I Know Where We Are But How Did We Get Here?
How did we get to this place?
I ask myself this question all the time. I’ve been asking this question for years.
How did we get to a place where we are literally battling to keep a fascist out of the White House?
How did we get to a place where said candidate can hold a rally at Madison Square Garden full of hateful, racist rhetoric that draws strong comparisons to the infamous MSG Nazi rally in 1939?
Is it because Giant Baby Man spent much of his tenure in the White House normalizing White Supremacy? You know, fine people on both sides?
How did we even get to a place where alt-right provocateur Steven Bannon could actually serve a high-level White House position? How did we get to a place where Bannon could be normalized in any way, shape or form?
Really, how did we get to this place?
We have an election in a few days. We expect there to be violence. In fact, there’s already been violence.
It is inexplicable. I have some ideas but no meaningful explanation as to how anything like this could be considered normal.
We fundamentally are talking about the possible end of our democracy.
Given the excesses of the current Supreme Court, Bush v. Gore seems quaint. Was that the beginning of the death of our democracy? Let us not forget that that election ended up hinging on Florida. Bush wanted the re-counting of ballots stopped with him in the lead. Gore wanted the recount to continue.
SCOTUS stepped in and ended the recount. Sandra Day O’Connor was the swing vote. I firmly believe that she regretted that decision up until her last breath.
It is worth noting that a study done by the Florida Ballot Project that reviewed the recount found that had it been allowed to continue, Gore would’ve defeated Bush.
And this anti-democratic decision by SCOTUS led to an anti-democratic course. You can literally draw a straight line.
As I wrote years ago, George W. Bush, by nature, was a tyrant, and he acted like one. Not to rehash those eight years, but let’s look at one SCOTUS appointment, that of John Roberts.
First, Roberts may go down in history as the worst chief justice in the entire SCOTUS history.
What of Roberts’ legacy?
He oversaw the gutting of most of the protections from the Voting Rights Act. He stood idly by as the Supreme Court’s corruption became painfully obvious with repeated partisan decisions with little to no basis in actual law, culminating with the hideous presidential immunity decision.
But for our purposes, let’s look at Citizens United, which literally allows billionaires to buy elections. In Wisconsin, the Koch Brothers bought us eight years of Scott Walker and a dozen years of one of the worst gerrymandered legislatures in the country.
And such anti-democratic structures become vicious circles, subverting democracy in an effort to maintain and consolidate power. Again, in Wisconsin, we saw numerous voter suppression measures. We saw attacks on labor unions designed to hamper the ability of working people to take advantage of the political power of their unions to influence political change.
And in what must be the grotesque example of the Citizens United Butterfly Effect, we see Elon Musk literally attempting to buy an election for Giant Baby Man.
Frankly, I’d rather not have to see him at all.
But there he is, stumping for Giant Baby Man, literally bankrolling GBM’s entire ground game because GBM and his family have siphoned so much of the RNC money that would normally work its way down to the states.
Musk, who, by the way, did not legally enter the United States when he first came here, has been illegally buying votes, one million dollars at a time, while using Twitter to stifle opposition voices. So much for being a free speech absolutist.
I guess Elmo and GBM are made for each other. And we know that Elmo is expecting a big payback if GBM wins.
And yet, I don’t quite feel like any of this is the answer.
Where did all this hate come from?
To be fair, I do have any extreme dislike for most GBM supporters. That said, I don’t want to see them come to harm. I would simply prefer that they face the reality that they have joined a cult and worship a grifter and would-be fascist who cares only about himself.
The same can’t be said for them. January 6 featured extreme acts of violence committed by 1000s of people, most of whom were not Proud Boys or Oath Keepers.
To be fair, when I was in college, I found it extremely difficult to be friends with conservatives. I worked in student government. I did know them and frankly found them abhorrent, or at least obnoxious. Something seemed wrong with young people fawning over Reagan.
But again, I wished no harm to any of these people. I don’t want to see people imprisoned because of their beliefs. I sure as hell don’t want to see people executed.
Not true for the other side.
And again, where does that hate come from?
There are many causes, many sources, but for my purpose today, I’ll take a quick look at propaganda, specifically rightwing talk radio. It didn’t start with Rush Limbaugh, but he took it far, camouflaging propaganda as entertainment.
In my cab-driving days, there was a local rightwing talker I would listen to, mainly to monitor, to see what they are talking about. And if there was one common motif, it was vilifying liberals and progressives.
We are the enemy. We are the other. We get objectified to the extent where we are stripped of our humanity, so anything they do to us is perfectly okay.
One memory from probably close to 20 years ago still sticks with me. Said local rightwing talker for a short time had a co-host who was a local liberal politician. He was always very respectful of her and the callers. One day, a regular caller gets on the air and starts verbally abusing the co-host, accusing him of looking down on him, which was far, far from reality.
I long thought of this talker as a Fifth Columnist though I wondered what the actual endgame was. When I heard her defend January 6, I had my answer.
It now seems like a far distant memory, but once upon a time, members of opposing parties in the Wisconsin legislature would fight like cats and dogs while in session but then get together for drinks later in the night. Those times are long gone, especially given the extremism bred by gerrymandering. We have fair maps now, so maybe we can get back some of that collegiality.
We need to get away from demagoguery. We need to get away from the notion that we need to destroy the other side. Granted, there is a long history of bare-knuckle politics in the country, but we must get back to a point where we can have respectful disagreements about policy yet still be able to come together for the mutual good.
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