That's Just Wrong #001

The rise of right-wing anti-democracy

The commentator I most rely on, and agree with, when it comes to creating meaning out of the seemingly inexorable push of the United States toward anti-democratic constriction, is the historian Heather Cox Richardson, in her daily “Letters from an American” (click here).

Her most important and oft repeated point is this: we are heading straight for the reelection of Trump (or one of his minions), and all that means for the rapid and long-term deterioration of democracy. I feel this reality — that my country is heading for a cliff — with the particular keenness that comes from being raised in a right-wing, evangelical, racist household. The threat of the GOP taking over Congress next year, and the certainty that the Democrats, without a strong voting rights law in place, will not be able to prevent massive voter suppression and shenanigans in 2024 . . . I feel that threat like an embedded trauma in my bones and muscles. My fight or flight response has been activated since 2016; it’s now compelling me to flee.

Because the threat is not just voter suppression and shenanigans. It is violence. January 6th in the capitol was just the beginning.

Charlie Kirk, a right-wing commentator, recently denounced a man in his audience who asked, “when do we get to use the guns” and “how many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” But the audience clapped and hooted for the man. Click here:

It’s probably true that the GOP will take control via the war on truth, by using false information and appealing to prejudices, corrupting elections, and in general, using means that rip the heart out of democracy in a mostly bloodless way.

But 39% of Republicans support using violence for political purposes (click here). Now, only 40% of Americans identify as Republican (click here). So the math works out like this: 15% of this country would be OK with blood in the streets.

Charlie Kirk may have denounced the desire for violence. But he, like the rest of his party, is fomenting anger and a revolutionary impulse by perpetuating the Big Lie. The party that is focused on the non-existent problem of critical race theory, and is pushing its adherents to resist mask mandates, and is trying to eliminate reproductive rights, and is scapegoating immigrants . . . that party is lighting a match to the fifteen percent.

The adult population of the U.S. is 78% (click here) of 332,882,220 (click here), or 259,648,132. Fifteen percent is 38,947,220.

Nearly 39 million adults in this country would support Democrats being killed.

So, I’m not just afraid of the nutjobs who dress like Vikings and attack the capitol. I’m afraid of my neighbors. Full stop.

When I look around me, my adrenaline shoots through the roof, not just because of this information I’ve just cited. It’s not fully intellectual for me. It’s visceral. I feel the truth of that information in my body, in the memories it holds.

There were the newsletters published by evangelical preachers, linking obscure numbers in the Book of Revelations to predictions of a showdown with the federal government in the near future. There was my father warning us kids about black helicopters coming to get us, and taking us to rifle ranges where we met survivalists. There were the plans my dad tried to make with my mom, to move us from a Seattle suburb to Idaho where we would live with other survivalists and prepare for the coming civil war. Thank goodness mom rolled her eyes at dad’s paranoia, and didn’t let us get swept up into some survivalist cult. But I met dad’s associates, and I heard him rant for years. These people are serious. They are true believers who think they are saving their country, not destroying it.

They can’t be reasoned with, because they devalue science and accepted methods for determining truth, and are unwilling to have their worldview — so tied to religion — challenged. Talking to them is like talking to a narcissist: up is down, the blue planet is pink, what you say is happening is the total opposite of what is really happening . . . the similarities with narcissism are uncanny. I come out of conversations feeling destabilized by what is really just gaslighting by people who don’t honestly care about measuring their reality against any accepted standard.

It’s only gotten worse since the early 80s, when I experienced it. Crazy talk has gone from fringe, to mainstream. No longer is the survivalist rhetoric spouted just by wackos. One of the two main political parties has drunk the Kool-Aid, and fully embraced the notion that a showdown is coming. The occasional disavowals of violence by elected officials? Tepid, and disingenuous, when everything else that comes out of their mouths is fomenting the type of thinking (or not-thinking) that inevitably results in violence.

The politicians can predict the coming violence. We can predict it. And I can feel it, with the trauma that has lived in my body since a childhood spent with a wanna-be survivalist.

The body keeps score. And I listen to its warning.

“Winter has arrived” photo by Cheryl McNeil