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The following is the content of the April 24 posting, the last one before we switched to the format explained above.

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It Happened 69 Years Ago

Back in 1952, I was working with some other students at Rutgers to get Adlai Stevenson elected President.  “Ike,” who of course easily defeated him, was visiting New Brunswick to speak to a crowd in the square in front of the old courthouse.  We came to the rally armed with literature featuring a four page circular with the headline “Why Ike is Coming to New Jersey,” which we tried to distribute to the onlookers.  I handed the circular to a group of stern looking ladies wearing banners indicating they were a group of workers from the nearby Ford assembly plant. One, apparently their leader, snarled out to me, “Don’t bother us with that junk.”  But another, after glancing at it, realized it was an anti-Republican piece and pointed that out to her.  She came running after me, apologizing profusely, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she said, “You’re on our side, with us! Thank you, Thank you.!” And that was 69 years ago and there hasn’t been a Republican as decent as Ike since then.  The G.O.P. has grown perceptibly worse over the years led by Nixon, Goldwater, Reagan, even the Bushes, and of course, Trump, and we are still fighting the same battles. It doesn’t end and it won’t for a long, long, time. 

Which leads me to a column by David Brooks which appeared in the New York Times a few days ago. 

  

 

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The Trump Base is Getting Worse

David Brooks

(New York Times – 4/22/21)

 

Brooks

Those of us who had hoped America would calm down when we no longer had Donald Trump spewing poison from the Oval Office have been sadly disabused. There are increasing signs that the Trumpian base is radicalizing. My Republican friends report vicious divisions in their churches and families. Republican politicians who don’t toe the Trump line are speaking of death threats and menacing verbal attacks. It’s as if the Trump base felt some security when their man was at the top, and that’s now gone. Maybe Trump was the restraining force.

 

What’s happening can only be called a venomous panic attack. Since the election, large swaths of the Trumpian right have decided America is facing a crisis like never before and they are the small army of warriors fighting with Alamo-level desperation to ensure the survival of the country as they conceive it.

 

The first important survey data to understand this moment is the one that pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson discussed with my New York Times colleague Ezra Klein. When asked in late January if politics is more about “enacting good public policy” or “ensuring the survival of the country as we know it,” 51% of Trump Republicans said survival; only 19%

said policy.

 

The level of Republican pessimism is off the charts. A February Economist-YouGov poll asked Americans which statement is closest to their view: “It’s a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people, and we must find a way to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to become isolated” or “Our lives are threatened by terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants, and our priority should be to protect ourselves.” Over 75% of Biden voters chose “a big, beautiful world.” Two-thirds of Trump voters chose “our lives are threatened.”

 

This level of catastrophism, nearly despair, has fed into an amped-up warrior mentality.  “The decent know that they must become ruthless. They must become the stuff of nightmares,” Jack Kerwick writes in the Trumpian magazine American Greatness. “The good man must spare not a moment to train, in both body and mind, to become the monster that he may need to become in order to slay the monsters that prey upon the vulnerable.”

 

With this view, the Jan. 6 insurrection was not a shocking descent into lawlessness but practice for the war ahead.

 

Liberal democracy is based on a level of optimism, faith and a sense of security. It’s based on confidence in the humanistic project: that through conversation and encounter, we can deeply know each other across differences; that most people are seeking the good with different opinions about how to get there; that society is not a zero-sum war.  Apocalyptic pessimism has a tendency to deteriorate into nihilism, and people eventually turn to the strong man to salve the darkness inside themselves.

 

David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times

 

 

Item Added on April 25

Within the next few weeks, the formatting of this blog will change.  All newly posted items will appear, with their date shown “up front.” With earlier postings following in date order.  I don’t know how far back the capacity of “blogspot” will allow me to go with this, but when it reaches its limit, I will start a new posting as of the current date, with whatever was posted earlier still being accessible through the archiving available right now to those using a PC via the links to the right.

 

Items Added on April 27

 A few days after his "I have a dream" speech, the Rev. Martin Luther King delivered the eulogy at the funeral of the little girls who were killed in the bombing of a church in Birmingham.   Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson wrote about it on April 22 (try to access his column by CLICKING HERE).  Dr. King said that in dealing with systemic racism, it was time for the all to show courage rather than caution.  Still true today.

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Forthcoming census results suggest that the Democratic majority in the House might disappear unless blue losses can be counterbalanced by gains in Republican districts.  Bear in mind that Congressional elections are run according to the rules of individual States, where voter repression laws, unfavorable to Democratic voters, are being considered in the majority of those States with G.O.P. legislatures.  Keep your eye on this story which will culminate on Election Day, 2022.

Because of the slimmest of majorities which the Democrats hold in both Houses of Congress, the slightest deviation, such as that possible by Senators Manchin and Sinema or the progressive Democrats in the House, can obstruct the programs of President Biden.

Item Added on April 30

Terrible News for Floridians

Restrictions on getting ballots for voting by mail, restrictions on delivery to the Board of Elections of vote-by-mail ballots and restrictions on availability of “drop boxes” for that purpose:  All part of the realization by Florida’s Republican Party that unless they restrict the number of people who can vote, they will become permanent losers in the Sunslime State. 

All of this has been perpetrated by legally elected legislators and will shortly be signed into law by the legally elected Trumpublican governor who still believes the big lie about the results of the November 2020 presidential election. Of course, this travesty on democracy will be challenged in the courts, but with uncertain results. As I have said before, its benign climate, excellent recreational opportunities and appealing cultural offerings make Florida a nice place to live or to retire to, but politically, it’s a pile of crap made possible by some of the most ignorant and gullible voters in the world. Nothing will change them.