Where we are Now

“I think we are in rat’s alley, Where the dead men lost their bones.” T.S. Eliot

From a recent report: “Amid the mounting drama of the early summer, a moment of truth appears imminent. It is one that will reveal whether the American electorate is still capable of large-scale shifts in opinion, or whether the country is essentially locked into a schism for the foreseeable future, with roughly 53 percent of Americans on one side and 47 percent on the other.”

Here are some facts for an historical comparison. For the New Deal: in 1932 FDR won the election by 17.7 %. In 1936 by 24.3%. In 1964, LBJ won by 23.9%. In 1932 Democrats won 58 seats, 74 in 1936, 68 in 1964. To paraphrase, the rest is commentary.

Which I will give. Why the schism? Due perhaps to fear of crime and immigration deadlock, Biden’s approval numbers have gone down slightly, but the basic split remains. More to the point, why do the GOP numbers remain where they are, even while the Party accomplishes nothing but to forestall policy changes that the populace favors, and fails to condemn the January Insurrection? Per some late polls, “a super-majority of Republicans backed Trump’s efforts to overturn the results: 86% said his legal challenges were appropriate, 79% said they weren’t confident in the national vote tally, and 68% said Trump really won. Another 54% said Trump should never concede, and a plurality said state legislatures should override the popular vote.”

No one has explained this, but here’s a start. Before the Pandemic hit, Trump was an odds-on favorite to win re-election according to every model one could consult. An uplifting economy, low unemployment: that’s what election models are based on. They can be wrong, as when Gore screwed up his campaign in 2000, but they’re the gold standard of prediction. In any event, that is the feeling that Republicans had as they looked at the world.

And then the Pandemic hit, and in the worst decision of Presidential history, Trump denied its strength, mishandled it, lied about it, refused to follow expert recommendations, and so on; the success of Operation Warp Speed came too late to save him at the polls. And the counter-factual came to pass.

If you accepted that Trump, the great and successful leader, the charismatic Great White Male (and it was easy to make up a list of his successes for a receptive audience) could not be wrong, than two things followed. First, the recommendations of the CDC that governors such as Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan faithfully followed, were part of a deceitful and partisan assault on him.

Thus the fervent anti-mask movement and the general air of resistance was not due to some onset of justified libertarianism in the face of a tyrannical State (as apologists such as Ross Douthat and Christopher Caldwell asserted); it was due to a disbelief that He and his supporters could have been so profoundly wrong. Their profoundly truthful world-view was being dismissed as irrational, unscientific, ignorant.

Second, since within this world-view the Panemic could not be as serious as his antagonists kept insisting, he was still a successful President, and as such bound to win the November Election. The reports that’s he’d lost must therefore be part of a Big Lie. Everything that you and I believe about the Pandemic and the Election is part of that lie: and there’s no way we can turn the dross of our counter-belief into gold. As Rachel Maddow put it so succinctly, we live on separate planets. That being the case, even what seem like obvious empirical truths are disjunct, and cannot be reunited. That is Where We Are.

So: In recent weeks, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho and Texas have all passed legislation that places significant restrictions on what can be taught in public school classrooms, and in some cases, public universities, too.

All Republican-controlled state legislatures. In other words, “Cancel Culture.” The signers of the letter (Noam Chomsky) et al that I wrote about some months ago did not understand–I hope they do now–that the occasional actions of academic officials, classroom teachers and students, editors of journals, are nothing compared to the oppressive power of government officials dedicated to the maintenance of white supremacy and sexual tyranny. That’s what the 1st Amendment is aimed at: “Congress shall make no law…”. That’s where the looming threat lies–not of limiting debate but of banning speech and punishing violators.

“Instead of acknowledging the dangers of the Delta variant, GOP representatives nationwide are continuing to downplay the severity of COVID-19, some even taking it to another level by offering unsolicited advice. In a since-deleted social media post mocking the threat of the Delta variant, Rep. Lauren Boebert said “the easiest way to make the Delta variant go away is to turn off CNN and vote Republican.”

Well, sure. As Amy Davidson Sorkin writes in The New Yorker, in the aftermath of Surfside3, “The nation has received many engineering reports outlining the severe risks we face. And yet, despite a deal on a 1.2 trillion dollar package — which would do more, crucially, to connect the priorities of infrastructure and climate — Republicans are fighting a second installment as if were an onerous condo assessment…”

She concludes, “this is where we are now.” A deeply held commitment to the destruction of knowledge and, if you can’t accomplish that, at least to make sure we, the rest of us, don’t act on it.

In Volume I of Capital Marx remarked that you understand the Law of Gravity when the house falls down around your ears. It’s falling, raining frogs and bridges and blood. Yet nothing can convince the Republican Party that the sky is really falling. As another Marx added, “Who Ya Gonna Believe, Me or Your Own Eyes?” Chico, not Groucho.

From J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, which received fawning reviews from reviewers who refused to understand where he was coming from, “If you look at every issue in this country,” Mr. Vance said, “every issue I believe traces back to this fact: On the one hand, the elites in the ruling class in this country are robbing us blind, and on the other, if you dare complain about it, you are a bad person.”Mr. Vance will benefit from $10 million pledged toward his campaign by the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel.”

Is any comment necessary?

From Paul Krugman (I think): “The Milley hearing was part of the orchestrated furor over “critical race theory,” which has dominated right-wing media for the past few months, getting close to 2,000 mentions on Fox so far this year. One often sees assertions that those attacking critical race theory have no idea what it’s about, but I disagree; they understand that it has something to do with assertions that America has a history of racism and of policies that explicitly or implicitly widened racial disparities.”

“A growing body of research shows that FEMA, the government agency responsible for helping Americans recover from disasters, often helps white disaster victims more than people of color, even when the amount of damage is the same.”

“Just over a year ago, the Justice Department offered a scathing indictment of New Jersey’s only prison for women, describing a culture of sexual violence by guards so entrenched that it violated prisoners’ constitutional protections from cruel and unusual punishment…officers violently removed several women from their cells during a midnight raid. One woman was punched in the face 28 times, the state’s attorney general said. On Monday, in a stunning declaration that the problems were beyond repair, Gov. Philip D. Murphy announced that the prison, Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, would be permanently closed.”

Critical race theory, of course, is just like any other critical theory: designed to make hidden truths explicit. Right now, for example, all over the nation major newspapers are making apologies for their historical behavior on the subject of race. As the Times puts it:

“The apology movement is historically resonant on several counts. It offers a timely validation of the besieged academic discipline known as critical race theory — by showing that what news organizations once presented as “fair” and “objective” journalism was in fact freighted with the racist stereotypes that had been deployed to justify slavery.”

The examples, over more than a century, range from repulsive to horrific.
But at the very same time

Michelle Goldberg writes that “Meanwhile, the right-wing moral panic about critical race theory has led to a rash of statewide bills barring schools — including colleges and universities — from teaching what are often called “divisive concepts,” including the idea that the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist. Even where such laws haven’t been passed, the campaign has had a chilling effect; the Kansas Board of Regents recently asked state universities for a list of courses that include critical race theory.”

And in a later column, she cites a report from the Public Religion Research Institute “that shows a precipitous decline in the share of the population identifying as white evangelical, from 23 percent in 2006 to 14.5 percent last year…and helps explain not just the rise of Donald Trump, but also the growth of QAnon and even the escalating conflagration over critical race theory. As an executive of the PRRI puts it, “It’s hard to overstate the strength of this feeling, among white evangelicals in particular, of America being a white Christian country,.This sense of ownership of America just runs so deep in white evangelical circles….the feeling that it’s slipping away has created an atmosphere of rage, resentment and paranoia…QAnon is essentially a millenarian movement, with Trump taking the place of Jesus. Adherents dream of the coming of what they call the storm, when the enemies of the MAGA movement will be rounded up and executed, and Trump restored to his rightful place of leadership.”

Why does this account of decline and fall not cheer me? I know who’s declining but am not at all certain about who’s falling. But I hope that my name is on that list. Failed to make Nixon’s; no excuse for missing out on this one.

And in a similar vein, Paul Krugman, writing of the Trumpian Pandemic fiasco, asks “How did one of our two major political parties come not only to reject democracy, but to exalt ignorance and despise competence of any kind?”

And, I must add, implicitly welcome the mass death and destruction that is on the way from the quickening pace of global warming and environmental degradation. My own theory is that they figure that whatever happens, they’ll be in some safe place–in Mid-America?–where they won’t suffer. That’s the bottom line of the Republican death cult that’s formed at the center of our social order. Better stay away from Mar-a-Lago, though.

A little more rain on the parade: Nicholas Kristov writes, “We Americans repeat the mantra that “we’re №1” even though the latest Social Progress Index, a measure of health, safety and well-being around the world, ranked the United States №28. Even worse, the United States was one of only three countries, out of 163, that went backward in well-being over the last decade…”

Am I surprised? Yes, who were the other two? Things must be pretty awful there. Or maybe there’s no there there. There’s not much here.

Here? An Italian defense contractor teamed up with the U.S. Embassy in Rome to use satellite transmissions to switch millions of Trump votes to Biden votes, thus stealing the election. That’s what they’re saying. In the premature dementia ward known as the Republican Party.

Yes, and “Ashli Babbitt Has Become A Martyr For The Far-Right.” It’s true what the video shows: the window into the House floor, where trapped members were crouching in terror, had been smashed open, the outnumbered cops has fallen back and a SWAT team was hurrying up–but that window was wide open–and the first person climbing through it was…Ashli Babbitt. And a cop fired–to preserve the integrity of the floor of the House of Representatives.

So now ask me. Ask me, dammit. Do I feel weird, do I feel a sense of upside-down, inside-out, as I rise to defend Death by Cop? And demand that the FBI–the FBI, titled “the feebs” in every liberal-oriented thriller I read–get off its collective ass and push even harder against the insurrections who tried to overthrow the Government and assassinate its leaders (though not of course The Great Rioter.)

Don’t ask.

And finally, you’re going to believe I made this one up. Just in:

The bill “gives private citizens, including rapists and abusive partners, the power to enforce the ban by suing their victim’s doctor. In fact, under HB 1515, anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion could face legal consequences, including a friend or family member who gives a woman a ride to a clinic…in other words again, in Texas from now on, rapists will have more rights than pregnant women. Not only that, People across the country may soon be able to sue abortion clinics, doctors and anyone helping a woman get an abortion in Texas, under a new state law that contains a legal innovation with broad implications for the American court system but those “private citizens” include residents of other states. But that’s what it’s all about. Patriarchy as tyranny.

But oh that Timesspeak. If by “broad implications for” you mean to overthrow the basis of the American federal system of government, as stated in Article IV, Section 1, “Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to Public Acts, Record, and judicial proceedings of every other state.” Then yes they are “broad.”
And Section 2 of the same: “ The Citizens of each state to all Privileges and Immunities of citizens in the several states.’
And finally Amemdment 14, Section 1–too long for me to reproduce here, but read it: it’s crystal clear. Though not so in Texas.

Or anywhere else.

“Lawmakers in 34 states have introduced 81 anti-protest bills. An Indiana bill would bar people convicted of unlawful assembly from state employment. A Minnesota proposal would prohibit people convicted of unlawful protesting from getting student loans, unemployment benefits or housing assistance. Florida passed a law protecting drivers from civil liability if they crash their cars into people protesting in the streets.”

Cancelling people is so much more rewarding than cancelling culture.

“Across the country, a rising class of Republican challengers has embraced the fiction that the 2020 election was illegitimate, marred by fraud and inconsistencies. Aggressively pushing Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that he was robbed of re-election, these candidates represent the next generation of aspiring G.O.P. leaders, who would bring to Congress the real possibility that the party’s assault on the legitimacy of elections, a bedrock principle of American democracy, could continue through the 2024 contests.”

But let us now praise famous men and women: those Texas Democrats who seized their opportunity and held back the tide: for now. As for us, you and I, we stand on non-existent battlements, helplessly observing the onrushing moral and intellectual depravity.

How many Americans are we talking of here? Two trains running on the same track. It doesn’t matter which is bigger and faster wen they collide. It’s a catastrophe in both.

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/Slouches toward Bethlehem, to be born.”

Where We Are Now: Postscript

I’ve just finished reading Every Day Is a Gift, Senator Tammy Duckworth’s memoir, of course focusing especially on the2004 shootdown (her word) that tore her body apart, the men who saved her life, and the aftermath of treatment in Walter Reed Hospital, and her ultimate recovery. It’s an amazingly powerful account.

As one point she was visited by Senator Dick Durbin (Illinois being her home state). She told him about the lack of dignity and care to which female patients, and veterans in general, were often subjected; he said he’d make it his business to do something about that, and gave her his card, telling her to call him about any further incidents of mistreatment. She writes:

“I didn’t really know Senator Durbin, so I wasn’t sure whether he literally meant for me to call him. But once I had that number, there was no way I wasn’t gonna use it, because I had some leadership responsibility for these men and women.
The army runs on hierarchy, whether you’re in battle or in a hospital ward. As a thirty-seven-year-old Major, I was for many months the oldest and highest-ranking amputee in the ward, so it was my duty to look after these younger wounded warriors, to help motivate them and address any problems that arose…” –

Wrote a woman–No, excuse me, an officer, a Major–who was in constant almost unbearable pain, subject to skin grafts bone surgery, an amputation, unable to continue on morphine drip because of the threat of addiction…

“My duty.” The Duty of Care: is there anyone in the whole panoply of Fox/Republican/Trumpish malignity who has ever uttered one word of care about anyone else? Let alone actually fulfilling a duty? Must I even mention the name of the high-rated scum who denounces the very idea of women in the military?

Later she continues:

“In mid-2020, when 40,000 National Guard troops were deployed to help with COVID-19 relief work, the Trump administration randomly decided to end their deployment one day before they’d qualify for Federal retirement and education benefits.”

She adds, quietly, that “it was an inhumane decision…a slap in the face for the men and women who were risking their lives to stem the pandemic.” Thank you, Senator. (The first piece of legislation she wrote as a Senator repealed that…thing.)

Dante in Hell could hardly fathom this one. Milton’s Satan would be baffled.

One more incident: At one point when she was getting celebrity visits for photo ops, a Colonel came in and told her that Secretary Rumsfeld would like to visit her. She answered, “He’s in m y chain of command, so I have to know, is that a direct order?”

No, the Colonel answered.

Then, she said, tell the Secretary that he is not permitted beyond threshold of my room.