Bart Bonikowski, a sociologist at N.Y.U., describes the danger of this political dynamic:
In capturing the party, Trump perfectly embodied its ethnonationalist and authoritarian tendencies and delivered it concrete results — even if his policy stances were not always perfectly aligned with party orthodoxy. As a result, the Republican Party and Trumpism have become fused into a single entity — one that poses serious threats to the stability of the United States.
The unwillingness of Republican leaders to challenge Trump’s relentless lies, for whatever reason — for political survival, for mobilization of whites opposed to minorities, to curry favor, to feign populist sympathies — is as or more consequential than actually believing the lie.
In that sense, the “big lie” is a precursor to more dangerous threats — threats that are plausible in ways that less than a decade ago seemed inconceivable. The capitulation to and appeasement of Trump by Republican leaders is actually setting up even worse possibilities than what we’ve lived through so far. (Source)
This is going to play out the way it's going to play out, but it really does look at this moment as if the Delusional/Cynical Right, aka the GOP, is in control. I'm sure the Susan Collinses and Ben Sasses have persuaded themselves otherwise. I look forward to reading their self-justifying memoirs after the country goes the way of the USSR.
Because that's where we are--as everybody in the Soviet establishment stopped believing in the soviet system in the 1980s, few among American econonomic, political, and media elites really believes in American Democracy anymore. A few do, of course, but they are relatively powerless. As China is proving, Technocapitalism doesn't need democracy to thrive, and in America, what technocapitalism wants, technocapitalism gets. FOX news is paradigmatic. It cares only about its profitability, not about how it contributes to the destruction of the American democracy. And because so much of technocapitalism, like FOX, couldn't care less about democracy, there is no constituency who does care that is robust enough to push back with strength enough to preserve it.
I am eager to be proved wrong on this, but I fear we are about to prove the ancients right when they said that democracy was the second worst form of government because the 'demos' was too easily manipulated by demagogues who turned democracy into tyranny, which for them was the worst form of government. We proved them wrong for almost 250 years, but the people who really care about it are too few and have been outmaneuvered by those who don't. So it appears, anyway. The world sees it, and they are preparing for it--some with dread, others with glee.
Most Americans don't really understand what it takes to be a democracy. Those who think they care, like the stormers of the Capitol, see themselves as patriots fighting to preserve democracy. That's the great irony of our moment--those who think most fervidly that American Democracy is in peril are the ones who are being manipulated by those whose goal is to destroy it. Others give democracy lip service but care more about whether their team is going to make it to the playoffs. And as a result American democracy has stopped being a healthy, living thing that adapts to changing realities. Like the USSR in the '80s, it has become perilously rickety, and it's swaying. Question is whether the Tucker Carlsons and Steve Bannons among us will be able to push it over.
Biden is an apt metaphor for our current predicament. Every time I watch him on TV, I fear he will collapse before he finishes speaking. Nevertheless, I am still hoping that we can find some way to prop the old girl up to prevent its collapse, but an awful lot of unlikely things have to happen this year to prevent it.
I started worrying about this inevitability when it started this blog in 2003. I was coming out of the '90s as a Democrat in name only who was disgusted with Clinton's neoliberalism and psychopathy, but even more so by Gingrich and Republican rabidity. I thought of Bush as a decent, platitudinous guy, a Warren Harding type in way over his head. I responded to 9/11 not so much with shock as with sadness, and hoped that Americans would be smart in their response. Instead, it reacted exactly as bin Laden had hoped. If he were alive today, he would be among those watching our likely collapse with glee.
9/11 woke me up as to how astonishingly self-deluded the entire political, economic, and media establishment had become that it could be so stupid as to think the invasion of Iraq to be legitimate. The fundamental delusional character of those elites didn't change during the 2000s or during the Obama years. Most among them can't see more than six inches in front of their noses. No wisdom, just expediency. That kind of thinking led to the crisis in 2008, to the idiocy of the Tea Party, and to the rise of Trump. And now some among those elite are beginning to see where it was all leading even back then, but in all likelihood it's too late to do anything about it.
I remember people writing to me back in the 2000s asking me to stick with the philosophical/religious themes, which they found helpful, but to stay away from my biased anti-GOP politics, which for them was a turn off because, in their view, it was overwrought and hyperbolic. Well I'll let what I wrote then speak for itself, but the two things--the philosophical/religious and the political--go hand in hand. Because the former is about seeing with as much clarity as possible what's there, but also what the best possibilities might be in any given situation if people have the good sense to see and choose them.
It's becoming clearer that we've got to a point where the best possibilities or even reasonably good ones will not be chosen. For a while there I thought Biden had a shot, but alas. I might feel better if the Democrats hold the House and Senate in November. There's an outside chance that the findings of the 1/6 Committee might break through in such a way that decent but oblivious Americans will reject the Republicans whom they otherwise vote for out of habit. It's possible, but at this moment looks unlikely. Sure, none of us knows what's going to happen--surprises are always a possibility, but it's very hard to feel optimistic right now.
I realize that the Genealogy series I'm in the midst of writing has little relevance for our current situation. I think of it rather as something I'm writing for my grandchildren, as something that might help to orient them when it comes time to rebuild after the current insanity plays itself out. Which it will. Reality always reasserts itself.