by Steven B. Orkin
Election Day is only a few days away. I am not being melodramatic when I say that the soul of our country is very much at stake, even though this isn’t a presidential election. If you care about America and the democratic principles it was founded on, if you care about issues like a woman’s right to choose, the integrity of our election process, equality of all Americans regardless of their race, gender, or sexuality, the continued viability of our Social Security system, make sure you cast your vote! Our country has never been in graver danger. Consequently, I’ve poured everything I’ve got into this essay, so let’s get to it!
The initial trigger for this post was a Labor Day BBQ at the home of a friend I’ve known for years. Though I had a nice time overall, I left there deeply disheartened, my exit spurred on by the conversation turning political. Normally, I don’t mind political conversations, even in circumstances such as this one, where most or all of the other attendees prescribe to political views that are largely divergent from mine. It’s important to have these kinds of conversations. The fact that we don’t have them nearly often enough has contributed enormously to our current state of political acrimony, even enmity.
My friend and I have had many one-on-one political discussions over the years. Though we often disagree, we likewise find that of the 5-6 points we may discuss, we can generally find some common ground on 3-4 of them. The reason why is because we’re able to employ rationality to the issues we discuss and understand that room must be made for compromise (we’re going to talk more about compromise later).
In light of this, I’ve been reflecting on what it was about that particular moment that so discouraged me, I frankly felt compelled to flee the premises and get the hell out of there.
Part of it was that I was still on an ideological high after hearing President Biden’s Democracy speech the previous week and wasn’t ready to have that buzz killed by negativity. Though Biden isn’t exactly the world’s greatest orator, I nevertheless contend that that address was one of the most important political speeches in the last half century or more. It was a thunderbolt of conviction and clarity in that it made a critical distinction between Republicans / Conservatives and what Biden termed “MAGA Republicans”. The problem is that the line between the GOP and MAGA has become dangerously thin, almost nonexistent. The very existence of the MAGA movement, aka the Trult, let alone its prominence, has given the Republican party a catastrophic credibility problem (we’re going to talk more about credibility later, too).
Let me take a moment to explain what ‘Trult’ means. As you can probably figure out, it’s an amalgam of ‘Trump’ and ‘Cult’. I did a websearch on “definition of cult” and here’s what came up:
Take note of that last entry. It typifies why MAGA is a cult rather than an actual political movement. The degree to which the GOP (and Evangelical Extremists (I won’t dignify them with the word ‘Christians’) has been influenced by Donald Trump is not only unprecedented in American History (though it’s amply precedented in World History via despots like Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin; and for the record, if you compare Trump’s rhetoric with Hitler’s, there are terrifying similarities), it’s devoid of rationality. The reason why it’s devoid of rationality is because it is impossible to analytically and objectively assess the actions and behavior of Donald Trump and not conclude that the man is unworthy of anything but a jail cell and an eternal appointment in a chair with his name on it, sizzling in a deep, dark, corner of Hell. He is depraved, corrupt, and despicable down to the last molecule. The degree of adoration and worship lavished on him is not only misguided. It’s twisted and sick. Anything he ‘accomplished’ during his time in office boils down to Mussolini making the trains run on time.
Anyway, Biden’s speech put into words realities that the Democratic Party have been largely (and inexplicably) timid about expressing in many respects. He called out MAGA Republicans and their depraved gangster-king for what they are: Unamerican extremists who represent the gravest danger that this country and the democratic foundations it was built on have faced in its entire history. Our current level of political division isn’t about Democrat vs Republican. It’s about the Rule of Law & the Will of the People vs Repression, Control, & Corruption. It’s about Democracy & Freedom vs Fascism & Totalitarianism. It’s about Order vs Chaos. Thanks to the rise of the MAGA Trult, it’s about nothing less than Good vs Evil.
And what, you may ask, was the GOP response to Biden’s speech? “He’s sowing division!” and “The lighting was terrible!” This is embarrassingly typical GOP rhetoric, amply illustrative of their titanic credibility problem. They have absolved themselves of any degree of accountability on any issue. Truth is irrelevant. Indeed, their grasp on truth has become tenuous, at best. They do not respond to criticism. They deflect it. On the rare occasions someone corners them on an issue, their reactions pretty much boil down to “I don’t wanna play anymore!” and “I’m being persecuted!” The latest manifestation of this behavior is refusal to debate their counterparts. Why? They don’t want to face the American people. They don’t want their repulsive hypocrisy and reprehensible ideology of control, repression, and corruption dragged kicking and screaming into the light of day. They thrive in darkness, misdirection, and people not paying attention.
Let me illustrate this point more fully with an example. Let’s say you and I work together. I get a notification for a meeting with you and the Human Resources Dept. I reschedule that meeting several times, delaying it for two weeks. Why? I’m busy. I don’t want to be bothered. I don’t like being put into situations where I could be asked questions I may not want to answer. Finally, HR steps in. They inform me the meeting will be occurring on Monday morning and that I will be present or be fired. I reluctantly show up.
As the meeting begins, you tell me, “Steve, the reason we’re here today is because you stole money from my purse.”
“Are you kidding me?!” I explode. “I would never do something like that! I have impeccable integrity and I deeply resent you maligning it! You’ve got some nerve making such a baseless allegation against me! You’re totally off-base on this!”
You calmly state, “Actually, no I’m not. I asked HR to access the company’s security footage. It’s right here on this laptop. See? It clearly shows you looking around to confirm the coast is clear, then opening my desk drawer, taking my purse out, and removing money from it.”
HR says, “Well, Steve? What do you have to say for yourself?”
My response?
“Can you believe this woman?! She actually conducted surveillance on me! That is TOTALLY unprofessional and unacceptable! I want her written up! As a matter of fact, just this morning, I realized I was missing a twenty from my wallet and I think she’s responsible! Since she obviously has knowledge of where the security cameras, are, she avoided them to keep from being caught. How come you’re not investigating her?! She’s just blaming me to avoid being blamed herself! Maybe HR is in on this, too! Maybe there’s a corporate conspiracy! Maybe you’re sanctioning the theft of honest people’s money and not holding the perpetrators accountable. I question the integrity of this company. What kind of place is this?! You watch your employees on security cameras?! You let the employees you like steal from the employees you don’t like?! This is outrageous! I’m not tolerating this behavior! I’m calling the Dept of Labor and filing a complaint! And by the way, just so you know, she’s a TERRIBLE employee! She never gets anything done and she’s constantly talking to other employees, taking them away from their work. She’s sucking the productivity out our workforce and costing this company money! What the hell are you interrogating me for?! She’s the REAL problem, here!”
Deflection. Smokescreens. Projection. Histrionics. Faux outrage.
What’s missing? Accountability. Even if every single thing I said was 100% true, it wouldn’t change one, immutable fact: I stole your money.
This is EXACTLY what the Trult does whenever anyone tries to hold them accountable for anything. And when the facts don’t suit their purposes, they lie. They literally make stuff up. They no longer even bother to hide it with qualifying phrases like “It’s possible that…” or “My understanding is…” They just state outright lies with the belief that if they lie long enough and loudly enough, they will be believed. They are often correct in this perversely cynical perspective. They often don’t even actually communicate. They convey strategic talking points. “The Democrats are responsible for Paul Pelosi being attacked!” Marjorie Taylor Greene declares, without the slightest shred of evidence that this is the case. Indeed, I have no confidence that she even believes that, but it suits her purposes. It deflects attention from the fact that the Trult’s extremist ideology leads to violence. Therefore, she says it. It’s childish, revolting, and thoroughly despicable on every level. The Trult has been infected with a dangerous, diabolical, insidious, and destructive sociological virus that has devoured their integrity as well as their credibility.
And we all know who Patient Zero is.
Moving on.
Though my friends at the BBQ thankfully didn’t devolve into abject hate speech or otherwise extremist rhetoric, what troubled me about the political dialogue I escaped from that Saturday evening is that the basic tenor of the conversation triggered my broader concerns about conservatism as an ideology: It’s unwelcoming. It lacks generosity and compassion. It’s deeply negative and cynical. It’s exclusionary. It assumes that people (except for themselves, of course) are largely untrustworthy and unreliable, and that anyone (except for themselves, of course) who struggles for money is ‘not working hard enough’ or ‘lazy’, that anything given to such people is a ‘handout’ that takes away from ‘good’ people. Further, I’m sorry to say that though there are exceptions, there is often a deep undercurrent of bias flowing like an unholy river beneath conservative thought: racial, ethnic, sexual, gender: ‘The Other’. Different is inferior. Different is wrong.
Before I continue, I want to make a couple of things clear:
1) Some people ARE lazy, untrustworthy, and unreliable.
2) There ARE government programs that may have been designed through progressive legislation with the best of intentions, but the degree to which they are being abused has made them untenable.
Let’s empower / motivate / compel the lazy, untrustworthy, unreliable people to get in the game and hold them accountable when they don’t. Let’s modify or conclude the faulty government programs.
Let’s NOT allow people who legitimately need help to suffer needlessly because of the irresponsible machinations of those few who are abusing the privilege of government programs. ‘Only the strong survive’ is not an efficient, effective, compassionate, mature, inventive, or reasonable paradigm for conducting a society. Anyone who thinks it is, is either embarrassingly ignorant, soundly on the spectrum of sociopathy, or both.
Note that the sentiment above should not be interpreted to mean that I think that we as a society need to ‘save everybody’. We don’t. We can’t. But we should provide viable resources and opportunities for people to save themselves. That’s part of what it means to be civilized. It’s who we are (or who we should perpetually strive to be) as a people and it’s what we should be aspiring to as a culture.
Let me make something else clear: As noted above, THIS IS NOT ABOUT POLITICS!! I am ready, willing, and eager to dispense with the delusion that the Democrats are the ‘White Hats’ who will save the nation. In some respects, the Democratic Party is just as corrupt as the GOP (quite honestly, the political party system as it exists today should be abolished, but that’s a rant for another day). Though I’m a registered Democrat, I don’t toe the party line. I usually tell people I’m a proud member of the Common Sense Party. Ideally, whoever has the best idea, regardless of party affiliation, should ‘win’. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening. Political partisanship has so catastrophically shredded our legislative constructs that one side routinely does everything it can to stop a policy that’s good for the country if the other side came up with the idea. They don’t want the other side to be perceived to have accomplished anything.
That’s not the way the system is supposed to work! In fact, it’s unadulterated moral and legislative sabotage that is not only paralyzing our nation. It’s ripping it to pieces! Any member of Congress who engages in it should be ashamed of themselves. The citizens of America certainly are. In fact, I’m very confident that the public approval rating of Congress has never been lower than it is right now. Congress’s job is supposed to be to enact legislation that moves the country forward in a positive direction, regardless of which side comes up with that legislation. It is NOT for political parties to enact their own ideological agendas. Though there are individual exceptions, as a legislative body, Congress is an unmitigated failure and disgrace to this nation and everything it’s supposed to stand for.
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Thus ends Part I. In Part II, we'll talk about The Big Lie and the differences between Conservatism (especially now) and Progressivism.
Thank you for reading.
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