I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked. – William Butler Yeats, 1916
It seems incomprehensible to me that half of America would vote for the political party that has no platform, is opposed to democracy, rejects separation of church and state, rejects science, and advocates insurrection and mob violence. The Republican Party has absolutely nothing to offer America but political nihilism.
Prof. Donald A. Crosby defines it this way: “Political nihilism is the position holding no political goals whatsoever, except for the complete destruction of all existing political institutions – along with the principles, values, and social institutions that uphold them”.
It is safe to say that all those associated with the Trump Administration subscribe to this philosophy of political nihilism. But so do the members of the Republican Party: those who fail to denounce this movement; and those who obstruct legislation designed to preserve our American democracy. Steve Bannon put lipstick on this ideology by calling it the “deconstruction of the administrative state”, but a rose is a rose is a rose…
The singular question on the American mind should be: why would the GOP want to murder democracy? Why murder the very idea that permits you to prosper? The question is at once posed and answered. Republicans are the beneficiaries of American democracy, but not its defenders. In spite of their claims of “maker” status in our economy, they are, in fact, the contemptible “takers” of their own mythology. They take the fruits of democracy – of rule of law and of peace itself – and like thieves, they hoard it for themselves. Our laws protect their financial interests and their cherry-picked constitutional amendments. Our laws preserve the financial stability that global economics relies upon and that multinational corporations need. The Federal Government subsidizes their ventures domestically and abroad, and creates a business environment that encourages investment and entrepreneurial risk. Given this, why would the Republican Party seek to return America to a previous era when managed capitalism, environmental protection, and a growing middle class of consumers did not exist? And why has this political party chosen to be democracy’s adversary – a party that would rather fight than win, if the cost is sharing? The answer is obvious: rapacious greed, miserly greed, money-grubbing greed. Prof. John Paul Rollert of the University of Chicago writes:
“Moral revolutions come about in different ways. If we reject some conduct but rarely admit an example, we enjoy the benefit of being high-minded without the burden of moral restraint. We also embolden that behavior, which proceeds with a presumptive blessing. As a matter of public discourse and polite conversation, “Greed” is unlikely to be “Good” anytime soon, but a vice need not become a virtue for the end result to look the same”.
While it is relatively painless to name Donald Trump the goat in this national nightmare of ours, it is facile to do so. Trump is the natural outcome of an American political party that, over many decades of fraud and unchallenged philosophical assumptions, evolved into what is now an agent of political nihilism.
It is a simplification to regard this trend in American politics as a function of the performance art that is Donald Trump and his allies, or more broadly, as a movement within the Republican Party led by uneducated dolts who see their personal relevance in society displaced by foreigners or educated “coastal elites”. While both are true, this movement appears to have reached its apotheosis in the 1980s, following Ronald Reagan’s election, and the emergence of The Federalist Society. We know it today as the organization to which Donald Trump offloaded his responsibility to name judges and legal specialists on behalf of his administration. And now, like so much of Republican Machiavellianism, we are helpless to oppose a Supreme Court that is ruled by berobed Torquemadas meting out Medieval justice to those who oppose the theocracy they intend to construct.
I have always wondered why the name of the most anti-federalist organization in America – The Federalist Society – named itself after the ideology that it stands in opposition to. Their name always struck me as a Janus word – a word that serves as its own antonym. And naming it thus was intended to deceive. As one of The Federalist Society’s founders, Lee Liberman Otis, revealed in 1982:
“Finally, our group out here settled on Federalist Society as a name, which I suppose makes up in euphony what it lacks in accuracy.”
Treachery and the manipulation of language are now synonymous with the Republican Party. Marjorie Taylor Greene regularly appropriates the First Amendment to cast her clownish Qanon conspiracy theories; and Lauren Boebert champions the Second Amendment and the right it purportedly grants for gunslingers to threaten U.S. citizens with automatic weapons. When Twitter permanently suspended Donald J. Trump in response to his efforts to effectuate his treasonous political coup, his namesake, Don Jr., said this: “We are living Orwell’s 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech, and what’s left is only there for a chosen few”. Dollars to doughnuts Donnie Jr. never read the book to which he refers: and neither did his father, nor his Deadhead cult of followers – or anyone else in his wide swath of stupid.
Republican ideology has always been nothing more than a teleological argument – an end that justifies the means style of thinking – than a solution to anything. Underneath their claim of “fiscal responsibility” was always a racist motive to punish those caught in a cycle of poverty due to many factors, not the least of which was the color of their skin. Underneath their claim of “Christian values” always lurked the moral absolutism of the self-righteous – Savonarola style. And underneath the celebration of deregulation and unrestricted capitalism always lay the greed of the unredeemed Scrooge.
While the apostles of conservatism have traditionally clothed themselves in the robes of an intellectual – a measured thinker who has mastered the art of political philosophy – they were always nothing but 5th century sophists whom Plato characterized as charlatans. Those who engage in “the deliberate use of a false argument with the intent to trick someone with false or untrue reasoning”.
Our country has been slouching toward political nihilism for decades, and, increasingly, we recognize that the leaders of the Republican Party have been the ideological fathers of this shift.
We appear to be at the end of an era. We are deeply distrustful of politicians in general and believe them to be largely incompetent. We have become cynical with respect to the corrupt nature of those who craft policy. We see a disconnect between social and environmental priorities and our ability to influence the outcomes. And we feel overwhelmed by the rapid change that has swept the globe and the implications of climate change, pandemics, gun violence, terrorism, and the reemergence of fascism.
We now exalt cartoonish thuggery over genuine heroism and decency and are transfixed by the power of mass murder delivered by the muzzle of a gun. Christianity is neither kind nor gentle and is cruelly force-fed to us by spokesmen of feudal justice. Our contemporary pursuit of happiness, delivered to us by our liberal democracy, is now a pageant of puerile narcissism. And, every aspect of our American contemporary culture is now a mockery of our founding ideals.
Perhaps the solution to this lies among the states and in using the GOP’s own tactics against them with enormous investment is state offices and in Democratic candidates. Perhaps genuine Christians should stand up and fiercely condemn the usurpation of their values by the Janus words of the religious right. Maybe young, educated Democrats could choose to run for office and vehemently condemn by name political hacks like Matt Gaetz and Ron DeSantis. And most urgently, Democrats must abolish this Republican Party and the political nihilism it espouses – and call them what they are: morally unacceptable and thoroughly evil.
image: Holger Schmidtke
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