It’s a question of character. There will be a test afterwards.
I frequently lament the loss of the Republican party. I know I comment on them critically and harshly, but honestly, I do miss having a decent opposition party. I’m not especially thrilled with the Democratic party and their deliberately ‘hapless’ lifestyle, and it was helpful to have someone else around who could point out the dumbest parts of the liberal position and laugh. And make it stick.
That party is long gone. One by one, they’ve discarded every ‘principle’ they professed to hold. Each one was pushed aside with the single goal of winning. Winning wasn’t just the first goal, it pushed aside every other goal. If you win, that trumps any other doubt or concern. (Pun intended.)
I look at Watergate. Despite the principled Republican opposition to Nixon, people elected strong Democratic majorities afterwards. Those Democrats implemented administrative barriers that locked Republicans out of the levers of power. This was disgraceful, and Republicans were correct to when they complained, but it continued for years. Republicans chose to work around the barriers the Democrats had put up using whatever tools they could.
Understand: I disagreed with Republican’s effective goals then as well. Doesn’t matter. This is a democracy, and these were elected representatives and full members of the House and Senate.
But one big approach they chose was the idea of ‘wedge issues’: “A divisive political issue, especially one that is raised by a candidate for public office in hopes of attracting or alienating an opponent’s supporters,” (Wikipedia). The idea is that you can drive a wedge between parts of the electorate to get a few more percentage points’ advantage for a few weeks. And if you fray the sense of community we held, well, nobody really connects it with you personally.
And so you do it again, and again, and again. There’s no political reason not to.
I don’t see any big plot here, nor do I say there was some nefarious end goal. It was just one political hack after another, each using the same technique, looking for a small, short-term bump in their polls. And getting it.
But I do see a distinction. This is predominantly Republican technique. Democrats have some wedge issues, but most are just responses to Republican memes. ‘Pro-Choice’ only happened to define the opposition to the anti-abortion rhetoric (charmingly renamed ‘Pro-Life’ early on). But most of the time, Democrats simply rolled over and played dead. When public servants became Republican “bureaucrats,” Democrats accepted it. When they tarred “liberals” and “feminists” and “government” as a whole, they barely demurred.
As a lifelong public servant, I was torqued about that.
And by the time Republicans tarred teachers — underpaid saints on the earth — because they trended to be liberal, the Democrats barely stirred, only glancing nervously at their Republican masters for a hint of what to do.
Republicans have used their newfound powers very badly. They managed to make us suspicious of each other, distrustful of our public servants, and suspicious of our institutions. They made us equally cynical about every politician regardless of their actions, so their lies didn’t make them stand out. They’ve corrupted the language and the ideas behind it. They’ve worked to corrupt every independent institution. They used their power to rig the system in their favor. They even crowed when they thought they’d ensured a perpetual Republican majority. How would that make sense in a democracy?
And with each new wedge, each corruption and each victory, they pushed ‘winning’ up higher, and their principles down a little further. What do principles matter if you haven’t won, after all? And once you’re in office, do people really care about those other things? They already voted for you.
These days, almost everything Republicans say is breathtakingly self-serving. There’s no reason to point out each individual hypocrisy because it’s too common to bother. They’ve manipulated us to expect lying, and accept those lies as the cost of doing business. Trump supporters know he’s lying, and they don’t care. They’re willing to accept a liar on the chance he’ll make things better.
Why does it work? Here’s a test. Remember the truism that “all politicians lie”? My question is easy: do you remember who told you that? I don’t. That’s the trick to cynicism: it doesn’t leave fingerprints behind. Nobody wants to be a stooge or a chump, so we remember the cynical message but forget the source. No fingerprints.
Despite my ire about President Cheese Doodle, this isn’t a post about Trump. While Trump is the most obvious idiot out there, he didn’t make these techniques up. He took the tools the Republicans had been building for decades and used them broadly and with a blunt indifference to whether they made sense. Republicans shrieked horribly, but only because he was breaking their toys.
Republicans say that lots of things aren’t critical right now. Limited government? Strong defense? Balanced budget and a stable currency? Individual liberty? Local, not centralized decisions? Promoting democracy over totalitarians and communists? Strong international engagement? Open markets and open trade?
When they’re faced with the choice between supporting a winner and any of their big goals, Republicans defer. Trump won; winner take all. If winning wasn’t everything, Republicans wouldn’t act this way.
But after they’ve accepted ‘winning’ as their primary goal, then there are no limits on what they’ll do to keep winning. Voter suppression? Not a problem. Gerrymandering? Doesn’t everyone? (No.) Sow suspicion and baseless demagoguery? Why not?
They’re tearing the rest of us apart to keep themselves on top. If you look, you’ll see that Americans distrust other Americans more every year.
