donald trump lost the 2020 presidential election.

Period. Exclamation point. Double underline.

Despite atempt after attempt after attempt to challenge it, trump’s repeated denial of it, and the insurrection on January 6th, 2021 to try and overturn it, it remains a solid, incontrovertible fact.

Most of the United States has accepted that, though a certain segment has done so begrudgingly. A lot of folks don’t like it, but at least have the good sense to admit it.

Which brings us to last weekend’s convention of the Texas GOP, the living embodiment of what Forrest Gump’s mother told him:

Stupid is as stupid does.

These guys adopted a party platform at their convention in Houston that, upon reading, left me in shock, disbelief, horror, disgust, and just outright anger.

You’ve heard of the Five Stages of Grief? I think I went through the Five Stages of Pissed Off.

Not to mention, utter embarrassment for my home state. We already were a laughingstock, and this sure doesn’t help any.

To list all the outrageous things declared in this platform would take more than a single post – much more – but I’ll just mention a few:

Regarding the aforementioned 2020 election – which, I will remind you again, trump lost – the Texas GOP party platform includes a resolution stating, in part: “We reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”

Yes. It actually says that. Proving that facts that are inconvenient to these people are simply wrong. They’re kissing trump’s tookis so hard, they’re gonna leave bruises.

Not content with stopping there, the platform also issues a rebuke to the 10 Senate Republicans involved in the bipartisan talks on gun legislation — including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who was booed during his speech Friday at the convention.

The platform states that “all gun control is a violation of the Second Amendment and our God given rights.”

I’m just gonna say this once. God never, ever gave anyone the right to carry a gun. You believe otherwise, you have no idea who God is.

Oh, and then, there’s this: the platform calls for a referendum “in the 2023 general election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation,” asserting elsewhere that “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States.”

Yep, secession fever is flaring up again. Won’t get anywhere, of course; the US Constitution, the US Supreme Court and legal experts all agree that Texas cannot do this. (Which will disappoint Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who wrote a piece titled, “Texas Republicans Want to Secede? Good Riddance.”)

And I haven’t even got to what this platform says about abortion, voting rights, gay and transgender rights, the World Health Organization, the Federal Reserve, the United Nations, education and oh, so much more. If you think you’ve got the stomach for it, read the whole thing here.

Now, of course, this is only the platform; none of it is policy.

Yet.

But it gives a clear picture of what’s on these people’s minds. And I don’t like it the least little bit.