By Dr. KAREN L. BLACK

I have been a Democrat ever since I was old enough to know better, but I miss the Republicans. Not today’s party, mind you, but the Republicans I grew up with and remember from the time before the Former Occupant and the onslaught of the Crazy People. We used to be able to have reasonable conversations with Republicans, usually without death threats or too much yelling.

But I grieve because we need a functioning Republican Party.

I know that the Reasonable Republicans are still out there; they must be bothered by a former president who seems to be edging towards indictment, who has broken laws in the sight of all of us, and whose mystical power over Party operatives has them blocking legislation they know to be good and tolerating candidates clearly not up to normal standards.

The current Republican Party is responsible for a House of Representatives apparently incapable of constructive legislation, interested only in time-wasting “investigations” of non-issues that they wrongly suppose to be embarrassing to Democrats.

Clown-figures like the ridiculous Marjorie and the compulsive liar George Santos caper about on the national stage to the cheers of the MAGA right, under the impression that they are “owning the libs”. I have news for them: The libs are not owned.

We’re still out here, hoping for the return to power of the party that used to be a worthy, if aggravating, opponent.

The Republicans used to be the party of principle. Surely they can do better than this.

Wisdom, morality, and political experience apparently no longer mean much; all that matters is trying not to attract unfavorable attention from Mar-a-Lago.

Another distressing aspect of our current politics is the pervasive lying — every day, both nationally and locally.

Only this past week we had the full exposure of Fox News’s knowledge — on Election night — that Biden had won the election, a fact which they deliberately ignored and to this day are refusing to report. And all that malicious pervasive nonsense — Never once have I heard of Democrats drinking the blood of babies, mass grooming of children, plans to kill Republicans, cheating on vote counts, or wanting to create communism in America. Really, people.

You know this is all pernicious nonsense.

What do we Democrats believe (broadly speaking)? We believe that we are the richest country on earth, with a government that should use a good part of those riches to improve the lives of the people; that the super-wealthy have gotten very adept at moving the money to the top instead of paying fair taxes to help those down here at the bottom who really need it; that attempts to overturn the results of a fair election must be punished, and also that those who claim an election was not fair must provide real evidence for it; that presidents and other public servants are as much obligated to obey the law as we ordinary people are, and must be held to their Constitutional oaths; that there must be standards of decent behavior and competence in those elected to public office; and lastly, that when citizens start claiming a nasty right either to shoot those who disagree with them or to make their lives unlivable, something is very wrong. We must do better.

Dr. Karen L. Black is a Warren resident.