Category Archives: Random Blogging

The “Good Republican” Dilemma

Michael Gerson is one of the many prominent former Republicans who are horrified by what the Grand Old Party has become. In a column earlier this year for the Washington Post he wrote that

A political movement will either police its extremes or be defined by them.

Disapproval from opponents is easy to dismiss as mere partisanship. It is through self-criticism that a political party defines and patrols the boundaries of its ideological sanity.

The column was triggered by the overt racism of Senator Ron Johnson and the reaction–really, the lack of a reaction–by Johnson’s Republican colleagues, who (once again) proved unwilling to “patrol the boundaries of ideological sanity.”

There have always been bigots with access to a microphone. But in this case, Johnson did not face the hygienic repudiation of his party. Republican leaders preferred a different strategy: putting their fingers in their ears and humming loudly. Republicans have abolished their ideological police.

The reason is simple. After four years of Donald Trump, Johnson’s sentiments are not out of the Republican mainstream. They are an application of the prevailing Republican ideology — that the “real” America is under assault by the dangerous other: Violent immigrants. Angry Blacks. Antifa terrorists. Suspicious Muslims. And don’t forget “the China virus.”

Gerson concedes that Trump didn’t somehow create those views out of whole cloth. But  he points out–as many others have–the fact that Trump normalized these sentiments to an unprecedented degree.

Under Trump’s cover, this has been revealed as the majority position of Republicans, or at least engaged, activist Republicans…

Our country faces many crises. But our nation’s politics has a single, overriding challenge: One of the United States’ venerable, powerful political parties has been overtaken by people who make resentment against outsiders the central element of their appeal. Inciting fear is not an excess of their zeal; it is the substance of their cause.

In the column, Gerson describes the effect this has had on him, personally; he now considers himself politically homeless. As he says, as an Evangelical Christian, he has difficulty with several aspects of Democratic policy goals. Despite his own discomfort, however,

I could not advise an idealistic and ambitious young person to join today’s GOP because her ambition would be likely to destroy her idealism. Most Republican leaders can no longer be trusted with the moral education of the young on the central moral challenge of our history. Elected Republicans who are not bigots are generally cowards in the face of bigotry. And that is a shocking, horrible thing.

Gerson is far from the only former Republican adrift in a political no-man’s-land, confronting a once-typical political party that has embraced anti-intellectualism and abandoned policy prescriptions in favor of waging culture war.

I have many friends with whom I served in a very different GOP, and most of them are struggling with a similar personal dilemma. These aren’t simply people who once voted Republican and have decided to no longer do so–they were what you might call “professional Republicans,” people who spent the greater part of their careers in political activity and public service. They include former office-holders, several of whom were quite prominent, a collection of state and county elected officials, a few former city-county counselors, and a number of high-level Republican lobbyists.

Most no longer consider themselves Republican, and several have publicly announced that fact. Others are convinced that necessary change will only come from within–and although I disagree (I think it’s too late, that the party is too far in the thrall of the know-nothings and bigots) I understand their reluctance to “pull the plug” and pronounce the patient dead.

There are many kinds of homelessness. For good people who are intellectually honest, political homelessness is–at best– purgatory.

What’s worse, however, is that the American political system is deprived of the benefit of principled, reality-based debates over the way forward–debates that require honorable and thoughtful political debaters. The ultimate decisions made by politically homeless former Republicans–create a new party? fight to regain control of the GOP?– will determine whether those discussions can ever resume.

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Words, Words, Words…..

One of the barriers to productive political debate is language–its use and misuse.

Genuine communication–in general, not just in politics– is anything but simple. Back in “the day,” when I was a high school English teacher, discussions of grammar included a lesson on the difference between “definition” and “connotation”–between the dictionary meaning of a word, and the social or emotional “freight” it had picked up through use. (Further complicating matters, that “freight”–the negative or positive spin on a word or phrase–often varies depending upon the constituency hearing it. Think of how different ears hear “woke.”)

We all bring our individual world-views to our discussions, and those views and personal experiences become the lens through which we interpret what others are saying. Often, those interpretations are wildly different from the intended meaning–think “Defund the Police”–which is why political strategists and PR folks are so concerned with the language employed by candidates and/or commercial interests. Insisting “that isn’t what I meant” is almost always ineffective; it’s far preferable to initially frame an argument or proposition using  language that is as accurate about meaning as possible, and that will be most resistant to misinterpretation, whether intentional or unintentional.

Sometimes, partisans forget that the object should be to communicate, not simply to engage in virtue signaling.

Back in April, Governing Magazine ran an article titled ” ‘No Accountability, No Peace’: Sloganeering and the Language of the Left,” focusing on the differences in language employed by contemporary Republicans and Democrats. The author noted the “constant demand on the left” to be sensitive, to use words that are received as less hurtful. Sometimes, he wrote, this makes perfect sense. “Other times it feels like they want to fight on the wrong battlefield.”

This is not an isolated linguistic debate. It comes just after the recent overbaked argument about whether President Biden’s infrastructure plan, or parts of it, qualify as infrastructure, namely caregiving for children, the elderly and those with disabilities. Mother Jones was not alone in decrying this as a “semantic argument,” stressing the importance of Biden wanting to support women workers as part of the recovery.

But semantics do matter in politics. For years, the right has found success by putting potent, clever labels on things that help make their arguments for them: Recasting estate taxes as the “death tax,” for example, or succeeding in switching usage from the clinical description of intact dilation and evacuation to the soberingly graphic “partial-birth abortion.”

On the left, the impulse is more aspirational. You increase the power of your vocabulary by borrowing meanings, asserting that some things actually mean other, good things — that child care is infrastructure, or that housing is a human right or health care is a human right.

Give credit where it’s due: the GOP has been far more successful than Democrats in using language–words–to drive public opinion. That success has been partly due to good PR advice, but it also owes a debt to the fact that today, Republicans are far more monolithic  than Democrats, and their major goals are simpler to convey: keep my taxes low lends itself to far clearer messaging than, say, immigration reform, or even “Black Lives Matter.”

I actually think a large-scale public debate over the meaning of “infrastructure” would be  very useful. I have often distinguished between physical infrastructure (roads, bridges, the electrical grid, etc.) and what I think is accurately described as social infrastructure–the governmentally-provided social supports and services that are arguably necessary to social functioning and national cohesion.

America is rather clearly not ready for that discussion–not ready to use language for its intended purpose, which–I will reiterate– is to communicate. Far too many of us evidently subscribe to Tallyrand’s theory that “speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts.” 

“Make America Great Again” comes to mind….

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Grief

Gerald Stinson recently shared a research article with me that  gave rise to a small epiphany.

The article was titled “Political Grief” and it had been prompted by reactions to the 2016 election of Donald Trump–a reaction that the author accurately noted went well beyond the usual types of depression partisans suffer in the wake of electoral loss, and in fact, was a manifestation of what the author dubbed “political grief.”

I think this is exactly right.

All of us who are of “a certain age” have experienced personal losses and the grief that accompanies those losses. Friends and family members disappoint or die, businesses and/or projects near and dear to us fail, and we respond to those events with grief and despair. As the article notes, however, similar responses occur when our expectations about how the world works prove unfounded. We humans are “attached” to such deeply-rooted assumptions; they are deeply woven into the way we live our lives, interpret our life events, and anticipate outcomes. When we “experience a significant life event that cannot be readily incorporated into these assumptions” we experience “a state of disequilibrium.”

Grief, in response to loss.

The author reviews research into the nature of grief, noting that the loss of our assumptions about the way the world works translates into a loss of safety, logic, clarity, power and control. Grief becomes the process by which we reconcile (or don’t!) the world we now know exists with the world as we once believed it to be.

The entire article is worth reading and considering. Those of us who reacted viscerally to the results of the 2016 Presidential election will recognize ourselves in the author’s description of the “feelings of sadness, disbelief and grief over the death of values, ideals, hopes and dreams” experienced by her colleagues at a conference they were attending at the time of the election. But what we may fail to appreciate is the corresponding reaction to cultural change that has been experienced by those who ended up voting for Donald Trump.

The author of the article traces the evolution of our current, toxic political climate, and considers the various academic theories about the motivations of Trump voters, especially  the economic inequality perspective and the cultural backlash thesis, both of which have contributed to the deep resentment of those who feel disrespected and left behind. (The Left Behind is a book I referenced in a previous post; I’m reading it now, and Wuthnow’s description of the rural folks he interviewed is consistent with the article’s thesis.)

People who embrace so-called “traditional values” feel increasingly out of step with the changing culture of contemporary American (and European) society–and they are grieving the loss of their worldview and their place in American society. The accompanying resentment and anger makes them susceptible to nativism and xenophobia–a susceptibility that is particularly (but certainly not exclusively)  found among older, less-educated White men.

Terror Management Theory also has application: people who feel threatened tend to find refuge in their cultural world-views, religious symbols and beliefs.

“When we perceive a threat, we retreat to what we know best and to those who are most like us, and who make us feel safe and protected….Identifying with others who share similar values, culture, religion (including outward appearance and skin color) is seen as safe; blame and fear are placed on those who are not us.”

In our current political environment, political affiliation is no longer based upon support for particular policies or parties, it has become an integral part of one’s personal identity. Partisans aren’t just working for specific policies–they are defending deeply-held values and world-views.  Both sides of the divide express “moral outrage” over the views of the “others.” As the author notes, the only common ground to be found is in “the shared sense of outrage over the deplorable values and platform of the other side.”

If this analysis is accurate–and I think it is–we’re in for a world of hurt.

The grief felt by both sides in what seems an insurmountable divide is all too real. Those clinging to “traditional values” (and traditional social castes) are grieving the increasing abandonment of those beliefs and the once-familiar lines of social and racial demarcation; those embracing that social evolution are grieving, overwhelmed and discouraged  by evidence that so many Americans are ready to fight to keep change and inclusion at bay.

Grief seems appropriate.

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Who Is A Real American?

Adam Serwer is a staff writer for the Atlantic, and the author of a forthcoming book titled “The Cruelty is the Point: the Past, Present and Future of Trump’s America.” He recently contributed an op-ed to the New York Times, in which he undertook to defend the thesis of that book

Donald Trump has claimed credit for any number of things he benefited from but did not create, and the Republican Party’s reigning ideology is one of them: a politics of cruelty and exclusion that strategically exploits vulnerable Americans by portraying them as an existential threat, against whom acts of barbarism and disenfranchisement become not only justified but worthy of celebration. This approach has a long history in American politics. The most consistent threat to our democracy has always been the drive of some leaders to restrict its blessings to a select few.

This is why Joe Biden beat Mr. Trump but has not vanquished Trumpism. Mr. Trump’s main innovation was showing Republicans how much they could get away with, from shattering migrant families and banning Muslim travelers to valorizing war crimes and denigrating African, Latino and Caribbean immigrants as being from “shithole countries.” Republicans have responded with zeal, even in the aftermath of his loss, with Republican-controlled legislatures targeting constituencies they identify either with Democrats or with the rapid cultural change that conservatives hope to arrest. The most significant for democracy, however, are the election laws designed to insulate Republican power from a diverse American majority that Republicans fear no longer supports them. The focus on Mr. Trump’s — admittedly shocking — idiosyncrasies has obscured the broader logic of this strategy.

Serwer locates the origins of that cruelty in the Democratic Party of the post-civil war, post-Reconstruction eras, and he concedes that contemporary Republicans are somewhat less violent and racist than were the Democrats of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. But he points out that, as the parties exchanged positions, Republicans have adopted the Democrats’ prior political logic. They view victories of the rival party as illegitimate, the result of “fraud, coercion or the support of ignorant voters who are not truly American.”

That last belief–that people who vote for the “other party” (i.e. the Democratic Party) aren’t “real” Americans–shocked me, and I thought it must be an exaggerated claim. But Serwer documented it.

On Fox News, hosts warn that Democrats want to “replace the current electorate” with “more obedient voters from the third world.” In outlets like National Review, columnists justify disenfranchisement of liberal constituencies on the grounds that “it would be far better if the franchise were not exercised by ignorant, civics-illiterate people.” Trumpist redoubts like the Claremont Institute publish hysterical jeremiads warning that “most people living in the United States today — certainly more than half — are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.”

There’s a great deal to provoke thought in the essay, and I encourage you to click through and read it in its entirety, but this accusation seems to me to sum up the crux of the argument Americans are having right now.

We are debating just who is entitled to be called a “real” American.

In a very important essay in the Atlantic, George Packer recently identified the Americans who consider themselves “real Americans.”The narrative of “real America,” Packard said, “is white Christian nationalism.”

Packard is correct. Survey research suggests that slightly over thirty percent of Americans believe that, in order to be a “real” American, one must be a White Christian. Those of us who reject that belief define a “real American” as someone who embraces what I call the American Idea: the philosophy that animated the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Unlike the European countries that awarded citizenship on the basis of identity–ethnic, religious, etc.–  the Founders established a country in which one becomes a citizen–an American– via acceptance of those foundational values.

American citizenship depends upon behavior, not identity.

The arguments we are having today in our dramatically-polarized country really boil down to a conflict between those who see “real Americans” as members of a tribe that one must be born into, and those of us who believe that being a “real American” requires that we understand, accept and uphold the principles and aspirations embodied in those constituent documents.

G.K. Chesterton once argued that the American experiment aspired to create “a home out of vagabonds and a nation out of exiles” united by voluntary assent to commonly held political beliefs.

The real “Real Americans” agree with Chesterton.

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