I am a first generation American, and I lived in the US for 19 years as of the date of writing this article.

I didn’t know much about the Democratic party and the Republican Party before I started living here, and the more I learned about them, the more I was shocked that there were so many supporters of the Republican party in this country. To me, it is a party of the extremists. The party of the racists, the religious fanatics, people who are against the gay rights, women’s rights, immigrants, abortion, etc. Many of them are barely a supporter of the principle of separation of church and state. And I am sure pretty much all the creationists vote republican.

They hate jews and muslims on principle, and the atheists are probably no better in their view.

They hate big government and taxes, and they could even do with no goverment at all, if that was a choice.

They think they support economic principles that are good for the whole country, but in fact they are being manipulated by the corporations, and the rich into supporting policies that are only good for the top 1%.

They think when you make the rich richer, they will create more jobs, and it will be better for the middle class and the poor as well, when in fact the result is an increase in the income inequality, along with an increase in the national debt and the budget deficit.

I don’t know the Reagan years. I wasn’t here. But when I look at the graph that shows how the national debt changed over the years, I see that it peaked in 3 periods in particular. One of them was the World War II years and afterwards, which is understandable, the second one is the Reagan years, and the third one is G. W. Bush years.

The way I see it, whenever Democrats are in power, the economy gets better, and then the Republicans come back to ruin it again. Even though Democrats are the ones who are blamed for increasing debt due to their social projects. But what I see is the opposite.

This has been my observation in this country so far.

In spite of all this, Republicans still win approximately half the votes in this country, which puzzles me, and scares me.

Is half the country consist of extremists? This is a scary thought. But I am told that this is not the case. Republicans have a long history and many traditional republicans are moderates.

I want to believe that, but my experience in this country in the last two decades doesn’t show me anything moderate about Republican views.

So, I am puzzled. How can half the people in a country that is the major power in the world are right wing extremists?

Am I missing something here?