OK, what in the fuck

have you people done to my Party!

Sure I was Evil.

But I was Genius Evil. Operatic. Shakespearian. I was fucking Epic.

And John here looked positively scholarly sucking on a pipe like he sucked on my gnarly Khmer Rouge during those long winter nights at Camp David.

It was not as if I was some rich, spoiled, cowardly waterhead moron.

With some skeevy, half-bright, Houston Fixer for my AG…

Lord how the wicked have fallen.

All of which is by way of reminding you that Sunday, June 17th is “National Republican Treasonal Affective Disorder” Day.

Here is the story behind the day we honor.

You see, once upon a time -- I know this is hard to believe -- a Republican President obsessed with a disastrous war that his every lie and surge made worse, obsessed with his enemies, obsessed with power, tried to set himself up as a king.

In his paranoia, he illegally wiretapped American citizens.

He abused the US intelligence system to achieve his own, petty, partisan ends.

He made a joke out of the Justice Department.

His nationalized and routinized slander. smear, race-baiting, crying “traitor” and backstabbing as the acceptable political wetwork and the calling card of the GOP.

He gave Lincoln the boot, and welcomed the Klan with open arms.

He targeted the press for GOP-brand abuse and intimidation.

He was protected by a shield wall of degenerate, morally-dead, robot-loyal political Myrmidons who ass-raped the Constitution three times before breakfast from onside the White House and smiled.

And his Party wuuuuuved him: even though he had a clear, decades-long record of being a degenerate monster, they elected and then re-elected him anyway.

Because the other guys were Dirty Fucking Hippies who obviously Hated America.

A man whose departure in humiliation and disgrace was perfectly summarized by Saint Hunter Thompson thusly:

"Jesus! How much more of this cheap-jack bullshit can we be expected to take from that stupid little gunsel? Who gives a fuck if he's lonely and depressed down there in San Clemente? If there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark. "

Amen.

And on June 17, 1972, the Nixon Administration nicked itself while shaving. Something it had to do six, seven times a day.

Nicked itself near an artery.

Of course they didn’t realize it; In their Pride and Paranoia (The admittedly least-brilliant novel of Jane Austen) they assumed it was something trivial. Something they could lie or cheat or bribe or blackmail their way out of as they had so many, many, many times before.

Because that is how Republicans do business.

But the wound bled. And it bled. And an infection set in. And after a year the skin began to slough and breach enough for everyone but the 27% to see the writhing horror underneath.

And it all began 25 35 years ago this Sunday (thanks, anonymous).

When this guy -- Frank Wills –

a security guard at the Watergate Hotel discovered a break in in-progress and called the cops. The PD arrested five men -- Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James W. McCord, Jr., Eugenio Martínez and Frank Sturgis – and then we were off to the races.

Make no mistake, Nixon laid down the political DNA of the modern Republican Party: What came after was no accident, kids, and they aren’t going to just up and disappear simply because they’re evil and stupid and wrong about every single fucking thing in the Universe.

They are a disease.

So this “National Republican Treasonal Affective Disorder” Day, please give generously of your time and money to a Progressive cause or candidate, so another generation won’t have to wake up to a Constitution again left in tatters by the Traitor Right. To more American’s dying in an illegal and catastrophic war. To a nation kept deliberately terrorized and divided because that is how fascists hang on to power.

Because isn’t 25 35 years of Republican treachery, deceit, slaughter and contempt for the rule of law

enough?