Markos Moulitsas: America under siege?

“CRIPPLED AMERICA” screams the title of Donald Trump’s new book, overlaying his pouty face. The subtitle? “How to Make America Great Again.” Given GOP screaming about American exceptionalism and superiority, it’s kind of surprising the party’s presidential front-runner is overtly arguing that America is less than great. 

Then again, that’s a common theme among Republicans, who unreservedly describe today’s United States as a nightmarish hellhole. 

{mosads}“[Our society is] very much like Nazi Germany,” said Ben Carson. “I know you’re not supposed to say ‘Nazi Germany,’ but I don’t care about political correctness. You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.” 

In the mind of Carson — Trump’s chief rival for the nod in 2016 — Americans are getting sent to concentration camps, while the unlucky citizens who have survived are just slaves because they can now get affordable healthcare.

“ObamaCare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And it is in a way, it is slavery in a way because it is making all of us subservient to the government.”

So President Obama’s murderous police state is a nightmare and must be opposed? Well, unless you’re the wrong color. 

“[Barack Obama] does not support the police, he doesn’t back up the police; he justifies Black Lives Matter,” whined New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another GOP White House contender. “I don’t believe that that movement should be justified when they’re calling for the murder of police officers.”

In the conservative imagination, the government is run by despotic slave-owning Nazis, but the police state lacks police because they’re all being murdered. 

Meanwhile, Carly Fiorina got a couple of weeks’ mileage and a minor poll bump by indulging in outright fantasy about Planned Parenthood during one of the Republican presidential debates: “Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’” Maybe a Nazi cop could’ve put a stop to it, if he hadn’t been murdered by a Black Lives Matter activist! (And if Planned Parenthood were doing what Fiorina says it’s doing, which it’s not.)

And heaven knows Christians just can’t catch a break in this country anymore. “Christian convictions are under attack as never before,” claimed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who’s polling at 3 percent in the RealClearPolitics survey. “Not just in our lifetime, but ever before in the history of this great nation. We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity.” 

But while Christians are under siege, Muslims are apparently running rampant in this country. 

“Without exaggeration, the Obama administration will become the world’s leading state sponsor and financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, yet another Republican vying for the presidential nomination next year, with maximum exaggeration. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) actually accused Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton of conspiring with al Qaeda prior to the 2012 Benghazi consulate attack — on national TV — because that’s the sort of nightmare America’s conservatives live in. 

And then there are all the jobs the Obama administration has killed. The Environmental Protection Agency is killing jobs. ObamaCare is killing jobs. Investing in green energy is killing jobs. Our current Kenyan socialist communist president has killed so many jobs that no one has a job anymore. 

Sure, in the real world the economy set a record with 63 consecutive months of job growth, but don’t try to let reality intrude into the conservative bubble. Their America is a hellhole, and they’re sticking with their fantasy ’til the bitter end. 

Moulitsas is the founder and publisher of Daily Kos.