(LONG THREAD) Lately, I’ve developed a serious obsession with Chernobyl. The problems that led up to the explosion of Reactor No. 4 are so complex, so intricate, that I find the whole thing absolutely fascinating. But there’s another reason I’m so interested in it lately. 1/

I’ve tweeted before about reading “Midnight in Chernobyl,” and how, the first time I read it, I was reading about one of the only two Level 7 nuclear accidents ever to occur. 2/

The second time, I was reading an analogy between how the Soviet Union handled the accident and how the Trump administration is handling the pandemic. 3/

The more I learn about Chernobyl, the more parallels I see between that, the Trump administration, and the Republican party. Chernobyl brought down the Soviet Union. Most of us were taught that corruption, nepotism, and the tenets of Communism caused the Soviet Union to fall. 4/

That’s true, but it was Chernobyl that brought it down. 5/

How? By peeling back the layers of the government and the Communist Party and exposing the horrific rot within. When the truth came out about happened at Chernobyl, and how much worse it was than people were told, they began to see through the illusion of the Communist utopia. 6/

Sure, the Union’s severe mismanagement of the economy left massive amounts of food to rot in fields, leading to the massive bread lines with which we’re all familiar, but the Party continued pushing the utopian idea upon which the Soviet Union was supposed to be based. 7/

Once the truth about Chernobyl started coming out, the Soviet populace began to see through the layers. Even the government, and Gorbachev himself, finally saw the sheer level of rot within the Union. 8/

Where are the parallels between Chernobyl and Donald Trump? Everywhere. First, the pandemic. Some in the Soviet scientific community knew the RBMK reactors used at Chernobyl (and other plants) had design flaws. 9/

They kept those facts to themselves, leaving plant operators and everyone else in the dark. The lie they told was that those reactors were impossibly safe. As such, nobody knew that an RBMK reactor even could explode, let alone how. 10/

Add to that the fact that the plant’s leadership was intent on running a safety test they should have delayed just to garner points, and you have a recipe for the disaster that was Reactor No. 4 on April 26, 1986. 11/

The way Trump has handled the pandemic is, in some ways, very similar. He and his mouthpieces keep saying everything is great, everything is fine, we’ve got all these tests and treatments and even a vaccine coming out ASAP. 12/

Behind closed doors, the administration and the Republican Party know better even if Trump himself doesn’t. 13/

The Republican Party insists on repeating Trump’s talking points about how “everything is fine.” For instance, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) keeps tweeting about how there’s no risk to children so we need to open the schools back up. 14/

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) says “common sense wins,” when it comes to opening the NCAA football season. Other Republicans are in lockstep with Trump on lying about the seriousness of the pandemic, too, along with trying to hide and downplay what the science says about it. 15/

Then you have Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who wants the Democrats and the media to stop with the alarmism over COVID-19. 16/

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS) have positions along these lines, too, repeating a thoroughly debunked idea that the death toll is badly overinflated because of the sheer number of people who had comorbidities. 17/

The list goes on. 18/

In the Soviet Union, the scientific community was in on the secrecy and lies about the RBMK reactor’s design flaws. In Chernobyl’s aftermath, though, leadership all up and down the line said people raising concerns about radiation were alarmists. 19/

The scientists who did try and speak up only did so later, at the cost of their careers, their positions, and their reputations. Many in the old guard would say they spoke the truth at the cost of their own souls. 20/

By contrast, the scientific community is being silenced by the politicians and mouthpieces who will say and do anything to prop up Donald Trump, even at the cost of their own souls. 21/

And the administration is well aware of the dangerous reality of the pandemic. They're downplaying it just as the Soviet government and the Communist Party downplayed the dangerous reality of Chernobyl. 22/

In the end, the result is the same. The science is suppressed, information is suppressed, people don’t know what’s really going on, and those who speak up are drowned out or actively silenced by the propaganda machine. 23/

And that’s just the pandemic. There’s a worse parallel here that ought to have everyone terrified and motivated enough to vote Trump and as many Republicans as possible out of office this year. 24/

Chernobyl brought down the Soviet Union. Yes, the full collapse was a slow burn that occurred over decades. We do know that – they slowly devolved into a world of secrecy, lies, corner-cutting, and corruption. 25/

What Chernobyl did was cut away the remaining layers of illusion surrounding the Communist utopia and expose the high degree of rot that permeated the entire Union not just to the world, but to each Soviet republic, to the Eastern Bloc, and to the populace in general. 26/

That exposure, that revelation, was the final nail in the coffin of the USSR. 27/

And as Chernobyl exposed that festering rot, so too has Donald Trump exposed the festering rot that permeates the Republican Party. 28/

When he first declared his candidacy, I laughed and assumed there was no way the Republicans would ever let him win the nomination. Then he did. So I assumed that, if he won, they’d stay true to the values they keep saying they hold, and keep him in check. 29/

They did not. Instead, they fell in line behind him, championing everything he did, repeating his lies and lying for him, and doing his bidding no matter the cost to the republic. 30/

In reading some history about the GOP, I learned that their true values have roots with Newt Gingrich, who turned the party into “Power above all else, party above country.” That value has rotted the GOP from the inside out the way trees can rot from the inside out. 31/

Some of us have seen symptoms of it for a long time. The tree doesn’t seed out nearly as well, it has more dead branches each year than it should, and so forth. 32/

But to those who ignore the symptoms and refuse to see the truth, the tree appears fine. To them, the GOP appeared fine. It’s not and it hasn’t been for a long time, since before Gingrich. Gingrich, however, kicked it into overdrive. 33/

Mitch McConnell is a symptom. Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Andy Biggs, Martha McSally, John Cornyn, Jim Jordan, etc., are all symptoms. 34/

Am I oversimplifying things? Yes…but this isn’t a research paper. It’s an explanation and analogy of what is so wrong with Trump and the Republicans that we need to get rid of them NOW. 35/

Trump has exposed the GOP for what it is: Rotten to the core and festering more than ever. And we need to ensure that, if he brings anything down, it’s the GOP, not the United States. /end