Full disclosure: I am still looking for a way to write about the new reality about to descend on us. Meanwhile, please allow me to revisit this piece from August 2020, when Covid was overrunning the country. Remove the initial Covid references and we're left with a lens through which we can see the rise of the American oligarchs who are apparently taking over the country. Back then, I didn’t name names, but since the election, a number of these oligarchs have raised their profiles by an order of magnitude. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Vivek Ramaswamy, and a host of other billionaires have shown their true racist, sexist, heartless, cruel, and wildly short-sighted colors. What I wrote over four years ago is at least as true now.
Fifty years of Republicanism has brought us to this.
A pandemic so out of control, the world sees us as a slow-motion car crash they can’t look away from.
An economic nosedive, steeper and faster than any before it, with no chance of recovery as long as the virus stays rampant.
An unemployment catastrophe, with sixteen million people out of work, with their health insurance likely cut off, with massive evictions looming, and their government lifeline severed.
These are all directly attributable, yes to Trump, but even more to the Republican party, which has been working its way down to this moment for fifty years. Long before Trump came along to say the bad parts out loud, Republicans were undermining norms, subverting institutions, and playing their constituents for reprogrammable rubes.
Since before Reagan, the Republican party has served the American oligarchy, that tiny sliver of the population that commands most of the country’s wealth. Between the very rich and the corporate powerful — two groups that overlap to an obscene degree — this oligarchy has bought and paid for the entire party.
The oligarch agenda has always been straightforward: lower taxes and eliminate regulation. Everything else — the shredding of the safety net, the union-busting, the court-packing, the obstruction, the bait-and-switch con they put over on social conservatives — is all in the service of these two overarching goals. Nothing else matters, no matter what they say.
Since it’s an agenda that nobody who’s not an oligarch wants, Republicans have had to work around the democratic process to do their bidding. They’ve played a long game over many decades. They’ve patiently and methodically built influence and curried favor at every level of government — local, county, state, federal — and they’ve taken over local school boards, state legislatures, and much of the judiciary. At the same time, they’ve captured media outlets in local markets all over the country.
Their tactics have been cynical — all sharp-elbowed politics and working the refs. They’ve perfected the use of voter suppression and gerrymandering. They’ve pandered to racists, misogynists, xenophobes, homophobes, and religious cranks.
And since their agenda is, by its very nature, deeply unpopular, they’ve meticulously constructed an elaborate mythology to sell the “American People” on their supposed values. These values, and the messaging around them, have never borne any resemblance to reality.
The myths are many, but here are arguably the top three:
Myth #1 — They told us they’re the party of small government.
This was never anything but a cover story for cutting taxes and deregulating everything they could. The less regulation, the more their oligarchs could loot the system while ignoring the safety of both their workers and their consumers. Since government is supposed to keep them from doing that, of course they want smaller government. And they’ve gotten it. Wouldn’t a bigger government come in handy right now?
Myth #2 —They told us they’re the party of national security.
Defense of the nation was paramount and alliances were sacred. Right. How quickly did that myth evaporate? How quickly did they get used to the idea of selling NATO down the river? Of being played by Russia, China, the Saudis, even North Korea? Of Putin paying bounties on American soldiers? Trump gave the party a massive tax scam and more deregulation than they ever dreamed. In return, they gave Trump more than Putin ever dreamed.
Myth #3 — They told us they were the party of fiscal responsibility.
They convinced people — even the mainstream press — they were the stewards of sound economic policy, despite massive evidence that they’d tanked every economy they’d ever gotten their hands on. Every Republican president since Nixon has expanded the federal government, exploded the deficit, and left the economy weaker than when they started. Often by design. When it comes to managing a major depression like the one we’re now blundering into, economic incompetence gets old in a hurry. It’s a situation that screams out for Democrats.
There are many more myths. Republicans piously claim to be the party of family values, of personal responsibility, of law and order, even of patriotism itself, yet they fail at all of these, even on their own terms.
But as lame as they are, the myths have served the party well. They've ridden a long wave of voter gullibility and apathy to come within striking distance of taking over every lever of power.
Which is why it is astonishing to see how quickly and completely they’ve jettisoned the whole mythology. After all those years of playing the long game, they’ve bet all that equity on a con man they saw through from day one. They’ve abandoned all pretense of fiscal responsibility, national security, and small government, opting instead for unfettered looting and corruption. And since they’ve done it all out in the open, the party is now being openly exposed for the naked fraud it’s always been.
If you’re a Republican office holder these days, you no longer own yourself. Your job is to promote the oligarch agenda, and to obstruct anything that doesn’t. You do not respond to rational argument. You don’t care if you’re seen as heartless, greedy, or stupid. You stay on message, whatever the question. And you never, ever admit a mistake.
It’s a simple bargain. You agree to do what the oligarchs want done, and you’re taken care of for life. Wingnut welfare. All you have to do is take the heat. If you debase yourself, if you disgrace your family, if history eviscerates you, that’s too bad. You made that trade with your eyes open.
Republicans are making it clearer than ever, not just that they have no intention of governing, but that they have no ability to do so.
As a lefty, now might be a good time to start speaking out about the failures of your own party. I have an example for you. I was researching candidates for a county treasurer position. The Republican candidate spoke of his experience as a CFO and other background in finance and went on to discuss his financial agenda. The Democratic candidate wrote about her plans for DEI. That's it.
ReplyDeleteI voted for the Republican.
Don't get me wrong. I voted for mostly Democratic candidates, but it was clear that the party line is all about DEI. This an obvious failure to read the room. I could go on, but this is your column. I'd love to hear your honest appraisal of what your party needs to do to reconnect with the working class they claim to represent.
It's amazing to me that (a) you voted for any Republican for any reason, knowing what they are, (b) for falling for that "successful businessman" bullshit that hasn't made sense since Hoover, and (c) for thinking DEI was the reason that woman lost, as opposed to the lying and backstabbing she was undoubtedly subjected to, since that's all they do. Democrats' only failure is having no billionaires willing to finance a media empire to counterbalance the Fox bubble and/or a social media platform that isn't nonstop Russian propaganda. Democrats stand for everything people actually want -- including DEI — and if people actually knew that, they'd never vote GOP again. I won't be writing about Democratic failure, as long as they have to keep rolling this massive boulder uphill.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like the same absolutist tripe that Republicans use. The best answers usually lie somewhere in the middle. To assume that all Republicans are evil and all Democrats are saints is folly and goes to the root of the reason we can't solve big problems with government anymore.
DeleteSure, national Repubilcan political tactics are as disingenuous as you can get. What else can they do when they represent so few people? At the local level, those tactics are far less necessary. In the township I live in, there are no billionaires to represent. Just farmers.
Finally, if you think MSNBC is as left as Fox is right, try removing your rose-colored glasses.
I don't watch MSNBC, since all their guests are former Republicans, with real progressives few and far between. I don't assume all Republicans are evil, but if they choose that party, even at the local level, their motives are automatically suspect. Nor do I assume all Democrats are saints, thought their party is the only one that cares for silly things like NATO and the rule of law. I understand that local politics is different, though in the case of Michigan it's arguably worse. Finally, if I were wearing rose-colored glasses, what could I possibly see this week?
ReplyDelete