Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, December 26, 2019

The Two Most Important Questions Of The Next Decade

The first question is obviously: how we will address climate change. If we don't get a reasonable handle on that, we are screwed no matter what.

The second question is: what is the future of the Republican party. The question of Trumpistan is not whether Trump wants to a dictator.  He does.  The question is whether the GOP is the Party of Trump because of Trump or because that's where they are headed institutionally. Put another way, is Trump the herald of the GOP's descent into authoritarianism or have they simply slipped into authoritarian impulses because of Trump? It certainly seems like a large faction of the GOP has decided that un-democratic practices are OK, because the Democrats are so awful. Steeped in a simmering broth of Fox News bile, the threat that Democrats pose to America - presumably by making health care affordable, the climate livable and inequality less problematic - warrants thwarting democratic practices. 

America has two competing impulses here, historically.  On the one hand, Americans distrust the power of the state, and any GOP effort to make the state powerful will butt up against America's libertarian streak.  On the other, America has long used coercive methods against populations of color, to keep them from democratic autonomy. 

America can't function with a GOP that is basically United Russia, servile before the cult of whomever their Dear Leader is at any given moment.  We have been lucky that Trump is such an incompetent clown. If Tom Cotton was trying to pull roughly the same thing, the news media would be easily manipulated into "both sides" nonsense like "Sure, Cotton wants to put gays in cages, but Democrats want them to use your son's bathroom."

I still think Trump loses in 2020. I wouldn't mind a mild recession to cement that, frankly, but even getting rid of Trump will not resolve the GOP's descent into authoritarianism.  They have be crushed at the polls over several election cycles, and I just don't see that happening.

No comments: