to love, right? Stocks! Bonds! JOBS JOBS JOBS! Again, you are wrong. They hate investors. If they liked investors, they would put restrictor plates on the banks and make it impossible for the circumstances that caused the 2008 crash to ever happen again. Of course, that’s not what Republicans did. Instead, they made defrauding investors easier than ever. That way, when the next crash hits, a cherished few will somehow manage to survive and profit while everyone else will be left wiped out and miserable.

They hate Democratic leaders, of course. Although I would argue that Republicans should ADORE Democratic leadership, given that Chuck Schumer puts up about as much resistance as the French Army. Schumer is so fucking useless and so painfully oblivious of Republican nihilism, the only viable explanation for his idiocy is that he’s joined the other side. Mitch McConell is Satan if Satan were better at his job, and yet Democratic leaders still treat him like a person who deserves actual respect. And McConnell still hates their guts anyway. It’s really quite something. Even when you offer a Republican leader friendship, they spit it out like it’s poison.

"Republicans have fully embraced being the party of hate, and parties of hate have fully embraced them. Anyone who supports them is either an agent of hate or someone seeking to make an easy buck."

It’s been very difficult for Democrats to dial in on a core point during this election cycle. This is because Democrats are clueless, and it’s also because it’s hard to sum up the past two years when there’s been a scandal every day and a lie every minute. It’s been awful; a living nightmare for millions. And it may be for misbegotten strategic reasons, or it may be due to their eternal hard-on for mythical unity, but Democrats seem hellbent on refusing to publicly acknowledge what has been made all too evident: Republicans have fully embraced being the party of hate, and parties of hate have fully embraced them. Anyone who supports them is either an agent of hate or someone seeking to make an easy buck (the latter especially holds true for garbage media people like Mike Allen and Megyn Kelly).

Republicans are not worthy of respect or legitimacy, and even the supposedly genteel conservative philosophy undergirding the Republican Party is hollow nonsense. There is nothing to them but cruelty. Today, you saw yet another potential manifestation of this hatred in the form of mail bombs, and it won't be the last time you see such atrocities attempted.

The only goal of the Republican Party is to gin up enough hate to stay in power, so that they can continue represent factions of the rich who see the poor and middle class strictly as coal to put in a furnace. They have ZERO interest in making your life better or easier, and this is because they hate you. The fact that you exist is an inconvenience to them, and they’re already actively planning for a world without you. If Democratic leaders are too stupid to fight them properly, to even REALIZE what kind of fight they’re in, then it’s left to you and me to do it. That means calling them out for what they are, where they are. That means demanding more of the opposition. That means marching. That means shaming Republicans, because they so richly deserve it.

Look in the mirror again. You’re a good person. You deserve better than these hateful shitbags, and so does the rest of the world. Fight them. Vote.