Metaphor. Getting an idea into the heads of readers requires a reasonable command of metaphor.

Finding the right metaphors to describe the godawful mess the Bushite Regime and its hangers-on and willfully stupid followers might possibly understand is difficult, sure enough, but the Incomparable Driftglass strikes a magnificent one in yet another brilliant post:

You and I, we live in a house built by giants.

Flawed giants to be sure – we’re all sinners here – but the men and women who made this place for us stood a full head taller than their times and looked to make us as fine a future as their magnificent, damaged vision could perceive.

The planks of the floor tongue-and-grooved together by Jefferson’s prose. The bricks laid straight and true by Washington. The kitchen kept tight and warm by Franklin. The Southern Wing fumigated by Sherman and made beautiful by Ms. Rosa Parks.

...

We all work in the dark and we all do what we can. That’s the social compact. That’s the deal, and from generation to generation our house gets little additions. New furnishings from Imperial to Populist to Early "Whip Inflation Now."

Sometimes we paint the place Red, and sometimes Blue, and sometimes what those colors mean changes completely, but the compact requires -- absolutely requires -- that we respect the house itself.

And it is in this signal betrayal that the Modern Republican Party is singularly infamous.

The Confederacy tried to tear down this house; and they failed. Their spiritual grandchildren, the Modern GOP, is returning to the family's work only now they use stealthed bulldozers rather than sledgehammers.

Go read the DriftMeister's magnificent prose.

He says what I feel far better than I can say it.