Ridding ourselves of Trump has proven difficult, replacing Biden will be much harder…
Understated
This week, the MAGA world was shaken to its core as Democrats outperformed expectations and defied prevailing wisdom. The party not known for its regimen and party discipline used diligence and message clarity focusing on women’s reproductive rights and the threat by Republicans on democracy to thwart an expected “red wave.” Republicans for all their threats and bluster found themselves failing once again to overcome the persistent and annoyingly feisty Democrats led by their Rocky Balboa-like leader, a bowed but unbroken Joseph Robinette Biden- even his name is understated. In Biden, Republicans have encountered a force of nature. He ducks and jabs, and borrowing another meme from the boxing world, plays rope-a-dope with an opponent who always seems to underestimate his heart and savvy. While “Scranton Joe” cannot turn back the clock as he ages- as presidents before him have aged in a job that is unrelentingly difficult and challenging- he refuses to give up on the American people, their dream, or surrender to their enemies. This week, Republicans punched themselves out, as Biden’s Democrats waited…waited…then landed a right cross that has Republicans reeling.
The boxing metaphor is so apt for a journeyman pol like Biden because he sees himself in that vein. He talks incessantly about “taking punches and getting back up,” loosely quoting Ma and Pa Biden urging him to pick himself up off the mat and fight. Biden alludes to an early upbringing in Scranton, PA that was short on power and wealth, but long on stubborn resolve. Like the coal-mining town with its old-line immigrant population, the Bidens were a scrappy bunch. For both the refrain “Never give up!” followed closely after morning prayers as a send-off for the day. This is the Biden Republicans could never quite “get.” Despite his rise to the pinnacles of power, he never forgot where he came from.
Republicans have a choice to make after the debacle that seems to gain added significance as time wears on. Not just America, but the world is facing an existential moment in history. The populist movement threatening modernity is like a recurrent virus, one that revisits from time to time as we are reminded that all “ages of enlightenment” were preceded and followed by darkness.
The Bamboozle
Carl Sagan once warned about times like these when truth is held hostage to a con:
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
~ Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Sagan is describing the post-midterm Republican Party being eaten up by the beast they had ridden for the past few years. While Trump and his eponymous movement are the latest examples of a historic “bamboozle, “ the political host they glommed onto is now its victim. Having given Trump and the MAGA bamboozlers power over them, baths and showers are insufficient to remove the stench they absorbed in the process. They are finding that crazy has no cure.
We are not out of the woods. The danger of the collapse of the MAGA movement is real and appears imminent. Joe Biden was made for times like these, and America- and the rest of the world- should note that despite his age and the evidence of his diminishing physical skills (yes, he may have lost a step) Joe might just have just enough left to handle this moment. Republicans, on the other hand, have reached a tipping point. Will they continue to follow the twice-impeached, currently-under-investigation, three-time losing, ex-president as he struggles with sanity and the ravages of seemingly endless lawsuits? The postmodern itch the right-wingnuts need to scratch may be at the heart of their denialism, but their cause is far less philosophical than they would have us believe. And when the curtain is pulled back to reveal a shameless disregard for truth and decency, they look silly- like pretend Nazis in a Mel Brooks satire. As Aaron Hanlon in a truly prescient article in the Washington Post wrote:
It’s clear that current trends long predate our theories of postmodernism. Kakutani opens her Guardian essay with a quote from Hannah Arendt’s 1951 “ The Origins of Totalitarianism”: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction . . . and the distinction between true and false . . . no longer exist.”
But Arendt herself thought political dissimulation was much older. “The deliberate falsehood and the outright lie used as legitimate means to achieve political have been with us since the beginning of recorded history.”
The practice of intimidating an electorate by darkening their future is not a novel political tack. Depots and autocrats long have raised fear and hatred to an art form. The conservative movement, in general, has adopted a philosophy of holding on to the past as a way to stave off progress- a bit like a collector’s pin-preservation of his bug collection, deadly but orderly. Time for them is fixed, but it is also wholly unnecessary- better tomorrow never comes.
“Red Puddle”
In fact, the latest illiberal schemes from the right are clear examples of their thinking as they try to hold back the inevitable. The denial of rights and privileges earned through time by women and minorities is their equivalent of a theme park ride back to the future- except the price of admission is far too dear. In a related tantrum over the midterm embarrassment, RW commentators have adopted a new campaign to restrict voting further and to deny the will of the people —
“The fact that these youth voters are coming in so strong in an off-year is very concerning,” Fox News commentator Jesse Watters lamented on Wednesday night. “It looks like they’ve been brainwashed. This new generation is totally brainwashed ’cause a lot of these single women [who] vote 37 spreads for Democrats, are teaching all of our younger generation in these schools and they’re polluting their minds and then they grow up and they’re in their twenties and then they vote for leftists.”
— Kelly Weill, The Daily Beast, “Some Republicans Want to Raise Voting Age After Gen Z Midterm Turnout,” Nov. 10, 2022
and, this tweet by Brigitte Gabriel, an anti-Muslim activist, whose ACT for America organization was featured in a 2017 article in The Atlantic:
“Raise the voting age to 21. We were promised a red wave and we got a red puddle.”
They want to raise the voting for Gen Z (18–24 year-olds) who voted 61 percent for Democrats. The logic is astounding considering that this group represents less than 6% of all voters. Their effort should be more targeted to limiting voting to their ideological sweet spot — white propertied males over the age of 35, who trend heavily to the right and closer to the grave. In that space, issues like reproduction rights and climate change are theoretical and bothersome. Hershel Walker may be the poster child for the bother of fatherhood.
It might take another generation or two to fully extricate the Republican Party from its addiction to the MAGA fascination gripping its leaders. It is as if they are in a death spiral with a past that won’t let go. The re-emergence of prejudice — of racism, anti-Semitism, bigotry, and the other evils that stalk current right-wing politics- is not external but exists within them. And democratic governments have no natural immunities, no natural resistance to their infection.
Hannah Arendt’s treatise The Origins of Totalitarianism mines this territory all too well to paraphrase:
“It has already been noticed that the Nazis were not simple nationalists. Their nationalist propoganda was directed towards their fellow-travelers and not their convinced members; the latter, on the contary, were never allowed to lose sight of a consistently supranational approach to politics… The Nazis had a genuine and never revoked contempt for the narrowness of nationalism, the provincialism of the nation-state, and they repeated time and again that their “movement,” international in scope, like the Bolshevik movement, was more important to them than any state…”
Hannah Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism, Chapter One, Antisemitism as an Outrage to Common Sense.
Arendt’s observation takes away the novelty of our moment. Trumpism as a “movement” is quite less sophisticated and pronounced than the historical precedents that it mimics. Donald Trump and his erstwhile band of disrupters are the bit players in a far more serious and darker human drama. I doubt we will ever be rid of them. Our best hope is to confront them and prevent their enterprise from taking hold today. We may have stumbled on some luck this time, not unlike when the nation stumbled upon a dark and deeply wounded soul, whose life experiences prepared him for the demands on his health and family- and his life — as he outlasted similar demons during the nation’s Civil War.
Joe Biden may not be Lincoln, but he has similar life experiences. He understands loss, having suffered unmentionable losses in his life. He wears his limitations in every step he takes and every sentence he utters, yet his convictions are crystal clear. He shares with Lincoln an uncommon sense of optimism in the American people, but even more, in humanity itself. Someday, Biden’s imprint on our times will be better appreciated and admired. If you are not already impressed by his stewardship during these months of turmoil, taken back by the resentment he has endured from those inside and outside his party, then wait. This week, after the midterm surprise, pundits are writing him off- looking for the next shiny object to replace him in ’24. He is fully aware of the doubts. He reads a room better than most. I doubt he will overstay his welcome. And like many good men before him, he will be missed and thought of more fondly when he is gone.
Originally published at https://www.dailykos.com on November 12, 2022.
