I grew up Republican. My dad voted for Bush twice. Much of my extended family is conservative, even if it is in a different context (Colombia). My first election was 2008, when my dad exhorted me to research both candidates and instruct him how to vote.

The Republican Party has been moving away from democracy for a while now. Their goals, their strategies, and their tactics run against everything I was taught to hold dear, values I was taught were conservative. What we are seeing is the culmination of 50 years of deliberate work by Republican leadership, a combination of messaging, gerrymandering, and the warping of norms and institutions. Republicans have fashioned a system that insultes them from repercussions, that forced them to tack as far right as possible during primaries to win generals that are foregone conclusions. Their messaging has radicalized their base, to the point that the most serious domestic threat comes from right wing groups (according to the FBI).

The two parties are different, in their goals, in their tactics, in their worldview, in their fundamental underlying nature. I feel for many Republican voters; they signed up based on family, on culture, in a nominal understanding of Republican values. Love of Christianity, of gun ownership, of small business, fiscal responsibility, personal liberty, and low taxes.

But these are all lies.

Republican leadership has only paid lip service to the moral teachings of Christ. Since at least the early 1990s, we have seen prominent Republican leaders publicly engage in adultery, in lying, in the worship of Mammon.

Their furious support for gun ownership rings hollow when a black man can be shot for being suspected of having a gun. When the NRA and GOP withhold their support for the victim in such cases, we know their support is conditional.

The bills they pass continuously benefit large companies over small businesses, and Republicans are forced to put in measures that account for the little guy. Deficits and the debt get significantly worse during Republican administrations or due to Republican action, the money incurred by Republicans go to measures with nominal ROI, and tax cuts for the rich are permanent, while tax cuts for the rest are temporary.

Finally, for personal liberty, Republican leadership has pushed for measures that allow them to act as they please, in accordance to their stated (not acted) morality, while denying others the right to marry, the right to choose their doctor, the right to travel freely, the right medicate, and many others that would make this too long post even longer.

My political evolution has been a slow and cautious one, and the positions and actions of the Republican Party have forced me to where I am today. I can have an honest and engaging disagreement with Manchin, with Sanders, with Biden and Harris. I believe that we have similar goals, in large part, and differ on how to best achieve those goals.

I cannot have a similar disagreement with a party that, at best, offers a tepid reproachment of an attempted coup, and at worst actively engages in voter suppression and electoral fraud while incentivizing stochastic acts of terrorism and violence from their supporters. This is fundamental to our democracy, and it does not touch my severe disagreements on their approach to science, to human rights, to diplomacy, to economics, to health care. I believe we have fundamentally different goals that are wholly incompatible.

The two parties are MEANINGFULLY DIFFERENT. Don’t fall for false equivalencies.