GOP leaders keep talking war-against fellow citizens

I watched City of Milwaukee crews work through the night plowing the streets during the recent two-day snowstorm, then pick up and empty trash carts in the morning as the wind chill dove below zero.

"God Bless those public employees," I said out loud, remembering how Republican politicians used these Wisconsin citizens as scapegoats for partisan gain when Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker sucker-punched them, and teachers, and nurses and their unions after the 2010 election.

Duped into believing he was chatting up the rightwing oil magnate David Koch, Walker bragged on tape that he'd "dropped the bomb" on public employees with his surprise legislative proposal to strip away virtually all their collective bargaining rights:  

This is an exciting time. This is — you know, I told my cabinet, I had a dinner the Sunday, or excuse me, the Monday right after the 6th. Came home from the Super Bowl where the Packers won, and that Monday night I had all of my cabinet over to the residence for dinner. Talked about what we were gonna do, how we were gonna do it. We’d already kinda built plans up, but it was kind of the last hurrah before we dropped the bomb.

Walker also was recorded quietly disclosing to his largest contributor that he would move first against public employees and go after private sector union members later - - which he did when the state passed blue-collar union-suppressing 'right-to-work' legislation - - using a "divide-and-conquer" strategy.

In fact, Walker got so caught up with the tough guy battle talk that he compared his win over protesting teachers and other public employees with the worldwide battle he saw himself leading against ISIS, The Washington Post noted:

Yes, Scott Walker really did link terrorists with protesting teachers and other unionists

His spokesman tried to walk it back, and he denied making the comparison, but Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, in an attempt to show just what a tough guy he is, really did say that his strength in taking on protesting union members qualified him for confronting radical Islamic terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State. 

Now we have former Congressman and Donald Trump adviser Newt Gingrich telling a Washington Post reporter that the President-elect needs to declare "straight-out war" against federal employees: 

“It’s got to be a straight-out war,” Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Friday during a Washington Post Live interview with my colleague James Hohmann.

Why do these privileged officials keep attacking fellow citizens and public servants, and why do GOP leaders like Walker and Gingrich relish through self-flattery these militaristic metaphors?

The people who work for all of us to keep a civil society running safely are the enemy?

Who thinks and schemes like that?

Democracy is threatened when leaders preach war against the people. 

If they want to fight something, try discrimination, hatred, disease, oppression.