A handful of squishy Republicans (RINOs) supported the impeachment of Donald Trump.  To be clear, this effort is little more than rabid wolves baying at the moon.  What could be more impotent than impeaching a president who is leaving office?  All the same, RINO participation in this nonsense is disturbing.

There are a lot of Republicans who want to work across the aisle, just like the old days.  News flash: This is not politics as usual.  You cannot compromise with people whose values are diametrically opposed to your own.  If you both want to fix the opioid crisis but have different ideas — fine, talk it out and compromise.   However, if one side wants liberty and the other tyranny, it's foolish to think you can compromise and immoral to try.

The Democrats and their fellow travelers on the left have some disturbing aspirations.  Just a year ago, discussion of tyranny in America would have been considered crazy talk.  Not now.  The temperature on this pot has been turned up slowly, and now we're at the boiling point.  Just look at everything our ruling class has done in the past year.

Lockdowns have restricted our movement, commerce, and assembly.  Our rulers are not making us carry papers yet.  That would be an inconvenience for illegal aliens.  They are, however, making us wear masks to demonstrate our obedience.

Big Tech oligarchs are using censorship and deplatforming to censor dissenting views.  Conservative commentators such as Dan Bongino and the Conservative Treehouse have been evicted from their web servers or had their advertising revenue restricted.  Donald Trump and his followers have been banned from Twitter.  Conservative postings mysteriously disappear from Facebook.  Amazon, Google, and Apple even conspired to shut down Parler for allowing conservatives to express themselves.

Those with opposing views are facing attack from all directions.  Forbes and the Lincoln Project are constructing a blacklist to track Trump Cabinet members and argue against their future employment.  Financial institutions are refusing to provide services to conservative organizations. 

The government was weaponized years ago, when the CIA ran spies in the Trump campaign and the FBI surveilled private citizens.  But now prosecutorial discretion is being used to punish challengers to the ruling class.  Federal prosecutors have announced that they are pursuing felony murder charges for anyone involved in the riot on January 6.  However, last summer's Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots resulted in over 30 deaths (the number as of August 2020).  How many felony murder charges resulted from that?  Charges have been dropped against nearly all of last summer's rioters.  Yet charges are still pending against those who defended themselves (such as Kyle Rittenhouse and Mark and Patricia McCloskey).  So much for equal treatment under the law.

It's time for every Republican to answer one question: what do you stand for?  Any politician who claims to support liberty but then works with wannabe tyrants is either lying about their patriotism or just a useful idiot.

It's time to choose — Vichy or Resistance.  Choose wisely.  We'll be watching.

Image: Pixabay.