The Grand Illusion
I can understand that Republicans feel Democrats spend too much and want to spend even more. I can understand that they feel the “wild left” is pushing gender/sexual politics beyond the law. I can understand why they want more spending on police, rather than less. I can understand their concerns about immigration, concerns that many Democrats share but refuse to acknowledge publicly. I can understand their concerns about excessive government regulation. I can understand, even if I disagree violently, their feelings about abortion. I can even understand [although it’s incredibly difficult] that they want Trump back as President.
Issues such as these, whether we like it or not, are the sort of issues to be decided by Congress, the courts, and the President through Constitutional procedures, not by a mob smashing its way into the U.S. Capitol and not by an authoritarian government.
What I find impossible to accept from Republicans is their belief that the last election was “stolen,” and their failure to accept that the January insurrection was just that – an attempt to overthrow the results of an election that even Republican state officials claim was fair, particularly at a time when Republicans controlled the majority of state governments.
To me, such Republican stances are the precursors of yet another attempt to force their will upon others, even on issues where over two-thirds of the population opposes the Republican position.
In his Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln said that the Civil War was fought so “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”
Today, it’s more than a little clear that the Republicans firmly no longer believe that, but instead will deny facts and ignore the will of all the people in order to create government of Republicans, by Republicans, and for Republicans, and the hell with anyone else, even though Republicans are in fact a minority of Americans.
I think one of the underlying issues is a disbelief in one fact: that Republicans are in fact a minority. Because they don’t believe that, they find it impossible to believe that they didn’t win.
I don’t understand why the Republicans believe that the last election was “stolen” but I can understand why they do not think of themselves as a minority.
Consider the elections as a horse race. If a an outsider wins by several lengths everyone will automatically think “doped”. If the outsider wins by a nose hardly anyone except the stewards will think “doped”.
So the last election was close enough that thinking Biden was “doped” is not a possibility. On the other hand because the election was not a shoe-in for the Democrats in the Senate, and to a degree in the House, the Republicans are not really a minority. McConnell is proving the Republican strength in the Senate; ok so he is getting help from the democratic penchant for the Democrats to pander to the individual and the minority at the expense of the nation.
I wonder why people think Republicans cannot govern and Democrats cannot lead? Perhaps because of …
IN A GOOD CAUSE
First Appearance: New Tales OF Space and Time, 1951. I. Asimov.
In a good cause there are no failures. … Humanity cannot unite by itself! The Greeks needed an external enemy; Persia. In the US? McConnell should recall Toynbee and the difference between a ‘dominant minority’ and a ‘creative minority’.
We are in a circumstance not entirely unlike the one in your newest book, awesome as always. Complete with the overt violence of Jan 6. America has been on a teter-totter between democracy and oligarchy. Until the bill of rights was added the Constitution was very much a document by, of and for the rich. Part of the problem beyond a republican authoritarian heirarchy our “crafter” and ordinary folk party in part work for the plutocrats and in part want an unworkable fantasy. Meanwhile pressing issues are going unresolved or unaddressed. I don’t see anything short of a convention of states and a new set of amendments that limit terms while governing how loud money can speak, if not silencing it entirely with regard to campaign financing. Limit the candidates from doing little more than submitting a resume to the public. Something like that.
IMHO. Lot angry and not a few hopeless people out there. Like I read in a book once. Angry people do stupid things. Including tossing thier liberty to a minority of extremists with a vote. I wasn’t looking forward to the last election and I fear the next will do little mose than deepen the divide.
Thanks for all that your books have added to my life!
The Republicans, as in the people that run the party, don’t think that Donald Trump won the election or that the Democrats did anything to steal it. They know that neither of those things is true.
They say those things because it makes their voters mad, and encourages them to get out the vote, donate money, and not look closely at Republican efforts to do away with democracy in swing states.
Also, re complaints about Democratic Party spending plans, when can we stop pretending that the Republican Party has anything to do with fiscal responsibility? As we seen for the last 20 years, whenever they get into power, they spend like drunken sailors and give fiscally ruinous tax breaks to their billionaire funders. At least the Democrats fund their plans by doing away with tax breaks for the rich.
The capitol hill debacle is seen more as a false flag event most of the right-wing Americans I know on the internet. None of the right-wingers I know want Trump back either, unless it’s semi-ironic in an accelerationist way. I think that both republicans and democrats are generally not the majority, that a lot of people just vote against what they find to be more distasteful.
I’m sure there are plenty of republicans who believe the Q-Anon stuff and revere Trump, similar to democrats who think Trump stole the election from Hillary and the Russian conspiracy stuff.
But inbetween are a lot of Americans just fighting about whose policies they hate more. I find myself sympathising more with those who think the two-party system and FPTP voting system have eroded any integrity the democratic institution might have once had.
And it’s a shame too, because so many people can agree that the military industrial complex, big pharma and establishment political and media machines all have far too much power for the sovereignty of the US’ citizens to be tangible, yet any calls to challenge the system are neatly divided and conquered.