So now I’m reading David Pakman’s book from last year (this one) after several months of seeing his clips on Facebook of commentary about daily politics. The first chapter aligns neatly with Heather Cox Richardson’s history of 20th century American politics, though Pakman begins his account in the early 1950s, the era MAGA apparently thinks was the golden age, and shows how conservative resistance to civil rights (especially) triggered the trend through Ronald Reagan and Gingrich to Trump. Will report more when I finish the book.
It reminds me that my attention to daily politics in this blog is about the same thing, but in a grander sense: the sense of how warring factions of human nature are seesawing us back and forth for dominance throughout history. Currently the tribalists (Trump and MAGA) are reigning in America. Given the potential existential threats humanity faces, if the tribalists prevail, humanity is doomed.
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Salon, Brian Karem, today: Trump wants to bribe voters. This is how far we’ve fallen in 25 years, subtitled “Our president’s attempts to play emperor now seem normal. It might be the worst result of the 9/11 era”
Donald Trump offered every adult American a bribe Wednesday night. If the Republicans keep the House and Senate during the midterm elections, Trump said, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.” He proudly shouted this from the Dallas podium during the sparsely attended Republican midterm convention.
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I do have a tie to 9/11 here. (I’ve probably recounted where I was when it happened, before, and I have no new comments I might not already have mentioned.)
NY Times, Radley Balko, yesterday: Civil Libertarians Knew This Would Happen. We Should Have Listened.
The title in print this morning was “After 9/11, America Created the Conditions for a Tyrant”
I think many Americans would now admit that many of the security provisions put into place after 9/11 were over-reactions, especially since they were never repealed. (Only a little bit: I don’t have to take my shoes off at the airport every time. But that rule was in reaction to a non-9/11 event.)
Six weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress passed the Patriot Act. The vote was 357 to 66 in the House and 98 to 1 in the Senate. Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, the chamber’s lone dissenter, said later that many of his colleagues hadn’t bothered to read it.
The law granted sweeping powers to the federal government. It gave agents new authority to use secret search warrants on Americans and made it easier to monitor them around the clock. It authorized the widespread collection of citizens’ digital information without any warrant at all, and made it a crime for service providers to tell anyone what the federal government was doing. It also allowed the government to detain some foreigners indefinitely without ever giving them a trial.
The point here is that all those provisions are now being used by Trump to be tyrannical. Also, the vote for that “Patriot Act” was rote, with many congress-critters not bothering to read it. It was, in my view, an over-reaction by conservatives, who tend to be more frightened and paranoid about the world than other people.
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Case in point.
NY Times, yesterday: Down in the Polls, Republicans Embrace a Familiar Tool: Fear, subtitled “At an unusual midterm gathering, President Trump and his allies painted Democrats as dangerously un-American.”
The photos plastered in the hallways were all of President Trump. Jackets were bedazzled with his name. And the red hats dotting the audience on the floor of the convention hall were embroidered with MAGA, his indelible political slogan.
And yet, at a gathering that fans and foes alike had nicknamed the “Trump-a-palooza,” the president and his Republican allies spent more time whipping up fears about the specter of socialism, communism and even anarchy than they did trumpeting the successes of his administration.
One point is that they’re simply *lying* about what Democrats want or would do. They repeat the same scare-words over and over, words their audience has only the vaguest idea about, except that they’re Bad Things.
Democrats running for Congress were “evil.” They were “communists and anarchists.” And they wanted to turn the country into “a socialist hellscape.”
I call it the Bolshevik Revolution in the Democratic Party,” said Representative Steve Scalise, the House majority leader. “Let’s make sure that when we wake up the morning after Election Day we know we did everything we could to defeat socialism.”
President Trump has long been a master of the politics of fear, regularly stoking anxiety about immigration and crime.
A second point is that from my perspective it is the Republicans who are increasingly anti-American, with policies and projects that subvert the ideals of the Declaration and the Constitution. Do they not hear themselves?
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Do they not hear what Trump says to them?
The New Republic, today: Trump Makes Crowd Swear Pledge to “Cheat Like Hell” This Election, subtitled “Donald Trump led the audience at the Republican midterm convention in a chilling oath.”
Actually, he said
I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m gonna try and cheat like hell like they do, there’s never been bigger cheaters, they don’t care.
Because apparently accusing the other side of cheating (without evidence) justifies your naked intention to cheat.
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