For the people who lie to my father – Political Orphans

Chris Ladd is a fallen away Texas Republican.  He wrote the GOP Lifer blog and developed a strong following.  He was repelled by the white nationalism and religious fundamentalisn that dominate the Republican Party.  When Trump was nominated he called it quits and now blogs as Political Orphans.
I don't think that the GOP has an honorable future. I know that there are rational Republicans like senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snow, governors like Christine Whitman and Charles Baker.  But when you add it up: not even John Boehner and Eric Cantor could survive, and now Trump triumphant I just down't see how there can be a place for rational Republicans other than in the Democratic Party.

There are glass half full and glass half empty people.  There are those who emphasize collectivism and those who emphasize individual freedom.  There is room there for difference.  Soon what terms should Republican orphans enter the Democratic Party?  On condition that racism, xenophobia, anti-gay sentiment, and respect for women's dignity are non-negotiable.

There is no prospect of a politics not heavily influenced, nearly dominated by major financial players (investment banks, high-tech billionaires, etc.).  But there is room for a politics that is closer to the ground and ready to press for reasonable regulation, rather than celebrating silly Reaganesque ideas like government is the problem not the solution.

Anyway..Chris add has written a painful account of his father's ideological developement.  - gwc
For the people who lie to my father – Political Orphans

By Chris Ladd October 25, 2016

Working 12-hour days in the blazing sun doesn’t leave a lot of time for independent reading. What my father knows about the world may be at odds with empirical reality, but his views line up almost perfectly with the opinions of the people who lie to him. The people who lie to my father long ago earned his allegiance, leveraging his biases to turn his political influence to their own interests. They will probably never be punished for what they have stolen from him, but they will always have my special contempt.

To be clear, my father has made his own choices. As Homer Simpson once explained, it takes two to lie: one to lie and the other to listen. In theory, he could have tapped into a very different collection of alignments.

He is not without education. My father has a college degree, though that might not mean what you’d think. He earned it across seven grueling years of plodding part-time study in a small regional state school.

He took classes when he could, without much sense of a degree plan. Apart from an older brother, no one in the family had ever been to college. The goal of his education was cloudy, but terminating his studies early would probably have meant joining his brother in Vietnam. So he stuck with it year by year, class by class, supporting himself with physically demanding, dangerous night work in a metal smelter. He spent very little time on campus and earned the grades he needed to get out with a degree.