They Aren’t Even Pretending

It’s an election year, and we are already–predictably–being inundated with commentaries exploring the roots of MAGA devotion to a mentally-ill would-be dictator. The punditry digs into sociology, political science research–even psychiatric diagnosis– and the result is to obfuscate and excuse what most honest Americans recognize as the roots of MAGA’s attraction: racism and a fear of  Americans who can be considered “Other.”

As the more complicated (and generous) “analyses” mount, however, so does the evidence of the bigotry and White Christian Nationalism that is powering support for Trump. There are a lot of areas of our common lives that are genuinely complex, but evidence abounds that Trumpism/MAGA is not one of them.

This blog has frequently highlighted that evidence, and today I am offering yet another example of the willingness of bigots to be “out and proud.” Increasingly, they are willing to be forthright about the world they are trying to create, and candidly, I find it terrifying.

This report from the Guardian is the latest example:

A venture fund and a real estate startup – both with links to far-right organizations – are promoting a residential development in rural Kentucky as a haven for fellow right-wingers.

The promoters have presented the planned development as an “aligned community” for right-wingers who want to “disappear from the cultural insanity of the broader country” and “spearhead the revival of the region”.

The move is the latest effort by the far-right to establish geographical enclaves, following in the footsteps of movements like the so-called “American Redoubt”, which encourages right-wingers to engage in “political migration” to areas in the interior of the Pacific north-west.

Unsurprisingly, the development was announced on X, which is being turned into a racist and anti-Semitic cesspool by Elon Musk. It was also announced  in a special edition of the “New Founding” by Joshua Abbotoy, who is described as the “managing director of venture fund New Founding and principal of real estate developer Kentucky Ridge Runner LLC.”

According to Abbotoy, “Most of the leadership is going to be led by Protestant Christians.” (Take that, Catholics!!)

The Guardian contacted Abbotoy via email, asking whether he reserved the right to refuse to sell parcels to prospective purchasers who weren’t members of the “aligned community” and on what basis. He didn’t respond.

Actually, this appeal–closely targeted to a White Protestant Christian market–is a fascinating amalgam of market capitalism and bigotry.

“Utopian communities have long been a feature of the American landscape, but this may be more of a money-driven land speculation project with a culture war angle than an effort to create a utopian project in the classic sense”, said Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers, a key book on Christian nationalism.

There are two “aligned community” developments underway, and The Guardian calculated the profits if lots sell at the asking prices: in one, the company paid around $6,011 an acre, but buyers will pay up to the equivalent of $88,500 an acre for unimproved lots, or up to fourteen times the rate HRP paid. In the other, sellers will collect a total of at least $2.27 million on 550 acres of land for which they paid $900,000.

Nice work if you can get it….

It’s hard to escape the suspicion that pious Right-wing folks are seen by these enterprising developers not as comrades in utopian “aligned communities,” but as patsies.

The website advertising the lots says the developers seek to “build and back companies defined by American ideals and a positive national vision”,  and adds that it “explicitly oppose[s] DEI/ESG and the bureaucratization of American business culture” and targets “customers disfavored by corrosive ideologies.”

The explicit rejection of “diversity” and “inclusion” telegraphs the basis for the appeal.

Financial matters aside, Stewart said the move tracked with the preferences of the contemporary far right.

“This is typical of the far-right’s emotional need for a ‘safe space’,” she wrote.

“It’s not just that some members of this extremist cohort disagree with liberals, feminists, or any number of people who don’t share their views; it’s that they really can’t stand having those people anywhere nearby,” Stewart added.

“The mere existence of people not like them counts as an insult.”

I used to believe that such people were a small percentage of the American public. Now, I’m not so sure. The good capitalists who are targeting them obviously think they comprise a substantial and thus-far untapped market.

It’s scary.

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A Message From GIMA

The Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance–abbreviated to GIMA–is a local organization of   faith leaders from a wide variety of religious traditions. Those leaders have come together to collaborate on civic projects that serve the common good of greater Indianapolis–unlike the Christian Nationalists and other theocrats I so often criticize on this site, they are intent on making our city and state a fairer and more equitable place.

The organization is currently focusing on the city’s lack of affordable housing and the crisis in evictions, and it has produced a short video that focuses on–surprise!–the failure of the Indiana legislature to enact enforceable minimal protections for tenants whose landlords fail to provide even minimally-habitable properties, or refuse to make critically-needed repairs.(In all fairness, those abusive landlords represent a relatively small percentage of all landlords in the city, and are disproportionately out-of-state investors. But they cause a lot of misery.)

GIMA focused its efforts on this issue because of what it describes as the “current landscape” of the problem.  Its website offers data that confirms the severity and extent of the barriers facing tenants who lack financial and legal means to hold those landlords accountable.

Housing instability, particularly evictions, is receiving its due attention in this critical moment because it’s nearing a full-blown crisis. According to Eviction Lab, Indianapolis is second only to New York in total evictions and Indiana is number one in statewide eviction filings since 2020. We recognize that there are several excellent non-profit organizations that provide direct services, as well as coalitions that amplify the voices and needs of those grappling with the impact of evictions and homelessness through advocacy. We also know that many congregations periodically collect food and clothing – and even temporarily house the homeless.

Those efforts are meaningful, but woefully inadequate to the scope of the problem.

Rather than offering my “take” on the issue, I encourage you to click through and watch the very short (just over 6 minutes) video.

And if you live in Indiana, call your State Senator and/or Representative and ask them to support SB 277–Senator Walker’s tenant repair fund bill.

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Framing The Issues

After I graduated law school and had practiced for a time, I realized that what I had learned  could be boiled down to one essential axiom: he who frames the issue wins the debate. The rest (to quote Hillel) is commentary. Or–in the case of lawyering–the rest is process. 

The ability to frame an issue–to make the debate about X rather than Y–is a powerful weapon.

That point was recently made by Rick Perlstein in The American Prospect, in the second of his essays on “The Infernal Triangle.” This piece focused on the frames used by political journalists, and the ways in which those frames distort our current reality.

In journalism, metaphors matter profoundly. Labels matter profoundly. Narrative frames matter profoundly. They matter most precisely when they function unthinkingly. That is when they soothe us into not bothering to look. 

The essay quoted liberally from a book by Jeff Sharlet. At one point, the book described Leslie Stahl’s interview of Marjorie Taylor Green–an interview that was widely panned for  what was seen as Stahl’s ineffective efforts to fact-check Green. Stahl is an excellent journalist, but she was operating from within that professional tradition.

“Those old frames don’t work anymore,” Sharlet explained. “Marjorie Taylor Greene is not trying to join the cosmos that Lesley Stahl and much of American journalism is set up to cover.” She inhabited an entirely separate one: a fascist one, which the likes of Stahl have no idea how to comprehend. “Fascism is a dream politics. It’s a mythology. You can’t fact-check myth. You can’t arch an eyebrow and make it go away.”

Perlstein’s thesis is simple, although its implications are anything but. He contends that “the conceptual tools, metaphors, habits, and technologies that make up what we understand as “political journalism” in America are thoroughly unequal to the task of making sense of what, in America in 2024, politics is.”

In the essay, Perlstein recounts a back-and-forth between Sharlet and a reporter for the New York Times. Sharlet pointed out that Trump—with his “cult of personality, and the celebration of violence”—has encouraged a politics very different from the political battles journalists have encountered previously, and he cited scholarship to that effect. He then asked the reporter

“with love and affection for The New York Times and the dilemma that you’re in: What is the argument against calling that ‘fascism’?”

At which his interlocutor doubled down on the smug.

“For the same reason we don’t call Trump ‘racist.’ It’s more powerful to say what something is than to offer a label on it that is going to be debated, you know, and distract from the reporting that goes into it.”

Sharlet: “Who is debating Trump’s racism right now?”

This exchange highlights a genuine dilemma. When does “framing” devolve into labeling and name-calling? On the other hand, at what point must honest reporters acknowledge that observed behaviors are fascist or racist–or unmistakable signs of mental illness?

Perlstein ends his essay with a promise to continue the analysis, and perhaps he will be able to describe that tipping point–the demarkation between a journalist’s accurate description of what a political figure said or did and a defensible characterization of that description as racist or fascist (or insane). I’m not sure I could identify that tipping point, but I certainly agree that the practice of political journalism is in crisis, and not simply because older professional norms no longer seem adequate to our current political reality.

What is particularly problematic is that “journalism” from the Right has understood the power of framing (Fox “News” et al) while practitioners of so-called “legacy journalism” have reacted by clinging more tightly to an increasingly misleading neutrality. (In all fairness, there are signs that–as the MAGA threat to democracy becomes too obvious to ignore–some of those legacy newspapers are sounding the alarm.)

The problem isn’t simply a stubborn adherence to norms that may be outmoded. There’s also the fragmentation of America’s media landscape–a fragmentation that has been facilitated by the Internet, and that allows us all to seek out compatible information sources, and inhabit realities of our choosing. We have the ability to visit “news” sites that frame current political debates in ways that confirm our pre-existing biases and world-views. In many ways, today’s media environment is a throwback to the bad old days when political parties published broadsides with their versions of what was “news” and there were few competing sources with commitments to accuracy and/or objectivity. 

Bottom line: the successful framing of the stakes of this year’s election will determine who wins–and the fate of the American experiment.

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Old-Time Republicanism

Here in Indiana, Eric Holcomb is completing his second and last term as Governor. He recently delivered his final “State of the State” address, and it was brief, filled with (moderately boring) policy successes and remaining priorities–and touchingly reminiscent of what Republicanism used to sound like.

As John Krull wrote at The Statehouse File, Holcomb’s speech had a perfunctory feel to it.

One of the governor’s strengths—perhaps his greatest one as a leader—has been his ability to recognize and accept reality.

He first was elected to office in 2016, the same year that Donald Trump captured the White House.

During the intervening years, America has been a noisy, screaming place, filled with all the ceaseless screaming tumult Trump has produced as he has strutted upon the national stage.

Indiana, by contrast, has been an oasis of relative quiet.

Some of that is because Eric Holcomb is secure and comfortable enough with himself not to require everyone to pay attention to him every day and all the time. He’s willing to let whole weeks go by without asking people to watch him, listen to him or even think about him.

In other words, he’s a functioning adult, not an overgrown child—unlike many of our elected officials these days.

Holcomb has been an old-fashioned Republican, increasingly out of place in a party of rabid ideologues and immature posturers who haven’t the slightest interest in the process of actually governing.

We citizens tend to think of American politics as a contest between conservatives and liberals. That frame has always been inadequate and over-broad, but today it is simply inaccurate. MAGA Republicans are not just somewhat different versions of Eric Holcomb, and they are definitely not conservative.

 Persuasion recently considered  conservatism vs. GOP-ism, in an essay called “The Path Not Taken.”

The author traced what he called the two “strands” of conservatism, one of which he dubbed National Conservatism. It is the version “championed by former president Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis,” and it has very little in common with American conservatism. Rather than the small-government agenda of the former Republican Party, this version “seeks to use the power of the state to challenge cultural progressivism—as evidenced by Trump’s severe immigration policies and DeSantis’ top down remaking of Florida’s university system.”

In short, this MAGA version bears little or no resemblance to the Republican platforms that used to define conservatism.  

National Conservatives have shown themselves to be at best hopelessly naïve about the foundations of human flourishing, and at worst incapable of understanding that some people may wish to live a life different from their own. When not pressuring mothers into staying home from work with their kids, they are defending foreign despots for preserving their national identity at the cost of basic civil liberties. To allow National Conservatives free rein in the United States would be to permit the very worst elements of the right to control the levers of our government. In the process it would undercut genuine virtue and allow bureaucratic tyranny to grow unabated.

When I joined the Republican Party, “conservative” meant limiting the power of the state. It meant endorsing the right of individuals to forge their own life paths without government interference– at least, so long as they weren’t harming the person or property of others, or denying others the right to do likewise.

The “National Conservatism” described above has absolutely nothing in common with that bygone conservatism. It is overwhelmingly autocratic, and– as embraced by MAGA Republicans– increasingly fascist. Calling it “conservative” is both misleading and inaccurate.

A couple of weeks ago, Liz Cheney was on The View, and–as the saying goes–she “told it like it is.”

 “There are some conservatives who are trying to make this claim that somehow [President] Biden is a bigger risk than Trump,” she said. “My view is I disagree with a lot of Joe Biden’s policies. We can survive bad policies. We cannot survive torching the Constitution.”

Precisely.

I disagree with Cheney on almost all policy matters, but I admire her clarity and honesty about the existential challenge America is currently facing–and her recognition that it’s a challenge going well beyond policy differences.

Back in the day, the term “Conservative” wasn’t used to describe someone who wanted  government to dictate what citizens should believe and how they would be permitted to act. (It was interesting–and telling–that Eric Holcomb’s recitations of what he considered  to be GOP successes in his State of the State address omitted any mention of the draconian ban on abortion passed by the MAGA Republicans of the Indiana legislature.) 

Today’s MAGA Republicans are many things. “Conservative” is not one of them.

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The Real Lesson From Iowa

Robert Hubbell’s Substack analysis of the Iowa Republican caucus focused on a point I keep hammering: turnout–getting out the vote–is far and away the most important imperative of this year’s election cycle.

There is a mountain of social science data confirming that high-turnout elections benefit Democrats. There’s a reason the GOP does everything in its power to suppress the vote. By far the most effective suppression comes from gerrymandering–voters in districts drawn to be “safe” for a party they don’t support feel–not illogically–that their votes won’t count, so why bother? It will be critically important to remind those voters that statewide races and the popular vote for President are not subject to gerrymandering. With the exception of the potential operation of the Electoral College, those votes will absolutely count.

Hubbell makes the argument for the importance of turnout in the context of Iowa’s (weird) caucus system. He begins by looking at the composition of those who did turn out:

Among those who attended the caucuses, most voters hold extremist views. Those views are reprehensible and deserve to be condemned. But those who showed up on Monday were mostly Trump loyalists who represent the slimmest majority possible of voters in Iowa.

Although Hubbell doesn’t mention it, this feature of caucus turnout is equally true of turnout in state primaries. The typically low primary turnout is characterized by votes from the most passionate–and extreme–members of both parties. And those voters do not reflect majority sentiments.

So, as we collectively talk about the results in Iowa, it is important to realize that 49% of those who voted on a bitterly cold night (-3 Fahrenheit) did not support Trump. Most of the voters who opposed Trump do not condone his views about immigrants poisoning the blood of America, or his opponents being “vermin,” or his belief that the 2020 election was “rigged.”…

As we move forward in the 2024 campaign, let’s remember that there are Democrats, Independents, and Republicans in Iowa who will not support Trump. Our job is to convince them to show up for Biden. Lumping them in with MAGA extremists is not an effective way of achieving that goal.

And the same applies to every so-called “red state.” In every state, there are local and statewide offices that can be flipped—something that will help limit and blunt the effect of Republican control of statehouses and governors’ mansions.

So, let’s set aside the notion that red states are a lost cause and do not deserve our attention or support. Not only do they deserve our help, but they are the front line of resistance—just like the Democrats, Independents, and Republicans who chose not to vote for Trump on Monday.

Turnout in Iowa was low— only 110,298 voters participated in the GOP caucuses, amounting to about 19% of the 594,533 “active” registered Republicans . Of those, 51%  voted for Trump (or 52,260). So Trump’s “big” victory in Iowa was “achieved with support from 7% of Iowa Republicans—or 3% of Iowa’s 1,518,280 active voters.”

Trump’s victory on Monday night was decided by the 97% of Iowa voters who “did not vote” in the caucuses. So, before we over-interpret the result on Monday, we must recognize that the potential for a devastating defeat for Trump is within our reach—assuming that we can motivate sufficient turnout. (emphasis mine)

So, as we face the onslaught of polls in the coming primary season predicting doom for Democrats, we must always remember that turnout can beat any poll.

As Hubbell reminds his readers, the Iowa caucus results affirm a fundamental truth: It all comes down to turnout.

Even in dramatically-gerrymandered Indiana, if a significant percentage of the disaffected voters in “safe” districts voted, a number of the districts would no longer be safe. Republican victories in Indiana are increasingly dependent upon low turnout–especially in the more rural areas of the state that have been steadily losing population.

Hubbell is absolutely right when he insists that Democrats cannot afford to write off Red states this year, of all years.

We need to make the strongest possible case– to apathetic and/or disheartened Democrats as well as to Independents and any remaining sane Republicans– that their votes are needed to save the Constitution, protect democracy, and remove the GOP crazies’ stranglehold that currently prevents Congress from functioning.

For those of us who have felt helpless against the drumbeat of depressing news, there is one thing we each can do: we can encourage everyone we know to register and we can follow up to ensure that they actually vote.

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