Much of the
New Political “Reality” Is
Mired in Mythology
A
Cautionary Tale of Political Evolution:
It's Not Your Family's Party Anymore!
Introduction
I was born during World War II, when the entire so-called
“civilized” world was in conflict. Then came an uneasy but promising
peace, led by the United States’ novel approach to ensuring that all
major factions—friend and foe alike—would have something of great
value to lose if they ever again resorted to warfare against each
other. This something to lose was not a vague and lofty concept, but
rather something of real and tangible value to both nations and
ordinary people: the unprecedented prosperity resulting from
international cooperation and trade fostered by the Marshall Plan.
Now, three-quarters of a century later, America is in
conflict—with itself (as, it would seem, are some other nations). In
America, there are two major sides, each persuaded that it is
unquestionably right and that the opposition is consumed by lies.
In itself, this is nothing new; it describes much of the political history
of government of, by, and for the people. What is new is that one side
hopes to overthrow the orderly democratic rule of law, sacrificing it
to a chaos of mob factionalism—oddly in the name of an ostensibly
conservative ideology, which over the past century has in fact failed
to conserve much of anything other than tribal animosities. The lofty
goal of "liberty and justice for all" now appears to have sunk into
the mire of factional supremacy and hatred. Divisiveness has become,
if not a global fashion, at least a rising and increasingly popular
counter-culture. What went wrong, and how can we fix it?
Note: For thorough understanding of the following material,
it is highly recommended that the reader consider this entire article
in the sequence presented. Skipping randomly about could result in
missing key ideas and connections essential to the whole. However,
the presentation is probably too long for some readers to assimilate
in a single session, so please make a note of where your current
session ends, so you can resume from that point when you return.
Contents:
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Timeline to
Understanding
brief chronology of American governance since the founding of its two
major parties
1828: Founded by supporters of
Andrew Jackson, the Democratic Party initially favors limited
government and state sovereignty, and opposes high tariffs and a
national bank.
1854: Founded by opponents of slavery, the Republican Party
(Grand Old Party / GOP) initially favors free markets and civil
liberty under rule of law. One of the new party’s leaders, Abraham
Lincoln, offers the following statement of general purpose:
The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what
needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at
all, or do so well, for themselves.
1860: During the election, the Democratic Party splits over
the issue of slavery.
1890s: Before the end of the century, the GOP yields to the
power of big money, effectively renouncing Lincoln’s seminal statement
of beneficent governance, in practice, if not in so many words. The
party trades civil liberty for the liberty of the rich to exploit
everyone else. In this “Gilded Age,” tycoons and bankers make the
rules to keep “free” markets under their control. Hazardous sweatshop
conditions prevail in many workplaces, large and small. Business
leaders trumpet the moralistic motto, “an honest day’s work for an
honest day’s pay,” while failing to follow through with the implied
corollary of that same bargain: an honest day’s pay for an honest
day’s work.
1900s: President Theodore Roosevelt’s (R) reforms hark back to
Lincoln’s statement, serving the people’s interest by regulating
business and curbing abuses by leaders of industry and banking. At
the time, such abuses include predatory lending, opposing organized
labor and work safety
standards, and adding toxic preservatives (e.g.,
borax, copper sulfate, formaldehyde) to processed food.
1910s: Roosevelt’s successor, William H. Taft (R), endorses
Roosevelt's reforms, but does not add significantly to them.
In 1913, Taft is replaced by Woodrow Wilson (D), who is both a college professor and a white
supremacist (not uncommon for that era). He makes few social
changes, being preoccupied with the Great War (World War I) after
1914.
1920s: Wilson is succeeded by a chain of Republican
presidents—Harding, Coolidge, Hoover. They undo Roosevelt’s reforms,
reinstating the tradition of privilege for the few and poverty for the
many. Stock markets soar, but weak consumer demand resulting from low
wages cannot justify inflated stock prices. In 1929, the real economy—of
supply and demand for goods, services, and labor—collapses, and the
GOP’s free-market mantra blinds its leaders to solving the problems
they have unwittingly created.
1930s: The traditional economic focus is on businesses and
households, with little awareness of an underlying macro-economy.
However, the Great Depression offers useful (if sometimes painful)
learning opportunities in that area:
·
The historical belief is that economic boom-and-bust
cycles correct themselves over time. But even if true, this spontaneous healing can
take years, or even generations. People simply cannot wait that long
to be able to afford food and housing.
Lesson: Free markets may be good, but by themselves they will not cure
all ills; recollecting Lincoln’s statement, government must get
actively
involved if human disaster is to be averted.
·
An attempt to spur recovery by balancing the federal
budget in 1937 worsens the problem instead of curing it, plunging a
feebly recovering economy back into depression.
Lesson: Balancing the budget is not a panacea, though it becomes a
possibility when the economy is in good health. Trying to do it the
other way around is like trying to push a rope.
·
Government uses deficit spending on public projects to
create jobs and reverse economic decline. Broadly applied, deficit
spending boosts personal income, thus demand and sales, thus
production, thus hiring and paychecks, which in turn generate more
demand. Although this helps, the immensity of deficit spending
necessary to cure the Great Depression remains unfathomable.
Lesson: See “1940s.”
1940s:
World War II emergency spending forces the answer upon us: It is
enormously expensive—but it works! Hiring increases and prosperity
returns, with a postwar bonus: a huge working middle class, generating
sustained consumer demand for goods and services.
FDR’s death in April 1945 shifts wartime leadership
responsibility to his V.P., Harry Truman, who makes an early attempt
at racial integration of the U.S. military, makes the decision to drop
atomic bombs on Japan in the hope of bringing the war to an end, and
deals with postwar difficulties, such as the round-the-clock airlift of
1948 to counter a Soviet blockade to cut off surface transport between
West Germany and West Berlin.
1950s:
From the economic experience of W.W. II and its
immediate aftermath, liberals learn that broad consumer demand by a large middle
class is the true driving force in a free and prosperous economy,
which thrives despite a top income bracket tax rate of 90 percent.
Conservatives, still tied to their failed "top-down" ideology
of the 1920s,
continue to rely on fiction to win votes: Blame all your troubles
on people who aren’t white Protestant males! Trust the business
leaders who sign your paychecks—never mind that they also pocket a
disproportionate share of the revenue your labor creates! The
laboring makers happily inhale the greedy takers’ smokescreen of
mistrust and hatred of “others.”
Former W.W. II Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower
(R) becomes president in 1953—the first Republican president in 20
years. “Ike” turns out to be a mixed bag: a rational strategic
thinker, but influenced by established alliances. During the early
Cold War years, he defends the interests of the free world against
aggression by the Soviet Bloc, but alienates Islamic countries in the
Middle East by conspiring with Great Britain to replace Iran’s
popularly elected President Mohammad Mossadegh with despotic Shah Reza
Pahlavi, who agrees to turn over Iran’s oil reserves to British
Petroleum. Eisenhower opposes Senator Joseph McCarthy’s (R,
Wisconsin) fanatical crusade against “a communist under every bed,”
but initiates a fear-driven purge of homosexuals from government.
Though clueless about how to deal with the rolling economic recessions
of his time in office, Eisenhower initiates the U.S. space program and
the building of the Interstate highway system. Though a staunch
supporter of military preparedness, in his parting address he warns
against too cozy a relationship between government and the
military-industrial complex.
1960s:
It would seem that the Republican and Democratic parties have
essentially switched sides from what they had been a century earlier,
at least with regard to human rights and economics. Republicans now
favor wealth, privilege, and conformity, while Democrats are
increasingly taking up the causes of both the downtrodden and the
academic elite. Starting with President John Kennedy and continuing
under Lyndon Johnson, Democrats pass and enforce civil rights laws,
thus ceding the blue-collar, white-racist Dixiecrat vote to the GOP.
Payback: President Nixon (R), raging inflation and a government freeze
on wages and prices. As in the 1930s, federal budget balancing fails
to heal the economic woes, and instead puts the public in a financial
bind.
1970s:
President Gerald Ford (R) presides over increasing inflation and an
OPEC (Oil Producing & Exporting Countries) oil embargo. He preaches
"keeping the lid on inflation," but his mediocre intellect prevents
his acquiring an understanding of economics sufficient to address the
problem with any noticeable effect. He does, however, rescind Nixon’s
market-stifling wage-and-price freeze. In 1977, President Jimmy
Carter (D) becomes president. He is relatively intelligent and a
charitable human being, but lacks the ability to delegate authority.
A protracted hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Iran kills his
hopes for a second term.
1980s:
Fundamentalist televangelists offer their faithful followers’ votes
for Ronald Reagan (R), in exchange for GOP commitment to their
agenda. Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, is elected
president in 1988.
Payback: banking crises, rolling recessions, crippled labor unions,
the end of cost-of-living raises, decline of the working middle class
and the broad-based prosperity it had generated.
1990s:
GOP industrial backers embrace science showing where to dig and drill
for fossil fuels, but deny science warning against fouling the
environment. Meanwhile, prosperity under President Clinton (D),
working with a Republican congressional majority, yields the first
national budget surplus since 1969. This time, though, with the
economy already thriving, the budget balancing poses no economic
threat.
2000s:
President George W. Bush Jr. (R) promptly turns the projected budget
surplus into a real deficit with supply-side tax cuts and endless
war. His feckless leadership, coupled with mistakes spanning the
previous thirty years and both major political parties, precipitate
the Great Recession of 2008.
When Barrack Obama (D) becomes President in 2009, he takes
immediate steps to reverse the worst recession since the Great
Depression. But in reaction to his becoming the first non-white
American president, the reactionary populist Tea Party hatches, and
invades the GOP, spouting traditional conservative values, but
actually (it turns out) bent upon undermining the structure of
representative democracy. During the surprisingly rapid
transformation of the GOP, its purpose switches abruptly from
conservatism to obstructionism. Its leaders announce a very simple
agenda—no lofty principles, visions, or goals—only to make Barack
Obama a one-term president . . . period.
2010s:
Republicans' "one term" objective fails on Obama's re-election in 2012, but the obstruction persists. An
increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court rules that corporations
are people, money is free speech, and voting rights and egalitarian
justice are obsolete, because . . . well, not necessarily because that
is what rich white folks actually think, but because it is what they
need in order to fire up their poor white working-class underlings to
vote against their own interests, and for the tycoons' preferred candidates. Welcome back to the Gilded Age!
Payback:
President Donald Trump, nominally R, but running on a primitive tribal
agenda with himself as the tribal chief, and with truth, reality, and
majority rule as his most feared and hated adversaries, fails to win
the popular vote, but wins the electoral college. Trump’s presidency
is an unprecedented collage of posturing, misanthropy, misogyny, racism,
scandal, border calamities, wild claims and unkept promises, capped
off by a
pandemic deemed a “hoax” until thousands of American lives are lost,
plus two impeachments.
2020s:
And here we are! President Joe Biden (D) takes the presidency in
2021, having defeated one-term Trump by 8 million popular votes, in an
election with the highest voter turnout ever! However, traditional
Republican Party leaders are outnumbered by a new party majority that
values myth over truth and insults over coherent argument; and in
which anarchy, bigotry, and mob rule trump the old ideals of
conservatism, patriotism, law and order. The once proudly
conservative GOP is now ruled by Tea Party anarchists, increasingly
relying on fraud, voter suppression, gerrymandering, and made-up
conspiracies to get its candidates elected.
So, what are
we to make of all this?
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Objectivity
why this discussion might appear partisan, with examples
Why focus on the Republican Party, when the Democratic
Party has also had a hand in bullheaded and underhanded dealings?
This is a fair question, which we might expect any critically thinking
observer from either side of the political spectrum to raise. Yes,
Democrats, both as individuals and as a party, have made a fair number
of blunders, including these most memorable examples:
·
siding with slave owners (until the 1860s) and with
white supremacists (until the 1960s);
·
inadvertently becoming allies to organized crime through
alliance with labor unions (early to mid 20th century);
·
advocating
programs intended to enable all American families to achieve "The
American Dream" of owning their own homes (1980s - 2000s), but
financed by "sliced-and-diced" junk loans whose cascading mass failure
precipitates the Great Recession.
So far, though, the propensity for tangle-footed
clumsiness appears to afflict conservatives—in numbers, frequency, and
intensity—far more than liberals. While it is true that
Democrats sometimes endorse foolish ideas and actions, they have never
(yet) stooped to inciting or excusing armed insurrection against the
duly elected government and against the orderly and peaceful transfer of power
under the U.S. Constitution (2021). But the overwhelming and
long-standing difference is that Democrats more often learn
from their mistakes, and adjust their objectives to align with
stubbornly impartial (if sometimes unpleasant) reality, while
Republicans too often cling to misplaced allegiances and obsolete
ideologies, in the blind faith that if only they persist long enough,
their sheer force of belief and fierce righteousness will somehow make their myriad predictions
come true:
·
Raising taxes will kill jobs (but only if the
taxes are high enough to choke off broad consumer demand; raising
taxes on the wealthy has no such effect, since their tax cuts go
mostly into investments, not demand-generating purchases of goods and services).
·
Inflation and recession will spontaneously correct
themselves in the long run (but not in time to save millions of
families from financial ruin).
·
Balancing the federal budget will solve all economic
problems (except for the stubborn fact that it actually
exacerbates the worst of them: inflation and recession).
·
Tax incentives are necessary to encourage investment
(as if lucrative dividends and gains—wealth ultimately generated by
the labor and skill of workers—were not incentive enough).
·
Financial aid for the unemployed (whose jobs were
lost in an economic slump) will discourage them from seeking other
jobs (also eliminated by the same economic slump).
·
Tax breaks for corporations and billionaires will pay
for themselves by trickling down to ordinary folks
(except that they never have, despite many failed attempts).
After decades, even a century or more in some cases,
Republicans are still waiting for any of those predictions to come
true, despite that they have tried repeatedly, each time hoping for
success, but getting the same failures as before. Meanwhile, their
absurd mythology has been spreading into areas besides economics:
·
Politicians know better than the Constitution
(Article I Section 8 notwithstanding) that the purpose of
militias is to instigate insurrections, not to suppress them.
·
Politicians know better than scientists when life
begins, when human fetuses acquire viability and self-awareness, and
that germ theory and climate change are hoaxes.
·
Politicians and preachers know better than licensed
medical professionals what women's health and reproductive needs are.
·
Politicians and business leaders know better than
epidemiologists how to deal with an epidemic (to ignore it or call
it a hoax).
·
You can be pro-democracy, but also opposed to having
polling places and ballot boxes in neighborhoods that tend to vote
against you.
·
You can profess opposition to election fraud, even
when your party must use it to overturn the will of the majority of
voters.
·
You can be pro-religious freedom, but also insist
that government support, endorse, and enforce only the doctrines of
your own creed.
·
You can be pro-law and order and pro-free speech, but
also riot and kill people when they tell you truths you would rather
not hear.
·
You can be pro-life, but also be pro-gun, pro-war,
and pro-death penalty (liberal intellectual claims of cognitive
dissonance notwithstanding).
·
You can espouse family values in public, but violate
them in private whenever you think you can get away with it.
·
You can support government-imposed "family" values,
but also deny the values of families whose views differ from yours.
·
You can trust science when it tells corporations
where to dig or drill, but not when it warns against polluting the
planet.
·
You can trust anyone who toes the party line, but no
one who insists on telling the truth.
This seemingly endless cavalcade of contradictions now
stretches on toward a hazy horizon, a trail of hypocrisy that has now
become the self-conflicted basis of today's GOP’s mostly whim-directed
party platform. Indeed, when asked what principles his party stands
for, U.S. Senate Republican minority leader McConnell says he can’t
tell us that until his party re-takes control of the Congress. This
would seem either a confession of absence of coherent purpose, or
cynical secrecy suggesting that his party's candidates could not get elected if
they told voters what they are really up to. Neither is what an
earnestly inquisitive voter would hope to hear from any political leader—but both are
duly noted.
So, what is the fundamental problem?
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Ideology versus Reality
strengths and weaknesses of thought based on ideology versus reality
Reality is indifferent to human values, preferences,
traditions, ideologies, and beliefs. Reality is what it is, whether
or not we perceive and understand it with any degree of certainty and
clarity. There is one reality that encompasses us all, though our
individual perceptions, interpretations, and opinions of that singular
reality may differ greatly. That there might be different realities
for you and for me is an illusion. One person might be healthy and
rich, while another person is sick and poor, but both are parts of the
same reality. Reality is not ours to invent or to define, but to
discover, study, and deal with for what it actually is, independently
of our diverse notions about it.
We can modify reality to some extent, within the
constraints of nature. However, we cannot alter one atom of reality
simply by believing or claiming it to be what it is not. By itself,
belief will not heal the sick, feed and shelter the poor, protect
against inclement weather, make injustice just, or transform tax
cheats and insurrectionists into responsible citizens, let alone
patriots. Action, whether natural or human, is needed to change
reality, and wise human action requires thoughtful planning to attain
the intended objective while avoiding harmful consequences. If we are
to devise real solutions to real problems, we must deal with
reality as it actually is, not as we might prefer it to be.
Now, when those aforementioned populist promises fail to
come true, what happens? Today's Republican / Tea Party simply makes
up a narrative that everything is perfectly all right as long as the
stock market is soaring, even as ordinary working families must work
multiple starvation-wage jobs just to struggle from one crisis to the
next. Nothing in the Tea Party narrative actually fixes anything.
But according to the party’s de facto doctrine, anything that
is not perfectly all right must be either a hoax about which no one
need worry, or else a far-fetched conspiracy of Africans, Asians,
Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, pagans, atheists, feminists,
homosexuals, artists, celebrities, kneeling athletes, and college
professors, whom white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males can handily blame
for everything that goes wrong in their world of supremacist fantasy.
However, as mature and well informed adults are aware,
this is not how reality works. Reality is not a roundup of scapegoats
and excuses, which have no legitimate role in a society that truly
aspires to liberty and justice for all: liberty and justice,
not just for all rich, white, heterosexual, Protestant males, but for
all law-abiding citizens and immigrants; each according to
individual ability and ambition; and regardless of sex, orientation,
ethnicity, religion, or socio-economic status, and also with the
tolerant maturity to extend common courtesy and respect to all others
of good will.
The "problem" (as the merchants of misinformation and
disinformation see it) with this stubborn bit of egalitarian reality
is that all the bogus fear and hatred might dry up, and the Tea Party
would be out of scapegoats on which to blame the results of its own
incompetence and malfeasance, and would consequently lose its
remaining voting base.
So, where would that leave us?
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Short-term View: What Seems Likely?
prospects of simply reverting to the old “normal”
Without the Tea Party, we might be a step or two nearer to
what used to pass for "normal," when civilized people could have
differences of opinion, yet could inquire, reason, discuss, and work
together to solve problems (and even balance a budget once the economy
got rolling). The best among them on both sides of the aisle could
manage to get themselves elected to public office by being passably
honest and by doing well by their constituents, with less diversion
and fewer insults.
But that is unthinkable with the Tea Party in the picture!
Their loss would be an aesthetic improvement! However, a
Reagan-Republican party would still be problematic. Its nouveau
Gilded Age vision would still be grounded in top-down economics: huge
tax breaks for those who need them least (hugely profitable corporations
and the obscenely wealthy), and either purposeful ignorance of the
impact on the national debt (when they are in power), or else bitter
complaint about the very same debt (when their opponents are in power).
So, life for most of us would be somewhat less unpleasant
without the perpetual din of Tea Party name-calling and conspiracy
hoaxes. But there would still be the same background rumble of the
working class being ground down, so as to ensure that the ridiculously
wealthy can have their tax loopholes to shelter their hoards from the
Internal Revenue Service, while their secretaries and chauffeurs and
everyone else who must do productive work for a living pay the
difference. This is not conservatism. It does not actually conserve
anything; it merely shifts the burden of maintaining the top-down
system, from those who benefit most from it to those who benefit least.
This is called “plutocracy,” government of, by, and for the wealthy,
with ordinary families increasingly working two or three starvation-wage
jobs to subsist and pick up the tab.
Even Tea Party Republicans seem to grasp the immutable
reality that they could never come close to winning the popular vote if
they were to tell the plain truth to those masses whose votes they most
desperately need. Truth is anathema to the political success of those
whose agenda conflicts with reality and is thus geared for failure in
the real world. For them, delusion and lying have become necessities.
They cannot help it. For them, political survival is a matter of “lie
or die!” Since truth cannot get them elected, they must resort to
distortion and diversion—formerly tools of last resort for any major
American political party, but now essential to a cause built entirely on
amateurish fiction. Their election to public office depends on
pandering to a gullible political base that prefers to be told the myths
it wants to hear rather than the truth it needs to know, and on
authoritarian reversal of any “fraudulent” election that goes the
“wrong” way, because a majority of voters have chosen their opponents!
I know, this sounds disturbingly like a conspiracy fantasy
that the far right themselves might cook up. And in a roundabout way,
it is true, for their own leaders are trying (sometimes successfully) to
put into practice the very voter suppression and election fraud schemes
of which they baselessly accuse their opponents: liberals, moderates,
and true conservatives. Systemic falsehood has become ingrained in the
Tea Party’s culture, its beliefs, and even its political survival
strategy (commonly known as “election rigging”). They assume credit for
what others accomplish, and blame others for their own failures to
deliver what they promise. They not only distort the truth about
themselves and their opponents, but make up false narratives to suit
their purposes—and develop, out of necessity, the knack of revising or
reversing those narratives on the spot, whenever they get caught in an
obvious distortion. They conflate socialism with communism and
totalitarianism, and falsely claim it to be antithetical to capitalism.
They oppose science that challenges their ideology. They dispute an
unbiased account of history that challenges their cherished illusion of
a past of unblemished greatness. Some even embrace Nazism, despite that
their grandfathers fought against it in W.W. II.
Perhaps surprisingly, deceit and lying do indeed work—if not
for achieving success in public service, then at least for conning the
gullible into voting against their own interests, and for inciting mob
support for rigging elections and overturning results they deem
“fraudulent” by reason that the voters voted for their opposition.
Indeed, deception is about the only thing in today's Republican playbook
that does work, simply because there are now so many Americans
comfortably accustomed to being lied to—being told that backward is
forward, that they are inherently superior to others, that they can
blame their woes on those others instead of on their own deficiencies in
discipline and education. They dread a future America in which
Caucasian Christians become just one of many co-equal minorities. That
very thought, that to build a majority, white evangelicals would have to
join hands with people whose looks or beliefs are different from their
own, is abhorrent to them.
But that once distant future is now close at hand, a reality
fast approaching, regardless of how much some prefer to dally in the
past. The time is near, America, to wake up, grow up, discard primitive
tribalism, and learn to live together cooperatively as fellow human
beings, as fellow citizens, as equals under the law.
Welcome, at long last, to democratic pluralism!
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Regressive Evolution
a pattern seemingly inherent in the nature of conservative thought
The once staid Republican Party has been commandeered by a
discordant cacophony of voices—anarchistic and authoritarian,
fanatical and reactionary, delusional and criminal—which can be
loosely lumped together as the Tea Party, where these voices shout
their fear and anger at each other from within a noxious cloud of
insults and conspiracy fantasies.
Republicans' once relatively clear platform of tradition,
stability, and law and order has been perverted to a confused and
disjointed mix of racist tribalism, religious fanaticism, privileged
plutocracy, minimalist anarchy, and chaotic mob rule. Many Teas profess
to be Christian, yet a demonstrated lack of scriptural virtues of love,
mercy, charity, prudence, and truth testifies to the contrary. The
party lacks any clear agenda for success, focusing instead on making the
other party fail—and democracy along with it. The GOP has become a
party, not of positive action, but of obstruction of anything the
Democrats advocate: things that benefit ordinary working people, their
children, and their retired parents.
The only apparent binding force within the current
obstructionist agglomerate is a vague yearning for “the good old days.”
Yet even this is fragmented by conflicting opinions about which notion
of “good” should prevail: supremacy, theocracy, plutocracy, or
anarchy—anything except representative democracy, equal justice,
and proportionate representation of the diverse interests of us, the
people. Even Republicans’ supposedly sacrosanct doctrine of minimal
government intrusion now has gaping carve-outs for the most intimate
personal matters of faith, family, health, and reproduction, with
politicians of questionable character and irrelevant credentials
presuming to play doctor, economist, historian, teacher, spiritual
guide, and family advisor to the rest of us.
There is now little upon which the conflicted factions of
the Republican / Tea Party can agree, except repression of dissent
within their own ranks—if only they could agree on precisely who the
dissenters are. They seem to have settled on a rough consensus that
dissenters are a rapidly shrinking clot of old-school truth-tellers who
refuse to be seduced by the nebula of misinformation that constitutes
the party's vacuous "platform" of blind allegiance to a certain former
leader, without whose endorsement they perceive no hope of being
elected—a leader, by the way, who had made a career of bullying, lying,
cheating, lawsuits, and bankruptcies, and was then foolish enough to
bring his corrupt practices into the national public sphere, where it
was inevitable that they would come under scrutiny and criticism.
Now, sensible people might sense such an unscrupulous,
disreputable, and foolhardy leader as an odd beast to which to hitch
one's political wagon. We must bear in mind, though, that the GOP is
now the Tea Party, in essence if not in name. Traditionally
conservative Republicans, some of whom are still dedicated to
conserving things of lasting value, are now hopelessly outnumbered,
and have been labeled "RINO" (Republican In Name Only) by the Tea Party
invaders for not being extreme enough for their tastes. However, it
might be more credibly argued that what is truly "Republican In Name
Only" is the party itself, now that it is ruled by an unreasoning mob
with little apparent interest in conserving anything except its own
political clout, yet which clings to the "Republican" label as a fading
token of respectability. The inmates, as the saying goes, have taken
over the asylum.
In truth, the Grand Old Republican Party of our forebears no
longer exists. What is now still called the “Grand Old Party” is
neither “grand” in its myopic vision, nor “old” in its rejection of
mature thinking; and it is not even a “party” in its lack of a unified
sense of constructive purpose. (The demonstrated purpose of its current
leadership is obstruction, but obstruction is not constructive.) Since
2009, all but a few of the traditional Republican faithful have
abandoned the party in disgust. It is no longer seen as a welcoming
environment for respectable servants of the people’s interest. Honest
Abe Lincoln and progressive Teddy Roosevelt would retch at its putrid
remains.
What remains no longer bears even the foggiest resemblance
to the virtuous party of those two gentlemen, or even to the succession
of corporate and banking interests it has served, from the Gilded Age
through the Great Depression, the ascent and decline of the working
middle class, and into the Great Recession. The conspiracy conjurers
and rabble rousers appear to have slammed and padlocked the door to that
comparatively civilized past.
So, what brought all this on?
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Origins of Our Dilemma
key historical observations on differences in acceptance of belief
“What brought all this on?” might seem a frivolous and
backward-looking question, but it is key to understanding (and hence
correcting) American society’s current tail-spin trajectory. It has
been famously said that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat
it. Additionally, there are many who prefer to revise history to
their liking, rather than confront and learn from some of the less
admirable facts of our real past—such as slavery, racism, religious
bigotry, misogyny, witch hunts, and labor wars, as well as
scapegoating and other clumsily creative ways of excusing or
rationalizing such atrocities.
Our species, homo sapiens, is supposedly
distinguished from others by its great wisdom. Yet, for the most
part, we humans seem rather lazy about verifying facts and reasoning
cogently, though we can be extraordinarily creative in conjuring up
excuses for the unhappy results of that intellectual sloth. It seems
in our nature to reject parts of reality we find unpleasant, and to
seize upon appealing fictions instead. As fourth-century
BCE Greek
philosopher Demosthenes observed, “A man is his own easiest dupe, for
what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.” Now,
nearly 25 centuries later, despite much progress in many disciplines,
our underlying nature seems not to have changed much at all, for as 19th
century American showman Phineas T. Barnum explained the popularity of
his outlandish circus side-show attractions: “There’s a sucker born
every minute!”
Since the 1980s, though, there has been a noticeable
increase in the popularity of fiction over fact—most notably (and
alarmingly) among our elected leaders. We might fairly attribute some
of this to technology: the rise of the Internet and virtual media,
with few (if any) safeguards against the rampant spread of false
ideologies to an uncritical audience eager to swallow any notion, no
matter how far-fetched, which appears to excuse—or even to
glorify—poor thinking and unscrupulous behavior.
However, it is also likely that the myth mongers have
become more clever with experience—and more influential with the
copious support of certain wealthy donors, who envision some advantage
to themselves in deceiving the public and fomenting hatred and anger
among the masses. One of the consequences of this is the
destabilization of society—and, ironically, of the very economic
system whose prosperity has so far enriched these moneyed donors.
Wealthy and clever they may be, but wealth and cleverness do not
necessarily equate to wisdom, foresight, and long-term prosperity.
So far, though, this tendency to cling to comforting
delusions seems to affect one end of the political spectrum far more
than the other. As 20th century British mathematician and
philosopher Bertrand Russell explained: “The essence of the Liberal
outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how
they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held
tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any
moment lead to their abandonment” [Unpopular Essays:
‘Philosophy and Politics,’ 1950, Routledge]. In short, liberals are
more likely to learn from their errors and adjust their attitudes and
behavior accordingly, whereas conservatives’ instinctive adherence to
tradition has the unfortunate effect of binding them to ideologies
made obsolete by the ongoing currents of social, technological, and
environmental change.
At this point, the Republican Party has become so detached
from reality that it cannot be restored to constructive function and
respectability by the current leadership that has effectively declared
itself dedicated to the “freedom” of obstruction, stagnation,
regression, and failure. Combative factionalism within the party has
rendered it incapable of functioning as a unit rationally centered on
verifiable facts and a common core of positive principles and values.
Indeed, there might be nothing about the chaotically divisive and
increasingly misanthropic Republican In Name Only Party worth
salvaging. Unable to identify any unifying force within itself, it
has sunk into a personality cult of blind allegiance to a single
sociopathic personality. We cannot undo what is already done. And,
in my opinion, we ought not to further disgrace the once venerable
Republican label with the incompetence and malfeasance of its current
RINO leadership.
So, what could be done to prevent another such calamity in the
future?
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The Current Situation
ramifications of the attempted insurrection in the 2020 presidential
election
At this unprecedented juncture, it seems impossible to
envision how true conservative traditionalists could credibly manage
to restore values, vitality, and respectability to a party that has
lost all ties to reality, or even to a passably coherent fictional
narrative. Even I, a liberal for most of my adult life, mourn the
loss of a responsibly conservative political party, whose legitimate
goals of conserving traditions and institutions of lasting
value, of advancing moderate points of view, and of cautioning against
destabilizing change, now seem lost to American politics. Serving
this essential function of mutually respectful disagreement,
intelligent dialogue, and cooperative compromise requires that all
major parties at least acknowledge the verifiably fact-based, yet
continually evolving, reality in which all of humanity and the natural
universe are inextricably embedded. For history has repeatedly shown
that to defy reality is ultimately to embrace chaos and failure.
Whether the Tea Party’s contempt for reality is based on
good intentions or malicious schemes, heedless negligence or willful
defiance of fact, makes little difference in the outcome. Real people
inevitably suffer the real consequences of widespread misinformation,
and democratic governance and capitalist economics could well collapse
under the systemic conflicts created by that confusion of both
honestly mistaken misinformation and deliberately contrived
disinformation.
Such catastrophic failure might sound like fantastic
horror fiction to those of us who have lived our entire lives under
the sheltering wing of this modern experiment in self-governance. But
it is already well underway. Since 1980, an increasingly anti-labor
and less humane Republican Party has worked to the advantage of
corporations and billionaires, and to the detriment of the once
prosperous working middle class, whose labor creates the material
wealth to drive our economy, and whose paychecks generate the broad
consumer demand that in turn drives production and generates profits.
With the weakening of mass purchasing power, we now have a harsher
reality with which current and future generations must either
forthrightly contend or else suffer calamitous consequences.
In addition, today we are bobbing in the turbulent wake of
a deadly assault (6 January 2021) on the U.S. Congress, by a mob of
self-proclaimed "patriots" goaded by their self-proclaimed
"law-and-order" leader's consistently refuted claims of widespread
voter fraud, as well as by racist and anarchist propaganda from
assorted nihilist sources.
Now, at long last, some major corporate leaders, who have
traditionally backed the Republican Party, are beginning to show
serious concern about the incompetence and fanatical divisiveness of
the party’s now dominant Tea Party faction, who routinely dismiss
verifiable facts and cogent reasoning in favor of conspiracy fantasies
and other delusions, and thus hobble any hope of finding real
solutions for real people’s real problems. The RINO Tea Party might
retain its fanatical populist base awhile longer, but it seems on the
verge of losing something of more existential import: its primary
funding from increasingly disillusioned establishment donors. The
erstwhile GOP, which was at least forthright about serving the
interests of business (by which it meant the short-term interests of
major corporations, banks, and investors—not family farms and shops),
now panders shamelessly to extremist factions in order to get its RINO
candidates elected. Let us hope those wealthy donors have not been
too late in awakening to the real possibility that American democracy
itself, along with the capitalist economy it supports, could become
even less than an already fading hope—perhaps a mere memory of a noble
dream never fully realized. After all, it has happened to other
nominally democratic forms of governance (Athens, Rome, Weimar,
etc.), and ours is by no means magically immune, as long as large
numbers of people can be conned into voting against their own
interests.
If democracy and capitalism fail, what would replace
them? If the historical pattern holds, most certainly nothing better,
but rather a period of anarchic chaos and socio-economic collapse,
followed by “rescue” by some despotic authority—an American
incarnation of the likes of Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Putin, or
Xi. Further complicating matters, our planet’s environmental
equilibrium is now under dire threat as never before, from heedless
greed and plunder, waste and pollution. Global efforts to correct
this would be delayed until it is too late to avert catastrophic
climate change. So, whatever we do, for the sake of future
generations we had better get it right, and base our solutions on
reality, not ideology.
We have already seen that the erstwhile Republican Party
has deteriorated into festering factionalism and is committed to
obstruction, incapable of functioning as a coherent unit, let alone
interacting and cooperating with more focused, constructive, and
civilized parties. Indeed, there might be nothing about the
chaotically divisive and increasingly destructive RINO Tea Party worth
salvaging. Unable to identify any unifying creed or force within
itself, it has sunk into a cult of blind allegiance to a single
sociopathic personality, with no visible escape. Even the timely
demise of that personality could not undo what is already done.
So, the question before us now is: What specifically could be
done to head off such a calamity in the future?
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Long-term View: What Could Be Done?
steps we might take to discourage insurrection, and to obviate a
perceived need for it
Consider that successful businesses have long had
standards for hiring employees. If they did not, the businesses would
surely fail from the incompetence or moral depravity of their workers
and staff.
Government has similar standards for its hired
(non-elected) personnel. As in private business, hired public
employees must be knowledgeable and competent in the fields in which
they are to function. Economists, lawyers, physicians, scientists,
technicians, clerical and accounting staff, administrators, and others
must all be qualified to perform their jobs, and willing to update
their knowledge and skills as circumstances evolve, lest they be
dismissed and replaced. The military also has minimum education and
health requirements, and provides training for its own specialized
fields of weaponry, technology, tactics, strategy, security, group
discipline, and performance under stress.
But what standards are there for elected officials? Only
that they have attained a certain age, be native-born or naturalized
citizens, and reside in the state or district they are to represent.
Anything beyond that? Well, to get an elective job, they must first
get elected. So, there is the practical necessity that they be able
to raise funds, please crowds, and tell voters what they want to hear.
In other words, a streak of hucksterism can be a useful skill.
What about after they win the election and get the job?
Do they have the basic knowledge and skills to accomplish what the job
itself requires? Decades ago, there used to be "smoke-filled rooms,"
where political party committees selected promising candidates to run
for office; but these were deemed too hyper-partisan to allow the will
of the people to be heard over the droning of the party bosses.
Unfortunately, far too many of the people are woefully uninformed
about the demands and qualifications for public office, and are easily
led to vote for slick-talking fear-mongers and frivolous spendthrifts.
We need some effective but impartial mechanism to filter
out incompetent and criminal candidates before they can even get to a
microphone in a local town square, let alone on national radio or
television. However, this selective mechanism should involve
questions of verifiable fact, not subjective or partisan opinion, and
should be operated by an apolitical body of acknowledged experts in
the respective fields, not by political parties or elective bodies.
At minimum, the process should include objective evaluations of the
following:
·
aptitude: knowledge and expertise in fields of
economics, geography, history and current events, natural and social
sciences, and (of course) government itself;
·
attitude: ability to lead and work cooperatively
with people of various backgrounds, opinions, and beliefs, toward
serving the needs of the people without bias or prejudice;
·
communication: ability to speak, write,
comprehend, and reason clearly and coherently based on evidence,
rather than emotional appeal;
·
honesty and reliability: demonstrated habits of
truthfulness, trustworthiness, and challenging questionable
information, as well as principled rejection of bribery and graft;
·
intelligence: covering such areas as vocabulary,
basic mathematics, pattern recognition, spatial and abstract
relationships, and logical reasoning;
·
mental fitness: psychological screening out of
candidates who cannot distinguish fact from fiction, who exhibit
anti-social tendencies, or who are immature, irrational, delusional,
emotionally unstable, or habitually intoxicated;
·
physical fitness: medical screening out of
candidates who are too physically frail to withstand the demands and
pressures of public service;
·
security: investigating any criminal background
or circumstances potentially compromising security or confidentiality.
There might be additional criteria by which candidates for
elective office should be screened for competence in the specific
positions in question; but these general points will serve well enough
as examples for this discussion, and should more than pay for
themselves in the long run (just as private business’s screening of
job applicants does).
If we can establish such clear standards as prerequisites
for elective office, we should find ourselves with a smaller but
better qualified selection of candidates, with professional
grandstanders sidelined and accumulations of clearly unqualified
seat-warmers and troublemakers summarily ejected. This is a big if,
however, since the advocates of delusion still retain enough influence
in government to block passage of such measures. Someday perhaps, we
may hope. Someday soon, before it is too late, before the fanatical
disciples of misinformation and disinformation have seized the reins
of power and locked themselves in place. But to make that hope come
true, we the people must assume the sober responsibility of getting
ourselves reliably informed and voting for candidates consistently
tethered to reality and dedicated to principles of democracy and
justice. And that will entail overcoming vote-suppressing measures
and representation-skewing schemes, either already in place or being
plotted by incumbents who know that they themselves would be
automatically disqualified by such rigorous non-partisan screening.
Once we have reestablished a solid base of qualified
elected leaders who are suitably intelligent, informed, and
civic-minded, we can progress to the following and related topics to
limit the spread of misinformation:
·
standard education curriculum requirements for
all graduates must include courses in basic logic, as well as
government, economics, and history—including the disagreeable parts we
might rather not tell young children in primary school, but of which
secondary level students must be made aware, so as to become
responsibly informed adult citizens;
·
mental health must be made an integral part of
all health care programs, in order to address an evident epidemic of
adults who have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction, as well
as those with anger management issues;
·
mandatory truth-in-labeling of bona fide news
sources, and of their myth-propagating competition;
·
“dark money” sources (anonymous donors of large
political contributions) must be publicly identified, so citizens can
be aware of which individuals, groups, unions, and businesses are
funding which candidates and issues;
·
libel and slander charges, brought by
non-partisan investigatory bodies, against individuals, groups, and
organizations disseminating misinformation, and against those who
provide financial and material support for such defamatory activity.
At first glance, such measures might seem to violate the
First Amendment right to free speech. But with rights come
responsibilities, and no right is absolute. Death threats are
illegal, and libel and slander are not permitted under anti-defamation
laws. And any speech (or writing or other disseminated material) that
poses imminent danger to individuals, groups, or the public at large,
falls into an unprotected category of expression posing a “clear and
present danger,” such as inciting violence or unwarranted panic, as
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes figuratively likened
to “crying ‘fire’ in a crowded theater when there is no fire” [Schenck
v. U.S., 1919]. (Although that particular case was later
overturned, the analogy and general principle still apply.)
Such measures are not a cure-all for the ills of the
information age. However, effective penalties for harmful
misrepresentation would be a clear step toward curbing the wilder
excesses of political intercourse, and should help to restore a
measure of civility and a more reliable connection to truth and
reality than has been characteristic of our troubled times. Mythology
can be interesting and fantasy can be fun, but rampant delusion that
needlessly arouses ill will and interferes with accurate
identification and effective solution of real problems has shown
itself to be a destructive and expensive detriment to the social order
at all levels. Time has already run out for too many victims, and is
now running out at an accelerating pace for current and future
generations of humanity and other species. We must get serious about
tackling the many problems that confront civilization, and we must
start by taking down the underlying intellectual blight of rampant
misinformation and disinformation, and restore values of truth and
earned trust, if we are to avert the reversion of civilization into a
new dark age.
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Afterthoughts
With respect to the discarded ideals the “Republican” name
formerly represented, we might reasonably suggest that the current
RINO Tea Party also relinquish that once venerable but now abused
label, and retire the noble and intelligent elephant mascot of the
former tradition of civilized community and thoughtful discourse. In
its place, the Tea Party (or whatever it chooses to name itself)
should adopt a mascot better matched to its current predisposition to
impulsive fear and rage: the smaller-brained and senselessly
belligerent rhinoceros. Perhaps traditional conservatives might
someday consider rebuilding the Grand Old Republican Party in the more
thoughtfully conservative and civil style of Dwight D. Eisenhower and
William F. Buckley—but tactfully excluding Barry Goldwater and Richard
Nixon . . .
In fairness, we should note that the Democratic Party has
a corresponding Democrat In Name Only (DINO) faction:
politicians who profess to be Democrats and to support the interests
of ordinary people, but who dare not support their party’s
humanitarian and environmental programs against the will of their
corporate donors (mainly fossil fuel magnates). DINOs, though, are
(so far) only a splinter group, far outweighed by the party’s moderate
center and growing progressive wing. They may tip the legislative
balance when a party-line legislative vote is close, but lack the
numbers to set the party agenda. But if, like the RINOs, the DINOs
ever do take over their party, it would be fitting that they replace
the dutifully toiling donkey mascot with the fossil dinosaur.
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