The Last Confession : Without Apologies
For some time now, as both professor and writer–including of this blog–I’ve been hemming and hawing about the conflict in democracies between the politics of equality and the politics of majoritarianism. Re-reading The Horror, The Horror, however, has led me to different, that is to sad conclusive, thoughts about that inbuilt contradiction. I’m not going to write about it any more. So, now:
A thin majority of American voters, and more than that if we include non-voters who “couldn’t make up their minds,” voted for a man who, along with his chief spokespersons and advisors, despises democracy in any of its forms, until and unless it produces only the results he desires. He hid none of this. He promised and now furthers that promise to realize that ambition with utter violence whenever necessary. He is, in other words, a totalitarian, along the lines of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Putin, etc.
I have no intention of abolishing democracy; I don’t think I know anyone who does. But, now to confess: I despise everyone and anyone who voted that way. I have not the faintest interest in complaints about neo-liberalism and the decline of wages and unionization in the past half-century that were mostly brought about by the people they are now voting for: at least, not so long as they are tied to totalitarianism and can accept its drive toward the victimization of Others.
For more detail, if anyone still needs it, the November 28 Op-Ed by David French, or Josh Marshall’s “Talking Points Memo” of the same date, will do nicely.
The Republican candidate for Attorney General of North Carolina campaigned with a list of persons she would like to see publicly executed. I see no need to specify such examples any further; it becomes clearer every day–and evening. Who/whom, as Lenin put it. Ignorance of the Law is not an excuse: neither is ignorance of injustice.
The Philadelphia Athletics went without winning an American League pennant, or not even getting close to that goal in most cases, from 1931 to 1972, i.e., four plus decades. Whoever they were over that period, they–the players, the managers — never stopped trying; never cheated by tampering balls or bats; or deliberately injuring opponents. That’s the way it goes sometimes.
But that’s neither here nor there. Anyone for whom the road to totalitarianism is what the democratic right to vote means: the hell with you. May you lose your Medicare, your Social Security, your immunization to whatever comes along, your right to vote, your property; billions of dollars of losses to farmers who voted for you. Yes!
Yes, they won: These are some of the things they voted for: concentration camps, on a space offered to Trump by the neo-Nazi Governor of Texas, where the unimaginable cruelty of separating families can be resumed; the dismantling of the Education Department as a gift to the voters who lack a helpful degree; power over all issues of Health by a guy who boasted that heroin made him better off, and who intends to sicken or kill as many as he can by depriving them of vaccines; the threatened occupation of Denver by the military if the Major does not round up “illegal” immigrants; huge price hikes on essential imports; poisoned waste and air as promised to the plutocrats of carbon. As Michael Steele called it, “A Pandora’s Box of Hell.”
I could go on and on but am losing track of the shit-storm. We’re in “Survivor” mode; the only ones who make it all the way through to the big pay-off, besides Trump the master of it all, being the totally corrupt sons who are actually unregistered agents of foreign governments.
I wish I could say Good Riddance. I’m a nonagenarian, so I won’t live to see them get just results, but the worse those are, the more they deserve them.
This is only Week 2.There is no indication that it is not representative of what’s to follow; or worse. So hold your horses, totalitarians never slow down. And no one benefits who doesn’t lick their asses. Who might intend to defend the Rule of Law, or Constitutional Rights, or human decency. For that matter, separation of powers? Checks and balances? If the Supreme Court were abolished, we’d be better off.
Hold on.
