The grotesque story from yesterday regarding the Wisconsin Primary election is but the latest illustration of the extraordinarily destructive thing the Republican Party has become in our times.
The Republicans, as always, show that they value only power: in order to maintain their control over the Wisconsin Supreme Court, they want a low-turnout election which will favor the Republican incumbent; and so they are absolutely determined that the election must go forward today, despite the pandemic and the need for people to stay at home; and so the Republican Party mobilizes its resources to protect their power even at the cost both of democratic values and of the lives of the people of Wisconsin who are compelled to choose between losing their voice in their government or endangering their very lives.
So the Republicans in the state legislature refuse to reschedule the election; So the Republican 5-4 majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturns the efforts of the (Democratic, of course) governor to protect both the democracy and the people; So the Republican 5-4 majority on the United States Supreme Court blocks the effort to extend the ballot-by-mail voting deadline, so that people who are waiting for ballots they’d already requested would be able to participate in deciding who will control their state’s Supreme CourtIt is essential to recognize that all these are part of a single “Thing” that the Republican Party has become. They are components of a force that is manifested also by
Trump’s putting himself first, over the needs of the nation, since the coming pandemic was first brought to his attention; The Senate Republicans, under Mitch McConnell, voting to keep their president in power, despite its having been proved with overwhelming evidence that this President had committed impeachable crimes of the gravest seriousness; Republicans it in the state governments of North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin, all trying to strip away from offices that the electorate had voted to confer on their opponents; The Republicans on the Supreme Court being an extension of the plutocracy, expanding corporate powers (Citizens United) and serving corporate interests in almost every relevant decision.Believe me, this list could be expanded almost without limit, because the atrocities have been coming one after another over the course of the past generation.
I first saw — in its naked ugliness -- what was taking over the Republican Party in September of 2004. The sight of it changed the course of my life: I’ve felt compelled since then to get my fellow Democrats — and my fellow Americans generally — to see the nature of the political battle for what it is. Which means seeing the nature of the force that has been taking over the Republican Party since the early 90s, beginning with the rise of Gingrich and Limbaugh.
What we see is “a coherent force that consistently spreads a pattern of brokenness” as it acts in the world.
As time has gone on, the Republican Party has become ever more completely and consistently acting in ways that make things worse, that result in more injustice, deception, ugliness, disease, environmental destruction, cruelty, and always more conflict between political parties, races, religions, nations.
I’ve been trying for more than 15 years to show this “Thing,” this “It,” this “coherent force of destruction.” Writing actually thousands of essays to show the nature of the battle, and to rouse my fellow Democrats to fight it accordingly. And all this culminated in 2015 in my book WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST: The Destructive Force at Work in Our World— and How We Can Defeat It.” (Complete text available without charge as a pdf.)
The central section of the book is titled, “A Secular Understanding of ‘the Battle Between Good and Evil’”— for it lays out the dynamic at work in the world that can yield something like this Republican Party, which has become controlled by something “coherent” that has come together in America, has gained great power, and has acted consistently in a manner profoundly akin to what our intellectual and religious traditions have called “Evil.”
Those who don’t like that word — “Evil” -- can think instead of “a force of destructiveness,” or a force that consistently degrades the whatever is life-serving and life-enhancing in the world, or a force of “brokenness.” All of which it showed itself to be yesterday when it used a legislature and two Supreme Courts to sacrifice human lives, and strangle the voice of the people, because it is driven by an insatiable lust for power.
The Republican Party should not be dignified by calling it an “outlier,” which is almost as far as the voice of reason and decency has gone. That doesn’t begin to capture the extraordinarily dark and destructive nature of how far toward darkness — way off the map for a major American political party during our two-and-a-half centuries — this Party has gone.
It would greatly strengthen the forces of Goodness in America if the Democrats were to
See the dark atrocity of this Republican Party for the “Thing” it is. Which would help move it to fight it with a the urgency that comes from understanding that this goes beyond just normal “bad politics.” We are playing for keeps here, because WHAT WE ARE UP AGAINST is like nothing ever seen in America (nor seen, to the best of my knowledge, in any other advanced democratic society). Which leads to the real work, which is for the Democrats to help the American people to see what the Republican Party has become. (And having seen it, reject it and drive it into oblivion, with a landslide defeat of Donald Trump and of many of the Senators who have enabled him in his unthinkable presidency.)No, it is not necessary to say anything about “Evil,” or “Brokenness,” etc. All that’s necessary is to show it: show the various particulars, and make the relevant connections wherever possible. (E.g. when the subject is the assault on democracy, don’t just talk about voter suppression, letting the Russians hack our election, citizenship questions on the Census, etc. But rather put those pieces together, so that the people can see the larger thing. And so with the countless other patterns of destructive conduct that can be shown, so that the “Thing” takes shape in people’s minds, without being states, simply as the facts assemble themselves into a general sense of the general ugliness of the Republican Party.)
And the 2020 Election is the perfect forum for doing it. The Democrats should make their campaign against the “Thing” that the Republican Party has become. (As well as showing the constructive and benign alternative they offer the people, for a government that makes things more Whole and not more Broken.)
I yearn for more of the American people to recognize the nature of this thing to which — shamefully, frighteningly — the American electorate has given so much power for so long, even after it had turned so dark. I want them to feel the kind of repulsion and outrage and dread that have been so burdensome for me over these 15-plus years.
And with that perception, and driven by those passions, to drive that force out of power, into the fractured fringes of oblivion, which it so richly deserves.
And I yearn then to live again in a nation where power is used to make the human world better, not worse.