I was raised on politics, but it has never been an obsession with me. At the dinner table, my family talked about two of the three subjects jokingly said to be unfit for polite conversation: politics, religion, and sex. (Do families still gather together for dinner?) Every political topic, local, state, or national, had two perspectives because my mother was a liberal Democrat, a now-endangered species attacked from Left and Right, and my father a moderate Republican, a now-extinct species. The discussions became more complicated when dinners included more family members or close family friends.
Such dinner-table discussions are one of my fondest memories as a child and teenager. Hearing more than one side of two sides of a controversial issue taught me to understand that there were arguments on both sides and to respect those who advanced those arguments, however different they were. Participating taught me to think carefully or risk embarrassment; today, one talks first, walks-back later. It may be that an interest in ideas and a joy in argument led me to become a teacher, a scholar, and a consultant. I am open to discussing divergent opinions, no matter how much I disagree with some. But I can find almost no one capable of arguing issues without getting ugly. Most people think arguments are shouting matches (profanities) or pitching contests (pots and pans).
Times have not changed that much in public discourse about American politics. Strong beliefs and strong feelings are nothing new to politics. Newspapers in colonial days were scurrilous in ways which we do not imagine of our sainted Founding Fathers. And crazy relatives at the Thanksgiving dinner table are no recent invention. But political talk seems to have become increasingly vulgar and violent. In the past, such talk was news to a few and came to them slowly and quietly by the newspaper, quickly and quietly by telegraph. Talk accelerated from the radio to television to the Internet and iPhones. No doubt, social media distributing vulgar language and violent behavior to millions models and normalizes them.
Such theorizing aside, insults and threats to those with different opinions have become norms not only at the dinner table, but also in legislatures at all government levels, not to mention political rallies. I am repeatedly stunned by the incivility of members of Congress, mostly Republicans, toward others, mostly Democrats. The big exception is shabby Republican treatment of Wyoming Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheyney. The only word to describe the behavior—words and deeds—of Congressional extremists mostly on the Right—Cotton, Cruz, Hawley, Gaetz, Greene, etc.—is barbaric.
How in the world did Americans get to this place not only in Congress, but also in communities? We have not been little angels until some recent date; we have quarreled and, indeed, fought over many issues. But the widespread and systematic behavior intimidating or attacking ordinary adults and children, volunteers at school or election boards, and teachers and health care professionals is, or should be, alarming to everyone but the perpetrators. The random violence of insults hurled at or from passing cars, of irate airplane passengers, of mass shootings in shopping malls and movie theaters—suggest an unprecedented psycho-political derangement throughout the populace.
What makes the vulgarity and violence so alarming today is the targets, not policies, but peoples. Old issues like slavery, expansion, monopolies and trusts, gold standard, and evolution, gave way to new issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, contraception, inter-racial marriage, race, immigration, terrorism, and climate change. The answers to the first set of issues were clear cut: civil war, the Pacific Ocean, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and the Scopes Trial—which is not to say that slavery did not metastasize into Jim-Crow laws and segregation. The answers to the second set of issues are far from clear because several of them concern private, not public, behavior associated with gender or race.
For Republicans, these issues are the perfect ones for demagoguery in the pursuit of power. They arouse populist fear and hate, avoid public issues in the public interest, and divert attention from their support of moguls and mega-corporations. Their attacks on women, LGBTQ people, and minorities (Hispanics, Muslims, Asian-Americans, Jews) will never cease. Soon to reverse a woman’s right to abortion, they are widening their attacks on other rights long regarded as “settled law”: contraception, same-sex marriage, and inter-racial marriage. They will return to flag-burning; school prayer; private rights in businesses, including accommodations and transportation; and, above all others, states’ rights to regulate citizenship, voting rights, and qualifications to hold office. Republican vilification of Democrats—name-calling, motive-mongering, and paranoid fictions—prepares for restrictions on and prosecutions of political opponents (how many will they lock up or execute for what crimes?). A Supreme Court of and for Republicans will continue to approve their abuses and erode democratic rights by ignoring the plain (“original”) language of the Constitution. Eventually, Republican super-majorities in the House and Senate, and in governorships in the states will convene a Constitutional convention to replace the present one, which has enabled the expansion of civil rights and liberties. Such is the grand strategy and the grim tactics of Republican fascism.
Republicans are silent about their inconsistency when it comes to government tyranny. They accuse of government of being tyrannical when it uses laws, regulations, or executive orders to achieve public goals in safety, health, education, the economy, or the environment. But they acclaim government for being non-tyrannical when it seeks to intervene in the lifestyle decisions of private citizens, not by ordering what they must do, but by prohibiting what they can do. Apparently, a government permitting private actions which affect no one but the parties involved is tyrannical; a government outlawing them is not. Totalitarian power answers to no one.
Republican use these “issues” to establish the power of federal and state governments to do as they please, repress dissent about their policies and failures, and oppress opponents in a widening circle eventually including all state-defined “enemies of the people.” There is no turning back. Those who seek power and acquire it rarely, if ever, relinquish it. In my day, neither Hitler, Stalin, nor Mao stepped down though their countries suffered the consequences of their rules. In my day still, Putin is destroying his country as well as threatening to destroy, and perhaps will destroy, other countries. Likewise, Republicans, who are using all possible means to effect the political transition from democracy to fascism, seek to establish know-nothing, White evangelical Christian, xenophobic nationalistic rule over most Americans, and abet the accumulation of power and wealth only for ruling oligarchs (Musk, Koch, Zuckerberg, and others).
Raised in a different time and place, and in a civilized society, I am stunned. I am stunned that many Americans think that a totalitarian government can enhance the quality of their or any human lives. Tucker Carlson is only one of many who support Putin and his dictatorial rule over a third-world country with nuclear weapons. I refuse to be numbed by outrageous words or deeds of media fifth-columnists and their fellow travelers. Indeed, outrage is my salvation. Unlike anger, outrage expresses moral convictions, and I have no intention of diminishing or abandoning mine. From this perspective, I deem anyone who turns away from the ugliness of the current political situation in disgust as merely self-indulgent, morally self-degrading, politically self-defeating, and socially destructive. As an officer, I swore to protect the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. No longer an officer and defender against foreign enemies, I do what I can to defend it from its domestic enemies. Among them are police forces out of control and in sympathy with home-grown malcontents, terrorists, and insurgents who regard people like me as un-American and themselves, despite the American flags which they conspicuously fly in their front yards, as patriotic. In Las Cruces, I know who is defending democracy and who is destroying it.
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