I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked. - William Butler Yeats, 1916
It seems incomprehensible to me that half of America would vote
for the political party that has no platform, is opposed to
democracy, rejects separation of church and state, and advocates
insurrection and mob violence. The Republican Party has
absolutely nothing to offer America but political nihilism.
Professor Donald A. Crosby defines it this way: “Political
nihilism is the position holding no political goals whatsoever,
except for the complete destruction of all existing political
institutions - along with the principles, values, and social
institutions that uphold them”.
It is safe to say that all those associated with the Trump
Administration subscribe to this philosophy of political
nihilism. But so do the members of the Republican Party: those
who fail to denounce this movement; and those who obstruct
legislation designed to preserve our American democracy. Steve
Bannon put lipstick on this ideology by calling it the
“deconstruction of the administrative state”, but a rose is a
rose is a rose…
The singular question on the American mind should be: why would
the GOP want to murder democracy? Why murder the very idea that
permits you to prosper? The question is at once posed and
answered. Republicans are the beneficiaries of American
democracy, but not its defenders. In spite of their claims of
“maker” status in our economy, they are, in fact, the
contemptible “takers” of their own mythology. They take the
fruits of democracy - of rule of law and of peace itself - and
like thieves, they hoard it for themselves. Our laws protect
their financial interests and their cherry-picked constitutional
amendments. Our laws preserve the financial stability that
global economics relies upon and that multinational corporations
need. The Federal Government subsidizes their ventures
domestically and abroad, and creates a business environment that
encourages investment and entrepreneurial risk. Given this, why
would the Republican Party seek to return America to a previous
era when managed capitalism, environmental protection, and a
growing middle class of consumers did not exist? And why has
this political party chosen to be democracy’s adversary – a
party that would rather fight than win, if the cost is sharing?
While it is relatively painless to name Donald Trump the goat in
this national nightmare of ours, it is facile to do so. Trump is
the natural outcome of an American political party that, over
many decades of fraud, evolved into this agent of political
nihilism.
It is a simplification to regard this trend in American politics
as a function of the performance art that is Donald Trump and
his allies, or more broadly, as a movement within the Republican
Party led by uneducated dolts who see their personal relevance
in society displaced by foreigners or educated “coastal elites”.
While both are true, this movement appears to have its roots in
the 1980s, following Ronald Reagan’s election, and the emergence
of The Federalist Society. We know it today as the organization
to which Donald Trump offloaded his responsibility to name
judges and legal specialists on behalf of his administration.
And now, like so much of Republican Machiavellianism, we are
helpless to oppose a Supreme Court that is ruled by berobed
Torquemadas meting out Medieval justice to those who oppose the
theocracy they intend to construct.
I have always wondered why the name of the most anti-federalist
organization in America - The Federalist Society – named itself
after the ideology that it stands in opposition to. Their name
always struck me as a Janus word – a word that serves as its own
antonym. And naming it thus was intended to deceive. As one of
The Federalist Society’s founders, Lee Liberman Otis, revealed
in 1982:
“Finally, our group out here settled on Federalist Society as a
name, which I suppose makes up in euphony what it lacks in
accuracy.”
Treachery and the manipulation of language are now synonymous
with the Republican Party. Marjorie Taylor Greene regularly
appropriates the First Amendment to cast her clownish Qanon
conspiracy theories; and Lauren Boebert champions the Second
Amendment and the right it purportedly grants for gunslingers to
threaten U.S. citizens with automatic weapons. When Twitter
permanently suspended Donald J. Trump in response to his efforts
to effectuate his treasonous political coup, his namesake, Don
Jr., said this: “We are living Orwell’s 1984. Free-speech no
longer exists in America. It died with big tech, and what’s left
is only there for a chosen few”. Dollars to doughnuts Donnie Jr.
never read the book to which he refers: and neither did his
father, nor his Deadhead cult of followers - or anyone else in
his wide swath of stupid.
Republican ideology has always been nothing more than a
teleological argument – an end that justifies the means style of
thinking - than a solution to anything. Underneath their claim
of “fiscal responsibility” was always a racist motive to punish
those caught in a cycle of poverty due to many factors, not the
least of which was the color of their skin. Underneath their
claim of “Christian values” always lurked the moral absolutism
of the self-righteous - Savonarola style. And underneath the
celebration of deregulation and unrestricted capitalism always
lay the greed of the unredeemed Scrooge.
While the apostles of conservatism have traditionally clothed
themselves in the robes of an intellectual – a measured thinker
who has mastered the art of political philosophy - they were
always nothing but 5th century sophists whom Plato characterized
as charlatans. Those who engage in “the deliberate use of a
false argument with the intent to trick someone with false or
untrue reasoning”.
Our country has been slouching toward political nihilism for
decades, and, increasingly, we recognize that the leaders of the
Republican Party have been the ideological fathers of this
shift.
We appear to be at the end of an era. We are deeply distrustful
of politicians in general and believe them to be largely
incompetent. We have become cynical with respect to the corrupt
nature of those who craft policy. We see a disconnect between
social and environmental priorities and our ability to influence
the outcomes. And we feel overwhelmed by the rapid change that
has swept the globe and the implications of climate change, gun
violence, terrorism, and the reemergence of fascism.
We now exalt cartoonish thuggery over genuine heroism and
decency and are transfixed by the power of mass murder delivered
by the muzzle of a gun. Christianity is neither kind nor gentle
and is cruelly force-fed to us by spokesmen of feudal justice.
Our contemporary pursuit of happiness, delivered to us by our
liberal democracy, is now a pageant of puerile narcissism. And,
every aspect of our American contemporary culture is now a
mockery of our founding ideals.
Perhaps the solution to this lies among the states and in using
the GOP’s own tactics against them with enormous investment is
state offices and in Democratic candidates. Perhaps genuine
Christians should stand up and fiercely condemn the usurpation
of their values by the Janus words of the religious right. Maybe
young, educated Democrats could choose to run for office and
vehemently condemn by name political hacks like Matt Gaetz and
Ron DeSantis. And most urgently, Democrats must abolish this
Republican Party and the political nihilism it espouses – and
call them what they are: morally unacceptable and thoroughly
evil. |
