The Witnessing
For some years now, unbeknownst to some of us, we have been witness to a 100 year (and more) flood of historical events. For some months now, we’ve been watching a slow-motion implosion of one of these events from these front row seats. Slow, in our time — a flash, in history’s eons.
Watching with more than a little fear of the collateral damage that will be done. Will they, the ones who carefully designed and built this sucking-event (bomb), endeavor to take the nation out with them? At the end, will it indeed be their way or nothing?
And, after it is over, how will the engineers rationalise their roles? Will they insist that they were only following specs? Will they know that we know whose specs they followed and of their craveness in doing so. Craven is not an acceptable excuse or defense.
Will the dead and living wealthy Kochs and Coors, the long-dead Bradleys, the Mercers and Thiels, …; the smarmy white christian nationalist preachers and politicians, Alito and Thomas Supreme Court, and sons and daughters of the confederacy who collaboratively dictated the specs, demanded my way or the highway, themselves be held to account for the murder of democracy?
Will the people demand sentence, consequence, for those flood engineers still alive? For all those who willfully took a hand in the construction? At the end, will some of these very people stomp and pee on the corpses of those who led them? And, what of the dumb as dirt ignorant as a pig enablers, will the MAGAts be allowed to plead innocent by reason of stupidity?
All things, good and bad, coming to an end; in the end, will the MAGA cult just fade away having learned nothing? In truth, theirs was a small role.
Will there be a formal inquiry, inquest? Or, will it be left for history to sort?
There simply must be at the least a debriefing. How did it all go so awry? What were the flaws in our democracy that made its hijacking possible?
Some were baked in from the get-go by special interest. It was always ‘my way or the highway’ for slavers. They lost a war but never really changed — other going from slavery to feudalism; kept on building and throwing bombs, cosplaying, big-lying.
The thing about wealth and power was also there from the start. Big as ever, will almost certainly require a new declaration and constitution to rectify.
So, the separation of church and state. A matter of severe regression. We currently have a majority on the Supreme Court who do not believe in the separation of church and state, the First Amendment. The regression was written into those specs.
These: the influence of racism, wealth, and religion on politics are at the core of our problems, are things that must be dealt with for democracy to revive.
The now imploding sucking-bomb itself was specced, designed and built over the past mere sixty years. Understanding the roles the civil rights movement, the republican party’s southern strategy, the Powell Memo and spawn, the right wing media, the traditional media, and politics played in all this is essential to understanding how it came into being.
All made possible in no small part by some really screwed up thinking. To wit, telling people what they want to hear is not democracy — more tin-horn republic. An invite of cultural issues to governance. The voters have issues they want addressed, it is unlikely they have the answers. Presently, we have politicians following rather than leading. And, running on cultural issues.
Better that candidates tell voters what they think about the issues and propose solutions, then the voters choose between candidates (choose leaders) on this basis. ‘Tis an error to teach, to think, that in a democracy the people decide what to do. In a democracy, they decide who to send to make the decisions on what to do.
Telling the people what they want to hear and what they want to hear is what Fox News does, is a business model. In a ratings way, it’s what they all do. It is a waste of everyone’s time. The term Fair and Balanced in re news would have made Orwell proud. There is no earthly need for the news to be either. The journalists are charged with getting the facts, the truth — let the chips fall where they may. No both sides.
In regard the truth and the facts, too many Americans get cultural beliefs and governance confused. Unless the cultural beliefs offend governance, they are the provenance of individuals. It is never right to impose them on others nor to deny others their right of choice. Culture, which includes religion, has no place in government.
The influence of wealth has no place in a democracy, in government. Yet, it was the very thing that brought us to this perilous time. An issue big enough to require a declaration of separation of its own.
https://kenmelvin.substack.com/p/the-people-vs-wealth
https://kenmelvin.substack.com/p/dearly-beloved
https://kenmelvin.substack.com/p/on-distribution
There’s a partial answer here:
Why the Extremists Took Over on the Right
That is, indeed, a partial answer but seriously incomplete. It concentrates on those on the right who are politically engaged, albeit coming out of nativist and authoritarian roots. At least as significant, if not more so, are the low information and easily conned voters whose simplistic attitudes defy correction. I think of the Hispanics who now say they thought Trump was only going after criminals in his deportation invasion of their ranks or the people believing he could through sheer will power reduce the cost of living. I will never forget the interview of the mayor of a small western Pennsylvania city before the 2016 election who said his constituents usually voted Democratic but were switching to Trump because they had lost a clothing manufacturing company and knew Trump sold neck ties and were hopeful he would establish a necktie manufacturing facility in their city. How to reach and “educate” such people is a conundrum; particularly if they only watch Fox news and ESPN. As the article points out, what does one do with people who believe a guy who bankrupts casinos is a great businessman? And why in the world would young Black males think Trump would benefit them in any way? Why would rural people ignore his administration’s attacks on their medical care? Are these questions and observations elitist? Perhaps, but they also go to the heart of the matter. “Reaching”such voters is a formidable challenge.