A Civil Political Society is on the Ballot This November
The Republican Party's glorification of violence is a threat to democracy.
“The husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was violently assaulted with a hammer during an early-morning break-in Friday at the couple’s San Francisco home, a chilling escalation in a string of violence and threats directed at political leaders across the country. The suspect…was searching for the speaker and shouted, ‘Where is Nancy?,’ according to a person briefed on the case.”—The Washington Post
“I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it.”—House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), 2021. A spokesperson for McCarthy said he was “obviously joking.”
“Nancy! Nancy Pelosi! Where you at, Nancy? Where’s Nancy?”—Members of the mob that assaulted the Capitol on 1/6/21 as they searched for Nancy Pelosi and ransacked her office.
“[W]e broke into the Capitol. We got inside. We did our part. We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the frickin’ brain. But we didn’t find her.”—A Capitol rioter in a selfie video filmed on 1/6
FOX News wanted its viewers to know Friday morning that the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband in her San Francisco home that previous night was a random act of violence that could have happened to anyone in our crime-ridden society:
That’s not right.
To begin with, consider the source. FOX News is full of shit. They know it, and a big chunk of their audience knows it as well. FOX News isn’t news; whatever they air that can pass as the news is there solely to deny the accusation that they don’t air news at all. At this point, FOX News is just a massive talking points disseminator in the business of distributing the party line on an hour-by-hour basis to an army of civilian spin doctors. If you’re a FOX News viewer who doesn’t know that yet, remember, if you can’t spot the sucker at the poker table, it’s you.
But more to the point, this crime wasn’t random. No rando just randomly breaks into a house owned randomly by someone named Nancy asking to know the whereabouts of Nancy.
And no, this crime isn’t related to the surge in street crime Republicans have been harping about on the campaign trail, in the same way Democrats can’t really claim the Capitol riot is related to the rise in street crime, either. This was an act of politically-motivated violence. Here’s CNN’s reporting on the suspect’s social media posts:
Last year, [the suspect] posted links on his Facebook page to multiple videos produced by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell falsely alleging that the 2020 election was stolen. Other posts included transphobic images and linked to websites claiming Covid vaccines were deadly. “The death rates being promoted are what ever ‘THEY’ want to be promoted as the death rate,” one post read.
[He] also posted links to YouTube videos with titles like “Democrat FARCE Commission to Investigate January 6th Capitol Riot COLLAPSES in Congress!!!” and “Global Elites Plan To Take Control Of YOUR Money! (Revealed)”
Two days after former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of killing George Floyd, [he] wrote that the trial was “a modern lynching,” falsely indicating that Floyd died of a drug overdose.
He also posted content about the “Great Reset”– the sprawling conspiracy theory that global elites are using coronavirus to usher in a new world order in which they gain more power and oppress the masses. And he complained that politicians making promises to try to win votes “are offering you bribes in exchange for your further enslavement.”
I’m sure Republicans are already saying this guy was misled. But how much more misled was he than the hundreds of Republican candidates running for election this year who also claim the 2020 election was stolen? Or who cast doubt on the efficacy of COVID vaccines or the dangers posed by a virus that has killed over one million Americans? Or those who would turn LGBTQ, immigrants, and minorities into boogeymen threatening to destroy the nation? Or who would entertain inflammatory conspiracy theories that have no basis in reality but prey on people’s insecurities and paranoia? Is this guy any more misled than Donald Trump?
I’m also sure Republicans are already saying this guy was just a disturbed individual, someone with a screw loose or taken by evil. And maybe so. Maybe the party faithful—those tuning into FOX News to note the daily talking points—understand none of this is to be taken literally or seriously or to justify violence. But how is it then that so many disturbed individuals with screws loose and taken by evil end up bringing guns to pizza parlors to investigate pedophile rings or conspiring to kidnap Democratic governors or ingesting horse dewormer or gathering at the seat of our national government to overturn an election? (And are we really going to say all of these individuals were out of their minds, that they weren’t acting on beliefs they were convinced were true?) At some point it’s fair to wonder if maybe just maybe the rhetoric is designed to activate the crazies, that Trump isn’t misled but misleading.
And I’m sure Republicans are already saying this shoe could just as easily have been on the other foot, that the target could have been a Republican and the assailant someone who drank the Left’s Kool-Aid. It has happened in the past, after all, like when someone went to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house this summer to assassinate him or when an angry Bernie Sanders supporter showed up at a congressional Republican baseball practice with a massacre in mind and nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise. And they’re right: Any one person with any sort of political grievance can commit an act of political violence. but the sort of grievances that inspire this kind of violence isn’t organized on the Left the way it is on the Right, nor has that grievance and the glorification of violence gone mainstream in the Democratic Party the way it has in the GOP.
This appeal to violence hasn’t just come out of the blue. Trump has long entertained violence as part of his political brand. At campaign rallies in 2015 and 2016, he often fantasized about hurting protesters and encouraged attendees to rough-up hecklers, at one stop even promising to pay for their legal fees if arrested. As president he failed to condemn white supremacists, encouraged police brutality, praised a politician for assaulting a reporter, and joked with rally-goers about shooting migrants. Hate crimes linked to his rhetoric rose over the course of his administration. In 2020 he ordered police to clear Pennsylvania Avenue of Black Lives Matter protesters so he could stand in front of a church with a Bible for a photo op. He capped his presidency off by siccing a mob he knew to contain armed and dangerous elements onto the Capitol building. (You can review a timeline of Trump’s links to political violence here.)
It really shouldn’t surprise you then to learn there are armed right-wingers in Arizona dressed in tactical gear monitoring ballot drop boxes
or that Arizona’s Republican Senate candidate brandishes weaponry that “wasn’t designed for hunting” in his campaign ads
or that Nancy Pelosi felt compelled to install magnetometers at the entrance to the House chamber after new Republican members swore they’d bring guns to floor votes. Because in a democracy apparently, if words and ballots can’t get the job done, at least there are bullets.
Republicans would probably say Pelosi has also advocated for violence. CNN recently reported she said she’d have punched Trump if he had come to the Capitol on 1/6. That is, she wanted to punch him on the day Trump sent a mob to Pelosi’s workplace to disrupt the constitutional transfer of power. That mob actively hunted her, ransacked her office, and endangered the lives of her staff and fellow members of Congress. And she said it in a private moment caught on tape, not in front of a campaign rally. Not comparable if you ask me.
And I’m sure some Republicans would say the attack on Pelosi’s husband was actually orchestrated by Antifa to make Republicans look bad before the midterms. That assertion only proves my point.
The 2022 midterms are nine days away. Judging by the commercials I see on TV, Americans seem to believe the most important issues facing this country are the economy, inflation, crime, abortion, education, and immigration. Those are important issues, but none of them are the most important issue confronting Americans today. What matters more than anything else is the state of our democracy, if our elections will remain free and fair, if the rule of law will prevail, and, as the events of last Friday morning remind us, if the tenor of our political society will remain peaceful and civil.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote the difference between political societies like ours and totalitarian regimes is that political democratic societies are based on power—in other words, people acting and speaking together—while totalitarian regimes rely on strength, or instrumental (and often violent) means of coercion. This is what makes the current democratic crisis the great issue of the day: Without a functioning democracy—a form of government that resolves public disputes via debate, reason, and voting rather than violence—either we the people lose our ability to address all these other issues we believe are important or these issues will be resolved in ways that potentially disregard the well-being of the people. To paraphrase Astra Taylor, democracy may not be perfect and it may not always meet the moment, but we’d sure miss it when it’s gone.
I am under no illusion that American politics has always been civil or free of political violence. In my lifetime, however, for the most part, it has been, and I think it’s not an unreasonable expectation to believe it ought to be. But Trump and his Republican Party (and make no mistake, it is his) keep playing with the fire of violence and militancy, stoking it, excusing it, even inciting it. It should come as no surprise that Trump acts this way: Throughout his life, whenever he has been challenged, Trump has always responded by pushing his opponents to the brink of their conscience on the assumption his opponents would rather preserve some measure of dignity and value than let Trump destroy that. Condemn him and he’ll smear your reputation. Sue him and he’ll force you to spend an exorbitant amount of time and money prosecuting him. Muscle him in the marketplace and he’ll find a way to make the cost of competing against him astronomical. Confront him in a debate and he’ll drag you into a three-ring circus and give you a starring role alongside him as a clown. Dare to defeat him in an election and he’ll throw the entire electoral process under the bus. Go ahead with a peaceful transfer of power and he’ll test how committed you really are to maintaining the peace. As David A. Graham of The Atlantic explained recently, Trump employs a kind of “heads-I-win, tails-you-lose logic” along with a dose of menace to compel others to either “exempt Trump from the rule[s] or risk someone destroying [what they care about] by other means.” Graham relates Trump’s position to that of a Mafia don’s: “Nice democracy you’ve got here. Shame if someone tried to make it great again, again.”
No other institution in American society is better positioned to stop Trumpism and end the threat it poses to American democracy than the Republican Party, but despite multiple opportunities, including moments when Trump was politically vulnerable, they have refused. Consequently, it is beyond time to acknowledge the Republican Party is not adequately committed to democracy. Some of its members may believe they can keep their party’s more autocratic impulses in check, but they’ve been failing at that task for the past six to seven years. In fact, the Republican Party has only grown more autocratic over that span of time. Given the choice between preserving their hold on power and preserving American democracy, Republicans—both elected officials and voters—have chosen time and time again the former over that latter. Their message to the American people is that they lack either the courage or sense of responsibility to hold themselves accountable. Conscientious Americans have a duty to do so for them.
This session of Congress began with a violent mob invading Nancy Pelosi’s office. It is ending with a homicidal maniac invading her home. If American voters cannot connect those dots a week from Tuesday and repudiate the party responsible for sowing in our democracy the seeds of political violence, we may very well find the cost of defending democracy in the near future painfully high.
Further reading: “Pelosi Attack Highlights Rising Fears of Political Violence” by Catie Edmondson of the New York Times
Signals and Noise
Robert Draper writes in The Atlantic what he learned about the Republican Party as he wrote his latest book Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind. He came away astonished by the certitude with which Republicans promulgate the Big Lie.
This New York Times article by Michael Keller and David Kirkpatrick titled “Their America is Vanishing. They Insist They Were Cheated” is a great profile of congressional districts whose representatives challenged the outcome of the 2020 election. These districts tend to have voters with lower incomes and lower levels of educational attainment and have seen the white share of their electorate decline over the past couple decades. Rates of suicide, drug overdoses, and alcoholism were also higher.
Also from the New York Times, this time by Jonathan Weisman, who surveys voters in Wisconsin: “Fears Over Fate of Democracy Leave Many Voters Frustrated and Resigned” (“Seventy-one percent of all voters believe that democracy is at risk, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, but only 7 percent identified that as the most important problem facing the country. Americans face more immediate concerns: the worst inflation in 40 years, the loss of federal abortion rights after 50 years and a perception that crime is surging, if not in their communities then in cities nearby. But another factor is dampening people’s motivation to save America’s representative system of government: Some have already lost faith in its ability to represent them.”)
From ProPublica: “That Cardboard Box in Your Home is Fueling Election Denial” (“Much of the cardboard and paper goods strewn about our homes — the mail-order boxes and grocery store bags — are sold by a single private company, with its name, Uline, stamped on the bottom. Few Americans know that a multibillion-dollar fortune made on those ubiquitous products is now fueling election deniers and other far-right candidates across the country.”)
Pay attention to elections in Arizona and Nevada, two toss-up states with a number of close contests where election deniers are on the ballot and GOP operatives are already meddling with the election process.
For more, read this article by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez of the Washington Post.
The videos in this article from the Tampa Bay Times are beyond belief: Floridians being arrested on charges of voting illegally.
In many cases, the voters asked local election officials if they were eligible to vote, and those officials told them they were. Even the arresting officers seem to think this is ridiculous.
This is straight-up state-sponsored voter intimidation. It’s telling people they run the risk of arrest and getting either a fine or jail time for voting even if they’ve been cleared by elections officials to vote. And make no mistake: Ron DeSantis is a despicable, dangerous politician.
At least one of those arrested for voter fraud has already had their charges dismissed.
Unless someone of their own volition flashes a fake police badge to prove they’re a cop, I try to avoid commenting on the political spectacles known as debates. Yet an important one occurred in Pennsylvania, and it did not go well for Democrat John Fetterman. Fetterman suffered a stroke back in May and he’s still dealing with the effects of it, specifically when it comes to speaking and auditory processing. It’s clear he’s still mentally sharp, but he’s often slow to respond and sometimes messes up his speech. This imparity has kept him from a vigorous campaign schedule, but his doctor has said he’s fine. The debate then was an opportunity to prove this to voters. Instead, his performance is likely to leave voters wondering if he’s hiding something. His opponent, Dr. Oz, offered up a sharp contrast (even if he bungled a question on abortion.) I don’t know how much of Fetterman’s support is baked in at this point, but for a candidate who’s been ceding ground to his opponent since Labor Day, his debate performance has the potential to break his campaign.
William Saletan of The Bulwark has a good analysis of the most interesting race in the nation, the showdown between Republican Utah Senator Mike Lee and independent Evan McMullin. Writes Saletan: “The Lee-McMullin race poses a difficult question: What exactly does the GOP stand for? Why should voters support a Republican senator against an opponent who agrees with him on policy but not on subverting democracy? If economic, moral, and foreign-policy conservatism no longer define the party, what does? What does it mean to be a Republican in 2022, beyond conspiring—or defending others who have conspired—to overturn elections when your party doesn’t win?”
Another woman has alleged Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker urged her to get an abortion.
Jill Filipic writes in The Guardian that Herschel Walker may be “the worst candidate the modern Republican party has ever run for national office.” (“Walker embodies everything the Republican party has claimed to oppose: violent crime, abortion, homes broken by absentee fathers, race-based affirmative action and straight-up incompetence. And yet no matter what Walker is accused of, up to and including acts many Republicans define as murder, he retains the support of the Republican party, and his race for a Georgia Senate seat remains a tight one.”)
Republican New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc is the latest Republican who thinks children are identifying as cats in schools.
Republican Michigan gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon thinks Democrats are still angry about losing the Civil War. Wonder what this “left-winger” thinks?
Nevada Republican Secretary of State nominee Jim Marchant thinks the way to fight voter fraud is by counting ballots by hand. Yeah, that would be a great way to eliminate the potential for human error.
The Republican Party of New Mexico has sent a mailer to voters asking them if they “want a sex offender cutting their child’s hair.” As ridiculous as that scare tactic is, the offense is heightened once you know the barber’s hands in the photo have been darkened:
Another article by Jonathan Weisman for the New York Times: “As Republican Campaigns Seize on Crime, Racism Becomes a New Battlefront” (I would note Republicans at one time could plausibly deny these charges. Post-Trump, they’ve lost the benefit of that doubt and should be expected to keep their act clean if they hope to prove they’re not in the business of race-baiting.)
By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Steve Eder, for the New York Times: “For Trump’s Backers in Congress, ‘Devil Terms’ Help Rally Voters” (“[A] Times analysis shows that the language of the 139 objecting members is markedly more hostile than that of other Republicans and Democrats. In their telling, those who oppose them not only are wrong about certain policies but also hate their country.”)
From Politico: “It’s an article of faith among Democrats that their party is deeply hampered by its inability or unwillingness to tout its own accomplishments.
But what if that conventional wisdom wasn’t just wrong but terribly, harmfully so? That’s the warning being issued by one of the party’s most seasoned pollsters, STAN GREENBERG. In memos, private communications and interviews, Greenberg has been imploring the party to — let’s put this bluntly — shut the hell up about all the work it’s done. It’s not that voters don’t care. He says voters actively turn against Democrats when they hear it. “It’s our worst performing message,” Greenberg told West Wing Playbook. “I’ve tested it. I did Biden’s exact words, his exact speech. And that’s the test where we lost all of our leads… It said to the voters that this election is about my accomplishments as a leader and not about the challenges you’re experiencing.”
If voters’ number one concern is inflation, I don’t know why Democrats don’t pound Republicans for supporting tax cuts aimed at the wealthy that would only compound inflation. (“But while Republicans insist they will be better stewards of the economy, few economists on either end of the ideological spectrum expect the party’s proposals to meaningfully reduce inflation in the short term. Instead, many say some of what Republicans are proposing — including tax cuts for high earners and businesses — could actually make price pressures worse by pumping more money into the economy.”) Here’s the ad: Clogged Chinese supply lines + Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine + Republican tax cuts for the rich = Supercharged inflation.
Robert Draper of the New York Times reports nut-wing congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene expects to be rewarded by Kevin McCarthy if Republicans take back the House. It’s a good—and disturbing—profile.
“There are many God-fearing Christians who are Democrats, there’s not a single God fearing Christian that is a leftist, because those two things are incompatible.”—Republican candidate for Wisconsin’s 3rd congressional district Derrick Van Orden going full Christian Nationalist during a prayer breakfast.
By Natasha Singer for the New York Times: “Why Am I Seeing That Political Ad? Check Your ‘Trump Resistance’ Score.” Singer looks at how voter analytics firms use voters’ demographic profiles, socioeconomic status, online activities, and offline interests to target voters with ads. Are you skeptical of the government because you believe they’re hiding information from you about UFOs? These firms will find out so campaigns can push an ad in your direction.
“I am a believer in precedents. People would find I adhere to that.” And “I recognize there is a right to privacy. I think it’s settled.”—Justice Samuel Alito, to Sen. Edward Kennedy during a private interview in 2005 during Alito’s confirmation process, according to a new biography on Kennedy. Kennedy didn’t believe him and voted against Alito.
The cost of government debt is through the roof.
The economy grew by 2.6% in the third quarter, reversing two consecutive quarterly contractions, but signs still point to a looming economic slowdown.
Remember that bottleneck of dozens of container ships waiting to unload their cargo outside the Port of Los Angeles? It’s down to four ships, hopefully relieving some of the inflationary pressure on the economy.
By Rachel M. Cohen for Vox: “Is the Cure for Inflation Worse Than the Disease?”
Standardized test scores dropped significantly as a result of the pandemic, which, frankly, isn’t surprising at all. What some may find surprising is that scores dropped across the board and aren’t tied to whether schools reopened sooner or later.
The state of Texas is sending DNA kits home with students that can be used to identify them “in case of an emergency.” Apparently Gov. Greg Abbott thinks the way to deal with mass shootings is to be able to better identify the bodies. And what’s more of an infringement on personal liberty: Regulating weapons of war or requiring citizens to hand their genetic material over to the state?
Pfizer plans on charging $110 for a dose of its COVID vaccine when it hits the private market next month. As if the company hadn’t made a windfall when a new disease swept the globe a couple years ago. I’m sure they factored that into their budgets.
How rich are the richest Americans? The Wall Street Journal reports the twenty richest tech billionaires have lost half a trillion dollars this year on the stock market, which is more than the market value of all but seven companies on the S&P 500.
Elon Musk bought Twitter, which Nilay Patel of The Verge argues in an article titled “Welcome to Hell, Elon” basically means Musk just bought himself for $44 billion. Patel also makes a great point: As much as Musk hates content moderation, the whole point of Twitter is essentially content moderation.
Celine Gounder argues in The Atlantic that the United States’ inability to control the disruptive spread of COVID is because it lacks the moral imagination to implement any other health-based solution beyond choosing whether or not to wear a mask and get vaccinated.
A UN report declared this week that the world is on the verge of an irreversible climate catastrophe, writing it may be time for governments to begin adjusting to the disruptions that will result from climate change than focusing exclusively on preventing it.
This was chilling: Former Chinese leader Hu Jintao, seated to the left of current Chinese leader Xi Jinping, getting escorted out of the Communist Party Congress. It has the feel of an old school Stalinst/Maoist party purge, although it could also be that Hu, at the age of 79, was disoriented. Xi used the event to solidify his command over the Chinese Communist Party and thus the country at large. In the ten years he has been in power, Xi has suppressed civil society, eliminated political dissent, and clamped down on free market reforms. He’s probably the most powerful Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping, if not Mao Zedong.
It’s getting hard in Moscow to find men, who have apparently either fled the city or are staying inside to avoid getting swept up by agents looking for conscripts for Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin told a foreign policy conference his real battle is with “western elites.” Reports the New York Times: “[Mr. Putin said] “There are at least two Wests[.]” One, he said, is a West of ‘traditional, mainly Christian values’ for which Russians feel kinship. But, he said, ‘there’s another West — aggressive, cosmopolitan, neocolonial, acting as the weapon of the neoliberal elite,’ and trying to impose its ‘pretty strange’ values on everyone else. He peppered his remarks with references to ‘dozens of genders’ and ‘gay parades.’” Sounds to me like Vladimir’s trying to win a Republican primary. If he is, he stands a pretty good chance of earning Donald Trump’s endorsement.