Republicans are America’s Problem
‘We have to stop saying that all these people are duped
and led astray, that they are somehow under the spell of Trump and programmed
by Fox News. Propaganda and disinformation are real and insidious, but I
believe that to a large degree, Republicans’ radicalization is willful. Republicans
have searched for multiple election cycles for the right vehicle and packaging
for their white nationalism, religious nationalism, nativism, craven capitalism
and sexism.’
Please
take special note of the underlined portions of the above excerpt.
Blow
is correct in that there has always been dissent, often undemocratic, in this
country and it always has sought to find a platform for its ideas, which would
be unpalatable on their own.
 |
| Those Who Opposed Democracy in 1776 Conveniently Just Said They Were Being Loyal to the king. |
These were the vehicles
those in favor of white and religious nationalism, nativism, craven capitalism,
and sexism used to package their ideas.
But now, and this is the point Blow makes in the title of his column, their search for wagons
on which to hitch their anti-democratic ideas has ended.
They
now have achieved their own legitimacy by taking ownership of the Republican
Party, which has totally abandoned the ideas of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore
Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower (they called him a communist) and to some extent,
even of Ronald Reagan. CLICK HERE to read
or re-read the column, which you also can find at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/17/opinion/republicans-cheney-trump-democracy.html. Note that its title is ‘Republicans are America’s
Problem.’
‘America’s Problem’ in other times used
to be British colonialism, slavery, fascism, or communism, concurrently or
separately. But by now, it is clear that Republicans have replaced them as the
‘problem,’ using the dishonest salesmanship of the forty-fifth president as
their pathway to getting there. Anti-democratic
forces no longer need someone else’s wagon on which to hitch their ideas. They
have become the wagon! They have achieved their own legitimacy by seizing the name of a
restructured Republican Party.
That
legitimacy is not unlike the legitimacy the fascists finally achieved in
Germany in 1932 as ‘National Socialists’ and that which the Bolsheviks achieved
in Russia in 1918, where minorities managed to defeat less authoritarian
alternatives. And it appears to me
reasonable to conclude that those still calling themselves Republicans are ‘comfortable’ with
that, no longer having to hitch a ride on someone else’s wagon.
I call them ‘comfortable’ because in historian Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr.’s 2003 ‘The Crisis of the Old Order,’ the author addresses the
choice America had to make during the 1930s, that of ‘saving itself,’ or like
Italy or Germany, seek ‘comfort’ in totalitarianism. I mention this because it appears to me that
many Republicans today are willing to sacrifice liberties for precisely that
kind of ‘comfort’
in an autocracy that will quickly squelch dissent and
reduce freedoms. They prefer that to the more elusive qualities that ‘make
America great,’ words to which they constantly refer but do not understand.
History does not sleep soundly. It does not take very much to awaken it from its dreams and nightmares. Indeed, America did save itself during the 1930s led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the impetus of the Second World War. Those reading Charles Blow’s column should work hard and long to do that right now, today, voting to enable America to again ‘save itself.’ We must solve what he identifies as ‘America’s Problem.’ Election Day draws near. Never before have the choices been so clearly delineated.
VOTE!
JL
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Disillusionment Over American
Democracy
Those of you who still think we live in the greatest democracy in the world (albeit a representative, republican, one) will learn a lot from reading this lengthy article from a recent New Yorker Magazine issue. Louis Menand, its writer, is a Pulitzer Prize winning author, a college professor, and regular contributor to that magazine. His words may disillusion you.
The article may be found at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/22/american-democracy-was-never-designed-to-be-democratic-eric-holder-our-unfinished-march-nick-seabrook-one-person-one-vote-jacob-grumbach-laboratories-against-democracy or simply by CLICKING HERE.
If you have trouble accessing it, email me and I will help you. The article is a bit too long to include in its entirety and summarizing it would be nearly impossible. Budget at least half an hour to read and understand it, but please read it.
It will
explain to you how the vast majority of Americans, probably including you, have
been politically, as well as royally, screwed, without their being aware of
it for many, many years.
JL
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When Republicans Nominate
‘Crazies’ and a big ‘BUT’
Democratic Senate, House,
Governorship, and state Legislature candidates should not base optimism on the
number of Republican ‘crazies’ against whom they will be running on November
8. Republicans erroneously believe that arguments
that worked in their primaries in which proponents of the ‘big lie,’ and of even grosser fallacies, triumphed over less radical Republicans will also work in the
election against Democrats and independent voters. From a ‘numbers’ standpoint, It won’t.
BUT Democrats still should not
overestimate the intelligence of the American voters, an attitude which
has cost them dearly in the past.
The more local (and smaller) the electorate for a particular office is, the more likely such overestimation of the voters’ understanding of issues will hurt Democrats. That’s why Republicans poll such big numbers in electing state legislatures and smaller numbers in presidential elections from a popular vote standpoint, where the Republicans’ only salvation is their control over election laws that domination of state legislatures gives them and the 'thumb on the scale' measures built into the Constitution.
It also matters that when a vote is cast for a Republican candidate for village councilman, for example, the voter usually sticks with the G.O.P. for the other races, contests of far greater import, filling vacancies in Congress and governors' mansions.
Our representative democracy is not really that democratic unless the turnout for elections is truly GIGANTIC and MASSIVE from bottom to top of the ticket. Only you can make that happen! (Refer to the item directly above in this posting. Go back and read what Louis Menand has to say!)
When I mention the voters’ understanding
of issues, as I’ve just done, it implies a lack of
intelligence on the part of some voters.
Ideally, it would be wonderful if only ‘intelligent’ people voted. The testing needed
to determine that, however, is totally undemocratic and would be like the methods
used in Southern states to keep Blacks from voting during the Jim Crow era. It should
never be instituted.
Implicit in democracy is the concept that the ignorant, the gullible, and
the stupid (except perhaps those institutionalized) all have the right to
vote because judging these qualities is purely subjective. One person’s
screwball might be another’s genius. That is the way it should be. That’s the democratic way, even in
representative democracy.
If one were to imagine, however, and it
should never go beyond that theoretical stage as a mental exercise, that such
intelligence testing, even on a totally non-political basis, for voting did
indeed exist, I would suspect that those who vote for Republicans would be hurt
the most. The success of Democrats in
‘college towns’ in otherwise solid Republican states supports that theoretical result in such a purely imginative exercise. Just a
thought.
JL
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America Afloat
(A poem that is always worth repeating in these blog postings.
To
learn more, visit this blog’s posting of July 30, 2022.) JL
America
Afloat
Jack
Lippman
The
greatness of America
Is
that it does survive
Attacks
upon democracy
Whose
flame it keeps alive.
The
laws that blossom from the words
The
Founding Fathers wrote
Still
serve us well today to keep
America
afloat.
This
doesn’t happen by itself,
We
cannot wish it true,
The
bottom line, my friends, is that
It
all depends on you.
JL
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That’s Not Enough!
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