“How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” – Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
And that’s where Republicans are taking us. Today’s Republican Party is cobbled together as an alignment between many disparate interest groups, from Evangelical Christians to Neo Nazis. It has strayed from the path of moral universalism, and has blackened the soul of individual liberty. Its governing agenda is hard to spot with the naked eye. Is the GOP the party of business, as it once was? Is it the party that speaks for low taxation, as it once claimed to be? Is it a party of people who see themselves as conservatives – as prudent and provident – as it once described itself?
The reality is that all of these ideals have been extirpated from today’s Republican Party due to the necessity of cobbling together a sufficient majority to win the presidency and the down-ballot elections that secure their majority in Congress. Today, the GOP stands for everything and for nothing at the same time. It is best understood as a gang, united by one and only one ambition: to win elections.
It is not a party that defends traditional Judeo-Christian ethics – not with their support of children in cages at the border. It is not the party that fights government intrusion into the lives of its citizens – not when it seeks to force 50% of our population to surrender their wombs to the demands of any Tom, Dick, and Harry. Even pigeons get to choose when and with whom they will produce their offspring. It is no longer a party that will fight to lower taxation – not with their “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” of 2017 that is forecast to raise the federal deficit by perhaps as much as $2 trillion over the coming decade. The Republican Party is neither conservative nor prudent, and it isn’t even remotely respectable. It will bankrupt America precisely the way Trump’s bankruptcies occurred: first gradually, then suddenly. We had a taste of this in 2007 with the devastation it wrought on American families – a recession second only to the Great Depression of 1929.
The Republican Party has metamorphosed into something quite different since 2000. It is a party of unrelenting corruption, a party that celebrates a growing ideology of sophomoric self-interest, Ayn Rand style. And it is a party of libertarianism, an idea that college students tend to grow out of by the time they’re seniors.
But standing astride this assemblage of special interest groups is a reality that would give Adam Smith a heart attack. The Republican Party is now a party of anarchy – our Libertarian Thunderdome. The authors of this shift in Republican ideology come and go in our public consciousness. But the effects of Steve Bannon’s, “Deconstruction of the Administrative State” remain, as does the effect of Steven Miller’s hate-fueled nativism. The effects of the NRA remain as their “Don’t Tread on Me” ideology continues to mow down innocent people at prayer, and children trying to become educated citizens of the future.
And the malignancy of this movement characterizes our executive branch in ways we’ve never thought possible: from the repulsive Steve Mnuchin and his Dickensian display of freshly-printed currency, to Elaine Chao’s, Department of Transportation – greasing the skids for her family’s company, The Foremost Group – one of the largest shipping companies in China. We have Wilbur Ross, our billionaire Secretary of Commerce, who, until Trump’s inauguration, was Vice-President of the Board of Bank of Cyprus – a leading international money laundering operation. And then there’s Moscow Mitch McConnell – the suspenders that hold the whole thing up.
What we really need is a Democratic Party willing to clean up this miasma, this anarchy, by focusing on the ethical malfeasance that the Republicans have perpetrated. It’s not that there are some good anarchists; not one of these swindlers has virtue of any sort. They are bound together by self-interest gone mad, by capitalism gone rogue. They are Paul Ryan’s, “Makers and Takers”, but they don’t actually make a thing. The Republicans have given us The Joker – Glasgow smile and all.
We need to stop talking about what progressive policies we’ll try to enact if the Democrats win in 2020. If we don’t take our opponents head-on starting now, those progressive policies will be reversed in the 2023 midterms, anyway. It’s time to start hammering away at the Thunderdome the Republicans have created out of our democracy. And please, please, please, no more Healthcare Plans. Last night’s “debate” was nothing but a charade for news outlets to have another week of headlines – shallow graves for gladiators in the age of political narcissism.
Deborah Long is a Principal at Development Management Group, Inc. and founder of several non-profit charitable organizations. If you find her perspectives interesting, provocative, or controversial, follow her at: https://www.facebook.com/debby.long.98499?ref=br_rs
Image: The Joker – Dark Knight uniquedrawing.com
Deborah Long is a Principal at Development Management Group, Inc. and founder of several non-profit, charitable organizations. If you find her perspectives interesting, controversial, or provocative, you can follow her at: https://www.facebook.com/debby.long.98499?ref=br_rs