Looking at photos of the rioters in their various outrageous costumes, I couldn’t help wondering: what would a true GOP superhero look like? Here are some ideas:
Any resemblance to Donald Trump is purely coincidental.
Like Obama before him, Biden has chosen “unity” as his brand. Predictably, the GOP has already started to use it against him. Their objective will be to try to force him to govern to the lowest common denominator, which, as the 2009 precedent shows, is very low, indeed. They may even try to argue that their belated acceptance of his legitimacy entitles them to a legislative program that looks something like Trump without tweets.
The ultimate purpose of this, of course, is to try to show that left-center government can’t work, thereby demoralizing the Democrats and winning GOP majorities in 2022. It is important for Biden to resist this. “Unity” means not treating your opponents as mortal enemies and working hard to solve problems like the pandemic that are as significant to the right as to the left. It also, in my opinion, means dialing back on the culture wars. It does not mean abandoning Democratic priorities on health care, the environment, and inequality just because the GOP opposes them, either out of principle or (more likely) opportunism.
Trump is in exile in Palm Beach. He can’t even tweet. It’s as if he has fallen off the face of the planet, which is better off for it.
Will Mar-a-Lago prove to be more analogous to Elba or St. Helena? We’ll know in a few years.
What does Biden mean by “unity?” Here’s my take on it:
The difficult part of “unity” is dealing with the fact that the Democrats and the extremists in the GOP have completely different ideas of the just society. There is no real common ground between a white Christian authoritarian state and a multi-ethnic liberal democracy. Realistically, the best Biden can hope for is to speak to the portion of the GOP that is still willing to defend the liberal democratic state, and to show it that government is, in fact, capable of solving its problems. If he can do that, you should consider him a success.
The rioters in Portland are providing Biden with the perfect opportunity to make it clear to the center and the right that he’s not some sort of puppet for the extreme left. Expect him to take it, with gusto.
My thoughts are as follows:
Normalcy, here we come. Thank God.
Trump insisted on his way out that his “movement” would continue. Does this “movement” even exist?
No. Trump is supremely self-centered. He doesn’t care about other people or ideas. He just uses them to glorify himself.
What Trump actually means by his “movement” is his willingness to bond with the Reactionary faction of the GOP by constantly reminding them that he hates the people that they blame for their problems. That division already existed; Trump and Fox News just stoke it, and make it worse, in their own interests.
The QAnon people are confused. The Proud Boys are just pissed off. Trump didn’t fight, as he had promised; he just sold them out after they did his bidding and stormed the Capitol. How could this happen?
The moral of this story is that even right-wing crazoids are marks for the man on golf cart. Trump was only in it, as always, to satisfy his own needs. He’s not the leader of a movement; he would sell out anyone–even a furry Viking–if it gives him a short term advantage.
In their younger days, the Stones were motivated by a variety of interests: money; fame; anger; drugs; women; and the desire to prove that they were the best band in the world. As old men, all of that is gone. The Stones continue to perform because they still have the music in them, and because it makes them and their fans happy. Any other kind of ambition is irrelevant at this point in their lives.
So it is with Biden. You have to believe that he was totally sincere when he said that it should have been his son taking the oath. He has no need for power or an ego boost at the age of 78. He only ran for president because he thought he was uniquely positioned to save the country from Trump. He was right, and we have cause to be grateful.
Life in the time of Trump.
The man on golf cart’s gone.
We’ve reached the day
For which we prayed.
We hope for a new dawn.
It’s been a really long four years
We’ve been through much, my friends.
But I’m happy to report
This poem’s at an end.
In the days following the 2016 election, I listened to Paul Simon’s “American Tune” over and over again. It summarized my feelings better than anything I could write.
The song for today is Coldplay’s “Everyday Life.” Listen to it, and you won’t believe it was written prior to the pandemic, George Floyd, and the election.
Obama’s first inauguration should have been a cause for unvarnished joy. After all, the country had broken its most obvious social barrier and elected a supremely gifted black man as its leader; in addition, there was bipartisan acknowledgment of the failures of the outgoing administration. The economy was falling off a cliff, however, and the immediate future looked very dark, indeed. Obama’s speech was more chilly and grim than inspiring. It was a strange time.
Today, we celebrate the democratic ritual of a transition of power with the pandemic, the economic downturn, and the storming of the Capitol as our background. A field of American flags will replace what would have been a very large crowd. We will be getting rid of the man on golf cart, but the millions of voters and the media infrastructure that made him possible are still firmly in place, and a comeback is not completely out of the question.
It will be a bittersweet moment.
Rupert Murdoch could, of course, have founded a respectable center-right news channel, but what would have been the fun in that? Nobody would have watched it. Instead, he created a house organ for the Reactionary faction of the GOP, with just enough real news to be taken seriously. It mirrored his populist newspapers, but with a vastly larger and more right-wing audience. The results speak for themselves.
It is in the financial interests of Fox to constantly stoke outrage in the base, all the way up to the line of provoking an insurrection, but not crossing that line. The events of January 6 show what a dangerous game that was.
The radicalization of parts of the right has several causes, but the emergence of Fox leads the pack. The Trump presidency was Fox made flesh. Murdoch has a lot to answer for.
Biden plans to make national unity the theme of his inaugural speech. That’s perfectly appropriate under the current circumstances. It won’t do much good, however, if he only gives us generic, warmed-over Obama and MLK.
What he needs to do is specifically address the fears of the white reactionaries who expect the worst from him. He should make it clear that white Christians are a valued part of America, and always will be; their values will not be under threat during his presidency. He should also say, however, that white Christians do not speak for all of America, that it is a complete falsehood to deny his legitimacy as president, and that people engaging in violent crimes for political purposes, regardless of where they are on the ideological spectrum, will be punished in accordance with the law.
Do I expect that? No. I expect generic, warmed-over Obama and MLK. Anything more than that will be a bonus.
MLK dreamed of a multi-ethnic democracy–an American mosaic, if you will–in which everyone, regardless of race or creed, would be treated on equal terms. It was a compelling vision, and one that is as relevant today as it was roughly sixty years ago. It is embraced wholeheartedly by the left.
My reactionary persona, Sebastian, has a completely different dream. In his eyes, white Christians made America great, and thus have established the right to rule indefinitely. People of color are essentially trespassers, but a wicked government intervenes constantly with the support of a self-interested coastal elite to protect their interests over those of real Americans. Ideally, they would be expelled from the country; barring that, they need to be neutralized politically through gerrymandering, voter ID laws, and spurious claims of “fraud.” This America is not a mosaic; it is a sheet of white ruled paper.
The conflict between these two visions has bedeviled American politics throughout my entire life. It still does.