 “He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.” –
Chinese aphorism
Whenever I picture Donald Trump posing with his jutting
Mussolini-jaw in profile, Gym Jordan in his shirt sleeves,
sweating in anticipation of his next auto-da-fé, or Marjorie
Taylor Greene posing as SS officer, Irma Grese, standing
indomitable in her boots, her whip and her pistol, I am reminded
that each one of these sadists, in their own way, displays the
thundering id of an identity-less America.
And then there’s Mike Pence, the “in for a penny; in for a
pound” pretender to the throne of Donald Trump. He rode in on
intense feigned piety and will probably return to Indiana "a
Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order” -
but older and even dumber, if that’s possible.
From Rush Limbaugh in the 1980s to Howard Stern in the 1990s,
the norm-breaking appeal of civic villainy has grown to become
America’s pastime because so many of us refuse to keep our
fantasies to ourselves. The attempted coup on January 6th, 2021
was unforgivable no matter how deranged the argument is in its
defense. This was an attempt to take down the government of the
United States, and everyone, particularly those at the top of
this effort, should be considered traitors – and nothing less.
Proof of this malintent can be seen today among Republican
leadership – Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell and every other
Republican who continues to remain silent. But surely everyone
noticed that the Band of Idiots who implemented that deranged
plot were not the revolutionary patriots they sought to
impersonate. The QAnon Shaman believed that President Donald
Trump was fighting a cabal of Satan-worshiping, child sex
trafficking cannibals. Of course, he was.
PATIENT MERIT OF THE UNWORTHY
America is experiencing a “Hell is other people” moment because
we have ceded ownership of our national identity - an identity
of pluralism, rule of law, and equity under the law - to those
who are patently unworthy. Steven Miller, Steve Bannon, Paul
Manafort, Lev Parnas, Kellyanne Conway, Rudy Giuliani, and
countless others wouldn’t have had voices in America if civic
villainy hadn’t become a cultural trend – and had Donald Trump
not given them roles in his 2016 reality TV show: Donald Trump,
Inside Job.
But do Americans really want to yield national identity to a
hostile takeover by Ginnie Thomas and her revisionist
interpretation of a moral social contract, or to Mitt Romney’s
better class of criminal, or to Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid
sensationalism? When Hitler’s Minister for Armaments and War
Production, Albert Speer, surrendered in 1945, he remarked: “So
now the end has come. That’s good. It was all only a kind of
opera anyway.”
But the question remains largely unanswered: How did Republicans
get to this inglorious dead end? And why has the GOP allowed
itself to become a gangrenous party of extremism? While there
are many fascinating analyses, one interesting explanation is
that Republican politics has become an opera due to a
decades-long positive feedback loop that is, by definition,
self-reinforcing. The crueler they are, the more they exist to
entertain their followers and the less they are incented to
govern. The more anti-intellectual they are, the more their base
followers believe in their own innate brilliance and become
emboldened. The more dismissive they are of governance, the more
their followers scream “Off with their heads!”.
Rush Limbaugh was the leading norm-breaking Republican of the
1980s. He entertained his troops with daily propaganda that
included insults against women, people of color, and LGBTQ
people. He was beloved by his followers because his goal was to
“Own the Libs”. In the 1990s, it was Howard Stern and his own
brand of norm-breaking misogyny. And today it’s the poisonous
Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. Owning the Libs is an effort at
misdirection. It entertains the pro-Trump Right while
traditional conservatives can pursue more serious programs such
as tax cuts and deregulation. Owning the Libs is Juvenal’s
“Bread and Circuses”.
But as these tactics successfully mobilized the Republican base,
the policies that emerged became increasingly at odds with the
broader national consensus. The result of this strategy is that
Republicans increasingly ignore the overall national policy mood
as they seek to appeal to a fringe minority that drags the rest
of the party behind.
THE LAW’S DELAY
And now we face the apotheosis of decades of norm-breaking civic
villainy; the constant escalation of a positive feedback loop
that obviates the need for sound policy; and the Hell is Other
People helplessness we feel because we failed to assert our
ideological values.
Now we face the totalitarianism of Ron DeSantis. We are
passengers on a runaway train of extremism, and DeSantis appears
to be the likely successor to the management of the MAGA
Express, as it wends its way through the American heartland and
on to Europe, the Middle East, and China. DeSantis’s “Daily
Affirmations” most likely go something like: “I'm smart enough;
I'm bad enough; And doggone it, people are terrified of me”.
Ron DeSantis has begun this rise to power in Florida by defaming
those with non-conforming sexual identities; deporting immigrant
groups arriving in the US seeking asylum; and using his office
to stifle education, access to books, and the means by which an
informed citizenry can insulate itself from tyrannical leaders
like him. Imposing a strict Catholic interpretation of women’s
rights to access abortion and birth control permits the return
of patriarchal control over the lives of over ˝ of the
population. This is how it is done. This is how Ron DeSantis is
doing it in order to seize the mantle of Trumpism and take the
reins of the moribund, leaderless Republican Party.
But can DeSantis ballyhoo enough? He has boarded rather late in
this movement, but his heart appears to be in the right place.
However, he lacks the “je ne sais quoi” of traditional fascists.
Hitler was a mesmerizing speaker, Mussolini had machismo, and
Putin has used his alley-rat sensibilities to kill everyone in
sight. DeSantis lacks any crowd-pleasing charms. He’s just cruel
- but he seems to think that the MAGA Express has many more
miles left on it.
The MAGA Express arrived in Washington DC on January 20th, 2017
and unloaded all of its passengers. They scuttled into every
institution of American Democracy. But perhaps this train is
about to be derailed beginning this week. There are over 17 law
suits that have been filed in various courts against Donald
Trump and his businesses. And things are looking increasingly
grim for him.
Convicting Donald Trump is the most urgent project in America
today. We must reclaim our national identity and extirpate this
movement permanently from all positions of power in American
politics. And we must incarcerate Donald Trump and remove him
from civilized society entirely, or else. |
