National Security, Vladimir Putin, and the MAGA Republican Party
One of Donald Trump's 'sir' stories, which casts doubt on its veracity, nonetheless clearly expresses his contempt for our NATO allies. If Trump were to decide that an ally wasn't pulling its weight, and that country was attacked by Russia, Trump would encourage Putin's troops:
"I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want."
Trump: One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, Well, sir, if we don't pay and were attacked by Russia, will you protect us? I said.. No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. pic.twitter.com/2RPVDFZIXy
This is Trump, playing the tough guy, while sidling up to Vladimir Putin. The NATO alliance has protected European democracies for 75 years, first as a defense against the U.S.S.R., later against an authoritarian Russia intent on seizing the territory of its sovereign neighbors.
Since Trump has come to dominate the Republican Party, the bipartisan consensus on American leadership in the world has disintegrated. The GOP has fallen in line, while unconvincingly dismissing the significance of the capitulation. Senator Lindsey Graham responded to Trump's remarks on NATO: “Give me a break — I mean, it’s Trump", adding, “All I can say is while Trump was president nobody invaded anybody." While Senator Marco Rubio said, “I have zero concern, because he’s been president before. I know exactly what he has done and will do with the NATO alliance."
The murder of Alexei Navalny
The murder of Putin's critics and rivals is nothing new. In February 2015, Boris Nemtsov -- a politician who advocated increasing political and civil freedom in open opposition to Putin and was organizing against a military incursion into Ukraine -- was assassinated, shot four times from the back as he crossed a bridge in Moscow. Many of Putin's opponents have suffered violent deaths, both in Russia and abroad. Guns, nerve agents, radioactive tea, falls from high buildings, and airplane crashes have silenced them.
In recent years, Alexi Navalny has been Putin's most prominent political opponent. His story is a familiar one. The most recent chapter: Navalny's death in a Siberian gulag. By poisoning in all likelihood. While many prominent political leaders across the globe immediately denounced the death and laid the blame on Russia's dictator, Donald Trump was silent for several days. Then this, a lame comparison of his losses in court (where he is finally being held accountable) with the "sudden death" of the courageous opponent of a ruthless dictator:
While a number of Republican elected officials have condemned Navalny's killing, this hasn't stopped the party from blocking American aid to Ukraine, which -- without further help from the United States -- is literally running out of ammunition to repel the Russians.
In other words, Russian interference in U.S. elections, ongoing by 2016, is continuing. Smirnov's disinformation has fueled the cynical impeachment inquiry, while other sources (including a number of criminals) of Republican talking points have had ties to Russian intelligence. Putin and the GOP often walk in lockstep.
Conservative media universe meets Comedy Central
Why?How have MAGA conservatives come to admire a brutal Russian dictator? Jon Stewart, on a Comedy Central television series, has provided a clear, crisp, solidly truthful answer.
This month Tucker Carlson, fired from Fox News, regained a spot in the limelight with an exclusive interview with Putin -- what Politico called a "2-hour love-in with the Russian president." Carlson also played the oh-so-impressed visitor in Russia. In the pre-Trump, pre-MAGA era this would be baffling. Today, while easy to lampoon, it is hardly inexplicable.
Stewart critiqued Carlson's broadcast, which (as he explained) sought to portray life in Russia as not so much different from life in the U.S. -- and perhaps a bit better (because of Russian subway stations, shopping carts, escalator ramps, wonderfully smelling bread, and cheaper grocery prices). What Carlson failed to acknowledge, Stewart highlighted via a clip from the CBS morning news, showing scenes of Russians, placing flowers at makeshift memorials, being dragged away and arrested as screams are heard: "In Vladimir Putin's Russia, political repression is everywhere. And hundreds have been arrested for daring to honor Navalny so publicly."
Stewart explained why Carlson is so diligently engaged in his duplicitous project: "It's because the old civilizational battle was communism versus capitalism. That's what drove the world since World War II. Russia was the enemy then. But now they think the battle is woke versus unwoke. And in that fight, Putin is an ally to the right. He's their friend."
And that, of course, is why Hungary's Viktor Orbán, known for slowly, methodically snuffing out institutions that have preserved democracy in Hungary, has become a conservative icon. As Hungary has become more authoritarian and less free, MAGA Republicans have rallied around him. Although Trump's expressions of admiration have been confused at times (“He’s probably, like, one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world. He’s the leader of Turkey.”), Republicans have followed his lead. Carlson first among them. CPAC as well.
The contemporary Republican Party has ceased to cherish freedom at home or abroad. The party has become enamored with undemocratic strongmen who impose traditional values (where one ethnic group rules over others, and men over women). It has deliberately chosen to reject democratic governance if it cannot win free and fair elections. While past Republican icons, such as Ronald Reagan, celebrated immigrants, the party now fears them.
The Christian right, dominated by white evangelicals, espouses a contorted view of religious freedom (a concept formed only by severing the establishment clause from the First Amendment) -- for itself, never mind other faiths or philosophies. The Dobbs decision, which stems from a religious view, is the first of many to come. Texas has led the way in suppressing a woman's right to make medical decisions regarding pregnancy, even when her life is at stake. The Alabama Supreme Court decision regarding "extrauterine children," a decision that said frozen embryos have the same rights as living children (while as a result women have fewer), is the latest assault. The concurring opinion of Alabama's chief justice is revealing.
“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote in a concurring opinion that invoked the Book of Genesis and the prophet Jeremiah and quoted at length from the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians. “Even before birth,” he added, “all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”
The GOP circa 2024, sad to say, has quite an agenda. Come November, I don't believe a majority of Americans will endorse it.
With ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the founders launched our American democracy. It did not satisfy the ideal of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," but it set the course for our country. For about a decade, following the Civil War and passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the Reconstruction era brought us nearer to a multiracial democracy (at least for men; women gained the right to vote with passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920). Reconstruction was short-lived, coming to an end by 1877, replaced in fits and starts by nearly a century of Jim Crow in the Southern states (and restricted rights for black residents of the North as well).
With passage of the Civil Rights Act (in 1964) and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the United States approached nearer the ideal of a multiracial democracy. These were bipartisan achievements. The Republican Party, founded in the mid-19th century to oppose slavery (and a Democratic Party committed to white supremacy), endorsed this expansion of democracy.
In fact, as noted in Chapter 4 of Levitsky and Ziblatt's Tyranny of the Minority, which describes how and why the contemporary Republican Party abandoned democracy, a higher percentage of Congressional Republicans, than Congressional Democrats, supported the 1964 and 1965 acts. This stance was consistent with the principles of the party of Lincoln (though it was discordant with Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign).
But with passage of these groundbreaking laws, the two political parties began to shift their allegiances (as Lyndon Johnson foresaw). Over the next several decades, the Solid South shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans, who began actively courting white Southerners with their traditional views of race and culture -- views which came to envelop the national GOP.
The story Levitsky and Ziblatt tell is a familiar one; nonetheless, it is shocking. While I am familiar with the story writ large, and much of the detail they present, the matter of fact presentation hit me with a start about two-thirds of the way through the chapter.
Consider a single paragraph, in the midst of the account of Trump's denying his November 2020 defeat:
But it wasn’t just Trump who refused to accept defeat; it was the bulk of the Republican Party. For weeks after the election, most GOP politicians refused to publicly recognize Biden’s victory. As of December 16, 2021 [sic], only twenty-five Republican members of Congress had done so. The Republican Accountability Project evaluated the public statements of all 261 Republican members of Congress, asking whether they expressed doubt about the legitimacy of the election. A striking 224 of 261 (or 86 percent) of them had. And on January 6, nearly two-thirds of House Republicans voted against certification of the results. [The correct date: December 16, 2020, weeks after the November 3 election.]
There is nothing new in this paragraph. I follow American politics closely. I watched this drama play out in real time. Republicans have moved step by step toward accommodation of Trump, of his hateful rhetoric, and even of his lies. This has been obvious for all to see.
But for someone who grew up in this country, who became interested in politics as a teenager when the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts were passed into law, and even someone who has watched with consternation and disdain the transformation of the Republican Party over the past six decades, it is astonishing to recognize where the GOP has landed. Not just nutty backbenchers or Fox News trolls, but "the bulk of the party." Nearly every leader who remains in the party is on board. Most of those who have resisted the party's authoritarian direction have been drummed out of it.
For several years I have often said of Republican leaders (below the ultimate leader, Donald Trump), "There is never a bridge too far." No matter how outrageous Trump's conduct, how reprehensible, transgressive, undemocratic, even antithetical to American interests -- No matter: Whatever they say (or, often, decline to say) initially, finally, when Trump doesn't back down and the conservative media universe backs him up, dissent absolutely evaporates.
The headline in Ramesh Ponnuru's Washington Post column declares the 'big lie' the winner of the 2024 GOP primary. Ponnuru doesn't use that term, but his meaning is clear. He condemns Republican leaders for not squelching that falsehood before a majority of Republican primary voters came to believe it. "The elected Republicans who didn’t want Trump to be the nominee have allowed his narrative about 2020 to go unchallenged for the past three years. Or they have abetted it, letting sane complaints about voting procedures and media coverage cover for Trump’s fantasies about Venezuelan interference with voting machines and the like."
They know it's a lie. They know Trump is a liar. (They often wish he weren't their party's leader.) But -- publicly, when push comes to shove -- there is never a bridge too far. So we find ourselves with a political party that has turned election denialism into a campaign plank.
More shockingly, they are willing to go along with the next step: resorting to violence when they lose. They reveal this in another big lie: that the violent clash at the nation's Capitol on January 6, 2021 was not what we all witnessed. It was, instead, a peaceful protest, no more eventful than a "normal tourist visit." That lie is a subterfuge, an excuse for violence when the party loses a democratic election.
For most of our evolutionary history, humans lived in tribes. This was critical for our survival. Breaking away from the tribe, or getting cast out, would render a life that was (to wrench Hobbes out of context) "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." We are tribal in nature.
For millennia, a tribal environment increased the odds of overcoming environmental challenges, including competition with other tribes. In such a setting, loyalty -- commitment to the tribe -- strengthened the cohesion of the group, making success more likely. Through social cooperation (made possible within the security of their community) humans increase their prospects for survival and for enjoying an environment in which they can flourish.
Humans have evolved as a tribal species. Tribal loyalty has been selected for. It has been bred into us, providing many advantages. But of course there are downsides as well. Close knit groups feature sharp divisions between those inside and those outside. This dichotomy almost inevitably generates, in some measure, suspicion, hostility, fear, or hatred toward the outsiders. These attitudes may have no reasonable basis. Tribalism has colored the insiders' cognitive judgments: "Although tribal loyalties inspire many noble behaviors, they can impel humans to sacrifice sound reasoning and judgmental accuracy for group belonging and commitment …. In other words, tribal loyalties can lead to tribal biases."
These emotional eruptions render cooperation with others (outsiders) impossible. And, when political tribes face off, that's a problem for democracy.
Tribalism is often referenced in discussion of political polarization (Red vs. Blue America), as it does in today's Washington Post. Without further ado, here is the quote of the day:
A recurring theme of this blog is that Republicans have gone off the rails; innumerable posts illustrate this theme. What follows is an overly long account of the January 6 violence, the responses of Republican elites (finally, rejecting truth for lies); placing violence at the center of Trump's conspiracy to overturn the November 2020 election; and suggesting reasons why Republican voters -- apart from the leadership -- accept the lies about January 6, 2021 and November 3, 2020. All this prompted by my consternation that folks on opposite sides of a political divide can't even agree on what's in plain sight.
Violent attack on the Capitol
Sarah Wire, who was in the House chamber on January 6, 2021 to cover Congress's formal acceptance of the Electoral College results, texted about the violent chaos at the Capitol. As rioters fought with police and stormed the building, folks inside (the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, rank and file representatives, senators, staff members and others) sought safety. On the third anniversary of the riot, she provided a more expansive account.
What happened on January 6, 2021 at the Capitol was clear enough at the time. The nation watched the brutal spectacle on TV. What we witnessed was mob violence on a scale few of us have ever experienced. We watched hand-to-hand combat as members of the mob crashed through barricades, scaled walls, and broke through doors and windows; attacked men and women in law enforcement with makeshift weapons ranging from clubs, flag poles fashioned into spears, and bear spray; resulting in injuries to 140 police officers. Five officers died in the aftermath and one protester there in answer to Trump's call lost her life that day. More than 1250 people have been criminally charged at this point, for the savage assaults on the police and the obstruction of certification of the election (among other offenses), resulting in nearly 900 convictions. Leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy.
There was no doubt, no ambiguity during the attack or in the immediate aftermath. We watched it as it played out. We have seen the graphic videotape footage, which is extensive and indisputable. The January 6 Committee hearings and final report were compelling, but far more supportive evidence has come forth since then. Both the Justice Department and the media have continued to add to our knowledge of the clashes that occurred on that day (and the months-long planning that brought them about).
Outrage from both sides of the aisle
In early January 2021, Congressional Republicans as well as Democrats were enraged by the rampage, which put their lives in danger. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader of the House had pleaded with the Republican president during the riot to call off the violent mob, to which the commander in chief responded, "Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are." (This fit the presidential pattern that day. When told that his vice president was in danger -- as the crowd took up the chant, "Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!" -- Trump responded, "So what?")
Madam Speaker, let me be clear: Last week's violent attack on the Capitol was undemocratic, un-American, and criminal. Violence is never a legitimate form of protest. Freedom of speech and assembly under the Constitution is rooted in nonviolence. Yet the violent mob that descended upon this body was neither peaceful nor democratic. It acted to disrupt Congress' constitutional responsibility. It was also an attack on the people who work in this institution: Members, staff, and the hundreds who work behind the scenes so that we can serve the American people.
He added, after praising the bravery of the Capitol police, "The President bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump: accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest, and ensure President-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
Trump celebration of the assault
Briefly, a cleavage appeared between Republican leaders (who saw what we all saw) and the outgoing president, who continued to deny what was plain to see. On January 6, 2020, Donald Trump told the participants in the riot, "We love you. You're very special." Trump's campaign kick-off in Waco, Texas, featuring the "J6 Choir" (rioters jailed in D.C.) singing the national anthem, celebrated the violence at the Capitol. More recently, the former president, who is expected to garner the party's 2024 nomination, has referred to supporters convicted for the events of that day as "hostages."
Republicans circle back to embrace Trump's lie
Within a short time, Republicans jettisoned the truth, bending to the will of their leader. GOP officials in Washington and throughout the country abandoned a commitment to democratic rule and bowed to Trump's lies. The representative from Bakersfield, whose overweening ambition trumped fidelity to facts and the rule of law, was among the most prominent to submit. Other Republicans -- save for a handful, most of whom have been summarily drummed from the party -- have followed suit. Two weekends ago, Elise Stefanik, the fourth-ranking House Republican, referenced "the January 6 hostages" and declined to agree to certify the 2024 election no matter who wins.
The Grand Old Party -- that is, the leadership, the party elite -- is foursquare in step with Donald Trump, who blusters that the 2020 election was stolen and that the January 6 riot was a peaceful assembly.
January 6: part and parcel of elaborate conspiracy to overturn the election
Today we know much more about the January 6 assault, which aimed to disrupt the peaceful transition of power after Joe Biden's victory over Trump. The former president, who had a history of election denial going back to 2016 (including rejecting the results of the Iowa caucuses and of the popular vote in the general election), had anticipated a loss in November 2020. His plans to overturn the election (through persuading or intimidating election officials in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania; creating fake electors in seven states; filing a lawsuit, Texas v. Pennsylvania et al, rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court; pushing his Attorney General Bill Barr and the Justice Department; and finally taking extraordinary efforts, including pressuring Vice President Mike Pence, to stop Congress from certifying his election loss on January 6) were months in the making.
The violent clash on January 6 was not a peaceful gathering that somehow got out of hand. The violence was planned as a belated effort to overturn Trump's loss. There were many co-conspirators. Among the folks who foresaw what was to come prior to January 6:
In March 2021, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker interviewed the former president for their book, I Alone Can Fix It. Trump insisted on mischaracterizing the mob violence, but made it clear he approved of the folks who acted out:
“Personally, what I wanted is what they wanted,” Trump said of the rioters. “They showed up just to show support because I happen to believe the election was rigged at a level like nothing has ever been rigged before. There’s tremendous proof. There’s tremendous proof. Statistically, it wasn’t even possible that [Biden] won."
Of course there was (and is) no proof, nor even any evidence, of a rigged election. That's Trump's big lie. That's what brought the crowd to the Capitol. And on the shoulders of the big lie, after the convulsion into violence, Trump has constructed the false narrative that the mob consisted of "a loving crowd," a peaceful gathering of his supporters (who, after convictions in federal courtrooms, are now "hostages").
"Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"
While the McCarthys and Stafaniks (among many, many others) appear to have abandoned the truth out of personal ambition -- a practical, if not principled, choice since the alternative is likely to result is losing ones job and being drummed out of the party -- the same isn't true of grassroots Republicans. Yet a significant chunk of the base has accepted Trump's lies and followed the leaders of the party.
Contrast, however, the responses of Republicans to this question: "Do you think the legal punishments for people who broke into the U.S. Capitol have been too harsh, not harsh enough, or have they been fair?" Although 42% of Republicans said too harsh, 17% said not harsh enough and 37% said have been fair. While Republicans' viewed the participants more favorably than other Americans, Republicans did not go all-in regarding the criminal prosecutions.
When asked (in another survey by the same outfit) whether Biden's election as president was legitimate, only 39% of Republicans (and 26% of Trump voters) responded affirmatively. Furthermore, 62% of Republicans (and 64% of Trump voters) asserted (erroneously) that there was "solid evidence" of election fraud.
Misinformation carries the day among much of the base
The events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and the nature and outcome of the November 3, 2020 presidential election are well-established by ample, unrefuted evidence. Apart from lies, hokum, conspiracy theories, trolling, wishful thinking, and the like, there are no grounds for rejecting that Biden was the legitimate victor in an election untainted by fraud and that a mob staged a riot at the Capitol in an effort to block certification of the election. Yet there is a stark contrast between the views of Trump's most fervent supporters regarding these events and the views of Americans not in Trump's camp.
A significant segment of Republican voters denies the truth of these events. This may be confounding to those of us in "the reality-based community" (as designated by the George W. Bush White House), but perhaps it should not be.
Following the leaders
First of all, the true believers in Trump's alternate reality are following their leaders. Congressional Republicans have been among the worst of the bad examples, though Republican officials (elected and appointed) throughout the nation have not fared much better.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have observed that political parties and their leadership play a critical role in safeguarding democratic institutions.
Potential demagogues exist in all democracies, and occasionally, one or more of them strike a public chord. But in some democracies, political leaders heed the warning signs and take steps to ensure that authoritarians remain on the fringes, far from the centers of power. When faced with the rise of extremists or demagogues, they make a concerted effort to isolate and defeat them. Although mass responses to extremist appeals matter, what matters more is whether political elites, and especially parties, serve as filters. Put simply, political parties are democracy’s gatekeepers. -- Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die
There have been few Republican leaders willing to stand up for truth, for democratic institutions, and for the rule of law in the face of Trump's MAGA lies -- making it easier for voters to accept the lies without question (though many grassroots Republicans have not been led astray). What's clear: as gatekeepers, Republican elites have been utter failures.
Praetorian Guard of conservative media
Fox News Channel's starring cast is every bit as influential as Republicans who stand for election (Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Mark Levin, and other luminaries count as Republican leaders), a fact illustrated by Ron DeSantis's remarks on the "Praetorian Guard of the conservative media — Fox News, the web sites, all the stuff." The failure of the DeSantis campaign undoubtedly has many authors, but it's hardly far-fetched to suggest that the influence of FNC (and conservative media overall) has the potential to overwhelm tens of millions of campaign dollars, personal visits to all 99 Iowa counties, and smug trolling of the libs.
Anyone -- whether Democrat, Republican, or even the Trumpiest MAGA Republican -- aware of the $787 settlement Fox paid to Dominion, and the revelations about the willingness of the FNC millionaires (on air and off air) to lie to retain viewers, has more than sufficient reason to question the reliability of the channel as a source of information. But perhaps the Fox News audience, taught for generations to distrust the mainstream media, wasn't paying attention to the devastating portrait of Fox painted by the unseemly saga. Regardless, they are standing with Republican leaders (prominent figures in the party in virtue of their elected positions or advocacy).
Doing the research
Among MAGA voters who take matters into their own hands -- putting in the work, double checking the conspiracy theories they have found online -- they are even less likely to figure out that they are deep into a rabbit hole than folks who don't take the initiative. Their 'research' reinforces their belief in the misinformation they plugged into a Google search. Sad but true. This is the conclusion of a scholarly review of online research and misinformation. The report at the Nieman Lab offers details and a link to the paper in Nature.
Doing the research, it turns out, reinforces the lies, at least among folks who believe the lies.
What she found was that their belief was less "a fully formed thought" (which might be refuted with facts or evidence), than "an attitude or a tribal pose" that they bought into as a matter of course. (It's tough to refute an attitude or tribal pose. So trying to reason with these true believers is highly challenging.)
They simply couldn't accept the election results, and were angry and mystified that others rejected their view, offering comments such as:
“I can’t really put my finger on it, but something just doesn’t feel right.”
“Something about it just didn’t seem right.”
“It didn’t smell right.”
Longwell noted that "the Big Lie has been part of their background noise for years." (Jonathan Chait has observed, "Many conservatives have believed for decades, without requiring any evidence for their conviction, that Democrats in cities, especially cities with large non-white populations, engage in massive, undetected voter fraud routinely.")
"Attempts to set the record straight tend to backfire," Longwell explained. Tell a Trump supporter that Biden won the election and they take that pushback as evidence that the election was stolen. She concludes:
These voters aren’t bad or unintelligent people. The problem is that the Big Lie is embedded in their daily life. They hear from Trump-aligned politicians, their like-minded peers, and MAGA-friendly media outlets—and from these sources they hear the same false claims repeated ad infinitum.
Four Corners of Deceit
More than a decade ago, Rush Limbaugh warned his listeners about the four corners of deceit. They were government, academia, science, and the media. Each of them represented sources of information that conservatives should not trust. They represented liberal ideology, which should be rejected out of hand.
Newt Gingrich was onboard with this campaign. And Republicans have embraced it. Fox News Channel carved out an arena apart from the mainstream media that Limbaugh, Gingrich, et al. loathed. Conservatives have been taught: Don't believe what you read or hear from any sources likely to stray from the party line. Government, academia, science, and the media: across the board, these sources are untrustworthy.
The classic critique (overdue by 2012, when it was presented) by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, which described the Republican Party as an insurgent outlier, included the observation that the GOP was "unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science."
Today, much of the Trump MAGA base rejects sources of information that challenge their partisan convictions. They have placed themselves inside a conservative media silo. There is ample evidence to justify challenging Trump's big lies (about the 2020 election and events of January 6). But if the MAGA response to this evidence begins and ends with rejection of the source (because it is on Limbaugh's list), then finding the way to the truth is blocked. (This is likely a factor in the failure of doing the research as a path to finding the truth.)
The contemporary Republican Party
The willingness to reject truth, principle, and commitment to democratic institutions is endemic among the leadership of the contemporary Republican Party. Rather than defending democracy and the rule of law, the party has taken an authoritarian turn. MAGA Republicans do not accept the outcome of elections that Republicans lose. They justify violence to overturn elections by pretending that there was no violence. Hence the big lies about November 3, 2020 and January 6, 2021.
For much the base: Following the leader (and leaders) and expressing agreement with ones tribe is the way to go.
The melding of the evangelical Christian community (that is to say, white evangelicals) with the contemporary Republican Party (led by Donald Trump, a man whose narcissistic fixations and malicious rancor are antithetical to veneration of the Gospel) is unequivocal. Few observers have grappled with this discordant amalgam as resolutely as folks inside the church who are repulsed by Trump.
Following the death of his father, Alberta returned home to deliver the eulogy at the funeral:
Now the crowd swarmed around us, filling the sanctuary and spilling out into the lobby and adjacent hallways, where tables displayed flowers and golf clubs and photos of Dad. I was numb. My brothers too. None of us had slept much that week. So the first time someone made a glancing reference to Rush Limbaugh, it did not compute. But then another person brought him up. And then another. That’s when I connected the dots. Apparently, the king of conservative talk radio had been name-checking me on his program recently—“a guy named Tim Alberta”—and describing the unflattering revelations in my book about Trump. Nothing in that moment could have mattered to me less. I smiled, shrugged, and thanked people for coming to the visitation. They kept on coming. More than I could count. People from the church—people I’d known my entire life—were greeting me, not primarily with condolences or encouragement or mourning, but with commentary about Limbaugh and Trump. Some of it was playful, guys remarking about how I was the same mischief-maker they’d known since kindergarten. But some of it wasn’t playful. Some of it was angry; some of it was cold and confrontational. One man questioned whether I was truly a Christian. Another asked if I was still on “the right side.” All while Dad was in a box a hundred feet away. It got to the point where I had to take a walk. Here, in our house of worship, people were taunting me about politics as I tried to mourn my father. I was in the company of certain friends that day who would not claim to know Jesus, yet they shrouded me in peace and comfort. Some of these card-carrying evangelical Christians? Not so much. They didn’t see a hurting son; they saw a vulnerable adversary.
Step back for a moment: there is something very wrong with this picture. This is not the evangelical Christianity (or Christianity plain and simple) that Alberta grew up with and continues to accept. The "Church has been radicalized," Alberta writes.
Never mind evidence. Grievance, fear of an increasingly diverse America, misinformation and conspiracy theories are enough to fuel the unholy politics aimed at eradicating the wall between church and state, undermining democratic institutions, and embracing authoritarian governance sanctioned by a regressive religious vision.
The stakes couldn't be higher. A far right authoritarian regime is incompatible with the commitment to American pluralism and democratic governance. Americans (whether or not they focus on this dichotomy) will choose ten months from now. But of course the result, while consequential, will hardly settle the issue.
Religious zealots have captured one of our political parties, which seeks to impose a constricted view of what is permitted on all Americans, willing or not. By now this vile alliance has become deeply rooted. No matter what happens in November 2024, the GOP will continue to threaten democratic social norms and to reject realms of individual liberty that it once revered.
On October 25, eighteen people were killed by a mass shooter in Lewiston, Maine. The day after the shooting, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, in an interview with Sean Hannity, responded to the carnage:
Hannity: This happens with almost every shooting incident. The immediate call by the Left in this country: We need more gun laws. We need more legislation.
Johnson: At the end of the day, the problem is the human heart. It's not guns. It's not the weapons. Even today we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves and that's the Second Amendment. That's why our party stands strongly for that. I agree with the comments of your guest. This is not the time to be talking about legislation. We're in the middle of that crisis. . . .
Speaker Mike Johnson dismisses gun control: "The problem is the human heart. It's not guns ... this is not the time to talk about legislation." pic.twitter.com/b1ti28zETl
That deliberately obtuse, cold-hearted response to this "shooting incident" is a familiar refrain from Republican apologists for the deadly gun culture their Supreme Court justices, Congressional caucuses, and state legislatures have brought us.
There have been 578 mass shootings -- defined as an incident in which at least 4 victims have been shot, whether killed or injured (not including the shooter) -- in the U.S. in 2023 as of this morning according to the Gun Violence Archive. The shooting last week in a bowling alley and a neighborhood bar in Lewiston was the deadliest this year.
Axios reports that what was once rare has become a commonplace:
Mass shootings are becoming deadlier and far more common. There were a total of eleven shootings in which at least 12 people died between 1949 and 2011. There have been 14 since then — more than one per year — including the 2017 shooting at a Las Vegas hotel that left 60 dead.
For two centuries, the First Amendment did not prohibit basic regulation of guns; such regulations have been present throughout American history. A radical far-right agenda, championed in recent decades by Leonard Leo's Federalist Society and funded by wealthy supporters, sought to change our conception of the Constitution. Ideologues invented a legal doctrine and pushed to pack the judiciary with zealots determined to impose their fraudulent 'originalist' dogma on the federal courts.
In May 2019, retired conservative justice John Paul Stevens deplored the high court's ahistorical turn regarding the Second Amendment, a turn which rejected well-established legislative history and judicial precedent, and severed the first words of the amendment, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to security of a free State," from its interpretation. Recalling the words of a previous conservative justice, Stevens wrote:
So well settled was the issue that, speaking on the PBS NewsHour in 1991, the retired Chief Justice Warren Burger described the National Rifle Association’s lobbying in support of an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment in these terms: “One of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
With Donald Trump's three appointed justices to the nation's highest court, the far right's judicial crusade has succeeded in great measure. And in no area of public policy has their success been more thorough or more damaging than in their rulings on guns and the Second Amendment. With many issues -- voting rights, reapportionment, civil rights, reproductive freedom, marriage equality, immigration, business regulation, taxation -- the country may eventually succeed in pushing back against rightwing policies. But with guns, going back to a more sensible era, a time when mass shootings were exceptionally rare, may be next to impossible.
Republicans in office have sought to enact and enforce a twisted vision of the role of guns in American life. Through their efforts, the GOP has transformed our country. Easy access to guns, and especially to military assault rifles, has created a booming industry of weapons manufacturers; has led to the astonishing proliferation of guns among Americans; and has ensured that the number of shootings, especially mass shootings with high body counts, have become far more frequent.
With each "shooting incident," and especially with mass casualty events -- at schools, movie theaters, concerts, churches, workplaces, bars, and bowling alleys -- Americans have become more unsettled, more fearful, less safe. And a vicious cycle has begun to develop: more folks decide that they need guns to protect themselves as ordinary activities become fraught with the arbitrary, senseless possibility of getting gunned down.
There's no going back. More guns won't increase the sense of security that folks felt when assault rifles equipped our armed service personnel, and were not scattered among homes and neighborhoods throughout the country. Our risks of a deadly encounter from a deranged killer with a military weapon continue to rise. That's the America that Republican dogma about guns has brought us. It is, without question, a result of an extraordinarily successful campaign to transform our society.
But, instead of acknowledging the consequences of their public policy success, Republicans duck and cover, denying any responsibility for an era that represents the new normal: a time when Americans continue to be slaughtered in high numbers, when our safety and security have been ripped away.
At last, Donald Trump can stop selling t-shirts emblazoned with the fake mug shots his campaign designed following his April 3 arrest in New York City. (Alvin Bragg and, later, Jack Smith passed on requiring a mug shot after Trump's first three indictments.)
Trump's criminal mug shot -- a bit of theater, a way to dominate a media cycle, a sure money-maker for the ex-POTUS and his lawyers, and a fitting tribute to his contempt for the rule of law -- is destined to become among the most iconic photographs documenting the man's place in history.
August 26, 2023 update: Trump reportedly raised $7.1 million in the two days since he was booked at the Fulton County Jail and $4.18 million on Friday alone, a 24-hour record for the campaign. Meanwhile, a senior advisor to Trump's 2024 election bid has threatened others trying to cash in on the mugshot:
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni have for many decades enjoyed an extraordinarily lavish lifestyle secretly funded by four billionaire benefactors, each with strong ideological and financial interests in cases before the court.
At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.
If there is precedent for anything approaching this level of corruption of the nation's highest court, which is currently dominated by Republican-appointed, activist judges intent on imposing their vision on the country and on the other branches of government, we haven't witnessed it in my lifetime (beginning almost smack dab in the middle of the 20th century).
At least one of the billionaires, Harlan Crow, provided funding for a fawning documentary about Justice Thomas, who shamelessly cloaks himself as just a regular guy with modest tastes:
You know, I don't have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States. I prefer going across the rural areas. I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There's something normal to me about it. I come from regular stock, and I prefer that. I prefer being around that.
2/ Thomas has publicly presented himself as an everyman with modest tastes.
In this documentary about the justice, he waxes nostalgic about his fondness for Walmart parking lots: pic.twitter.com/39kGMRJLrO
Of course, there is absolutely nothing normal about the opulent luxury Clarence and Ginni Thomas have become accustomed to since the justice's appointment to the high court in 1991 – at least not for regular folks who can only dream of a gaggle of billionaires shoveling money at them.
The documentary highlights something beyond the hobnobbing with the fabulously wealthy that the billionaires' largess permitted. Also funded: manufacturing a mythology regarding Thomas (which he fueled with his self-flattering comments about being a normal, regular guy). In their telling, Thomas has become a legendary historical figure. He is revered as an icon in the conservative movement. A "legal titan" in the words of court-packer extraordinaire, Mitch McConnell.
The private jet trip to meet with deans of Yale Law School and view the room where they intended to display Thomas's portrait is just another element of the campaign to glorify him, which has served to boost the man's personal ego, the conservative legal movement, and the public's view of the justice and the court. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern are impressed by the scale, expense, and strategy underlying the enterprise over more than 30 years:
It turns out that this massive publicity blitz was built on decades of work—expensive work—to canonize Thomas. Harlan Crow, ProPublica reported on Thursday, flew the justice to New Haven on his private jet so he could inspect his new portrait at Yale Law School, which Crow subsidized with a $105,000 gift. Cringier still in Thursday’s report is the fact that Thomas ally-slash-attorney-slash-biographer-slash-luxury vacation partner Mark Paoletta, along with his wife, wrote and performed a song for the justice while on a group vacation to the Grand Tetons, memorialized as a “special tribute.” (Sokol, the billionaire, funded the extravagant trip, and flew Thomas out on his private jet.) Photos from the Thomases’ various excursions with their benefactors consistently show the justice surrounded by rapturous, awe-struck admirers. “Have you met a Supreme Court justice?” Huizenga asked the waitress in the private golf lounge at the Floridian’s golf and yacht club before she took their order. “This is Clarence Thomas.” Again, Thomas was an “honorary member” of the club and paid no dues. These benefactors invest in the justice strategically. Crow helped to fund the Clarence Thomas wing of Savannah’s Carnegie Library, where he was honored for his service to the country. The library is right around the corner from the Clarence Thomas Center for Historical Preservation, another Crow-backed project. Down the road lies the Pin Point Heritage Museum (underwritten by Crow); from there, it’s not too far to Thomas’ mother’s house—which Crow owns. He says he purchased it because he has plans to turn it into a museum honoring Thomas. There will undoubtedly be a ceremony, a private jet, and an invitation-only event to celebrate that, too.
Suffice it to say, the Republican Party – which engineered the capture of the court – sees no problem with this state of affairs, so the current Congress will not act to change things, nor will the court itself. While this ugly story of corruption is so massive that it's hard to deny, Republicans will continue to avert their gazes to a fundamental problem of integrity and trust. We will have to wait for another day to set things right.
Final note: let's commemorate the four billionaires making the payoffs to Thomas: Harlan Crow (of course), H. Wayne Huizenga, Paul "Tony" Novelly, and David Sokol. And I'll add a fifth billionaire, one who has famously hosted Samuel Alito: Paul Singer.
Going back to Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, there’s a strain of American commentary that keeps waiting for the Trump action or revelation that turns the tide against him, presenting such clear and devastating evidence that the public and his party can’t help but turn on him. The Aug. 1 indictment seems like a straightforward candidate for this: It quotes the president of the United States calling his vice president “too honest” for refusing to overturn certified election results — even as an insurrection interfering with the peaceful transfer of power was under way. What could more clearly contradict the version of U.S. democracy that we all learned in school — the one where we respect election results, and in which the first peaceful transfer of power after an election loss, from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson after the election of 1800, was a major point of national pride?
She offers a response beginning with these words, "I don’t think it works like that in 2023."
Nope. Not with a starkly divided electorate, increasing partisanship that colors our divergent worldviews, and recent history "with a few Republicans abandoning the former president, many rallying around him and a substantial number forced to defend things they really don’t want to defend."
I've read the indictment, which retraced much of the ground covered by the January 6 Committee. The evidence is clear and overwhelming. I expect a guilty verdict. Unless Trump (or, less likely, another Republican) wins the presidency in 2024, I believe the man will end up in jail.
Results from the New York Times/Siena College poll suggest that as we wait for additional indictments of Donald Trump, the former president holds a commanding lead over his rivals in the 2024 Republican primary. Impeachments, indictments, increasingly authoritarian pronouncements, contempt for the rule of law, an agenda drenched in revenge, and the unending torrent of lies, including the big lie that he didn't lose in 2020, hardly deter his strongest supporters.
“He might say mean things and make all the men cry because all the men are wearing your wife’s underpants and you can’t be a man anymore,” David Green, 69, a retail manager in Somersworth, N.H., said of Mr. Trump. “You got to be a little sissy and cry about everything. But at the end of the day, you want results. Donald Trump’s my guy. He’s proved it on a national level.”
That's a metaphor, right? An allusion to dominance, strength, swagger – manliness, as regarded by men who would be altogether more comfortable if only women (among others) knew their place. While imprecise and ill-defined, if I interpret the metaphor correctly, "all the men" refers to the folks who populate the 21st century Republican Party, with a message directed at those who are not all-in with Donald Trump.
An equal percentage – 37% – are designated as persuadable. They'd prefer another candidate without Trump's baggage (in mainstream parlance), but they won't rule out voting for Trump if it comes to that. They need to stop being a little sissy, while crying about everything, and just get in line behind Trump.
And, if they're listening, the quarter of the party that is not open to Trump needs to reconsider and get in line too (if they haven't become too comfortable in wives' underpants to get the message).
Nate Cohn advises us that within the MAGA base, there are no second thoughts about Trump:
The MAGA base doesn’t support Mr. Trump in spite of his flaws. It supports him because it doesn’t seem to believe he has flaws. Zero percent — not a single one of the 319 respondents in this MAGA category — said he had committed serious federal crimes. A mere 2 percent said he “did something wrong” in his handling of classified documents. More than 90 percent said Republicans needed to stand behind him in the face of the investigations.
It is hard to fathom that "not a single one" among the MAGA base thought Trump had committed serious federal crimes. And then there are Republicans not quite so boxed off from truth and facts and evidence, but still on board:
“I think he’s committed crimes,” said Joseph Derito, 81, of Elmira, N.Y. “I think he’s done terrible things. But he’s also done a lot of good.”
As an avid observer of American politics over more than half a century, I am tempted to think: Republicans will be ready to ditch Trump by the time voting starts in 2024, won't they? But we're not following the rules of the 1960s or '70s or '80s, when my understanding of politics evolved, are we?
Not at all. By 2012, the Republican Party had become "an insurgent outlier." It had taken a decade or two to get to that point and the party is much further off the rails today than ever before.
