#54  NEW REPUBLICAN BELIEFS, OUR LIFE OF MAKE-BELIEVE, & SOME ADVICE FOR DEMOCRATS

A confederacy of dunces

It’s like being trapped in a bad movie that just keeps getting worse, but you’re locked in the theater for forced viewing.

Hence out of desperation and/or addiction, I’m locked into trying to make sense out of what’s taking place in America.  Based on my slack-jawed observation, apparently Republicans have come to believe the following:

• Republicans believe the President and everyone around him can freely lie and actual facts have no relevance to either their speech or actions.
• Republicans believe we should randomly slash social services and government departments regardless of what they do or who might be endangered.
• Republicans believe that neither the President nor the government should be held accountable to laws.
• Republicans believe that the President is free to use his position as well as government services to enrich himself and his family.
• Republicans believe that cabinet members can use large amounts of taxpayer money for their own personal benefit (travel jets, make up rooms, advertising, kickbacks, etc.)
• Republicans do not believe in power-sharing between three co-equal governmental branches, as the Founders set it up; they do believe that all the power should go to the executive branch.
• Republicans do not believe in the rule of law, the Bill of Rights, or the Constitution.
• Republicans do not believe that non-white people should live in America.
• Republicans do believe that the President should command an anonymous, deep state, paramilitary force that freely harasses citizens and others who are legally in America with violence and no regard for their civil rights.
• Republicans believe in secret rendition to concentration camps without due process.
• Republicans believe in massively ballooning the federal debt.
• Republicans do not believe in the right of free speech unless it reflects their own beliefs.
• Republican believe that the President is free to pursue wars on a whim without legal authorization or coherent explanation.

I guess I’ll stop there.  You could as well start every one of those line items with “Conservatism means…”  Just how do you make sense of the massive spigot of sewage which merely reports the daily actions of the administration?  This (inexhaustive) list points at least to one thing: whatever the Republicans have been telling us they’re about over these many long years has nothing much to do with what’s actually taking place.

If you’ve followed Washington politics for the past few decades, you would already know that the process of democracy has become seriously challenged.  The Founders of the United States saw democracy, I’m pretty sure, as a rational tool by which to interrogate problems and come to reasonable plans of action to benefit the broad swath of citizenry.  They certainly foresaw demagogues like Trump and formed the structure of governance to prevent wholesale takeover by one purely self-interested party (individual or political).

We’ve seen that in our current era, it becomes possible to load the mental space of citizens with fact-free rhetoric in order to shape them imperviously into one point of view, entirely rooted in the manipulators getting wealth and power.  That ain’t your “free exchange of ideas.”  That’s Orwellian mind control, worked out through capitalist and tech means.

Bertrand Russell: pro democracy and empiricism

Philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) writing on the value of democracy in Unpopular Essays (1950), had this to say:

“It is commonly urged that, in a war between Liberals and fanatics, the fanatics are sure to win, owing to their more unshakable belief in the righteousness of their cause.  This belief dies hard, although all history, including that of the last few years, is against it.  Fanatics have failed, over and over again, because they have attempted the impossible, or because, even when they aim for what is possible, they were too unscientific to adopt the right means; they have failed also because they roused the hostility of those whom they wished to coerce.  In every important war since 1700 the more democratic side has been victorious.  This is partly because democracy and empiricism (which are intimately interconnected) do not demand a distortion of facts in the interests of theory….”

Ah, yes.  Would that the American government functioned according to democracy and empiricism.  That is, our governors would formulate what they thought would work best for the rest of us, and then abandon or adjust it based on an accurate assessment of how well we were helped or harmed.  That’s not how fanatical ideologues go about it.  They tend to remain unimpressed by the facts on the ground.  (We can consider how the democracy of the US faired in the “important wars” of Vietnam and Iraq; yet those wars of choice did seem born of a fanatical belief that the American military’s superiority allows it to accomplish anything).

Well, Donald Trump is no fanatic, beyond his fanatical belief in his own ego.  That belief gets structure from his ability to talk people into pretty much anything, the con man’s art.  It doesn’t matter to him so much what he says, only that he holds you rapt while saying it, and you respond with adoration and monetary gifts.  It does not matter that immigrants do not pose a crisis of criminality; that most foreign goods don’t demand an enormous tariff; that the voting process in America provides honest and reliable elections; that Iran could not threaten us from the other side of the world.  If Trump says it, we’re expected to believe him, and the Republican party, with the whole rightwing media apparatus, comes in to reinforce the beliefs.  If he says the opposite tomorrow, they’ll about face and get behind that.

Within my memory, Republicans used to attack the left for its lack of seriousness, prudence, and dignity in their attempts to run the nation.  Meanwhile, we’re supposed to give unwavering support to a guy who can’t even stay on topic talking about a war he just started and who freely falls into senseless fantasies about his life while pontificating behind the bully pulpit.  As I told a friend recently, “Listening to him talk is the equivalent of watching him drop his pants, jack off, then turn around and finger his asshole.”

Somehow we’re supposed to witness this and then take seriously “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” correcting ourselves about “all the good things Trump has done.”  This know-nothing man-child has spent this current term using his office to line his pockets, rip away all the power in the government until it’s his, aiming to set himself up as dictator for life.  That’s the real thrust of MAGA.  “Trump Derangement Syndrome” constitutes merely another rhetorical mirage.

We’re the marks, and that’s his con.

So Democrats…want some advice?  Want to sweep away the Republicans in coming elections?  You can focus on Trump and miss the bigger picture that without Republican extremism, there would be no Trump.  The Republican party, who once upon a time at least believed in democracy, the Constitution, and all the rest of what we think it means to be American, has abandoned it all, put a dotard egomaniac in charge, and expects the rest of us to bow down to him like they do.  It’s their tariffs, their secret police, their racist policies, their corruption, their fucking wars.  When you campaign, forget Trump, make the Republicans own the whole fucking mess.  It’s what they worked so long and hard to achieve.

Just so you know where I stand…