"STOP TRUTH DECAY VOTE DEMOCRAT" by dankeck is marked with CC0 1.0.
A public interest policy seeks to solve social problems for the greatest number of people it controls. That has been the core commitment of Democrats since the New Deal. We need to reaffirm that commitment to turn back Republican policies that are anti-truth and anti-government and that present ultimatums that threaten to destroy American Democracy.
Across the country, Republican governors and legislators are waging an anti-truth war against “the woke culture.” In many states, new legislation bans school library books that contain the dark truths in our country’s history about slavery, Jim Crow regimes, and the genocide of Native Americans. They fear these truths will disrupt the delicate mental balance of White Americans by making them feel bad about themselves and their identity.
According to Politico, Florida’s 2022 legislation prohibits, “public schools and companies from leveling guilt or blame to students and employees based on race or sex. Inspired by [Governor Ron] DeSantis, it takes aim at issues like “white privilege” by creating new protections for students and workers, including that a person should not be instructed to ‘feel guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress due to their race, color, sex or national origin.’”
Radical right-wing member of Congress Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to “divorce” the American heartland from its woke-governed coasts. The New York Times reported that citizens of Eastern Oregon want to become part of Western Idaho because the “woke” folks who live in Western Oregon have better homes, better schools, more money and more power. This distribution of benefits, they claim, is culturally and politically unfair. They want a territorial identity more congenial with their sense of grievance, resentment and inferiority.
Former Vice-President Mike Pence joined the anti-woke chorus warning that “woke people” will destroy democracy, unless Pence-brand conservatives are elected to public office. Other right-wingers have added that “woke” America is responsible for the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank because the bank’s loan policy was favorable to woke borrowers.
Trump’s public claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him is an instrument of an anti-truth policy. That instrument included the Republican creation of phony electors, the January 6th insurrection, complicit Fox News commentators, and Republican members of Congress who voted on the 6th to overturn the election. Kari Lake’s losing claim of ballot fraud in Maricopa County in her 2022 governor race is an echo of the anti-truth policy.
Conspiracies are anti-truth instruments of hate. Conspiracy promoters claim Trump’s loss of the election was plotted by evil Democrats and their Dominion voting machines. Marjorie Taylor Greene claims that Democrats are “pedophiles,” and when they are not focused on abusing children, they are conniving with communists to destroy white America. And their evildoing includes facilitating the penetration of “6 billion” (!) illegal immigrants across our southern borders in the last year.
Ronald Reagan famously said in his campaign for president in the 1980s that government is the problem, not the solution. Since that time, the United States has witnessed the growth of Republican anti-governance policies to benefit special interests. Advocates of these policies occupy the boardrooms of the corporations that control giant banks, and the conservative think-tanks that exercise mind control in Congress. These advocates buy representation with campaign contributions, transforming the competitive economy of the 1940s into the deregulated, monopolistic system of the present day.
Trump’s January 6th insurrection would have been an anti-government success had it stopped the certification by Congress of the electoral results of the 2020 election. It would have destroyed American democracy and rule of law and replaced it with an authoritarian system.
Now, House Republicans are telling us that unless Democrats kill the policy accomplishments of the Biden Administration, they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling, killing our country’s ability to perform its financial commitments and destroying our credit standing in the world. Rather than debate spending cuts in future budgets, Republicans want the Biden Administration to stop student loan relief, take back all unspent Covid-19 funds, repeal the $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service and all monies appropriated for addressing climate change. They want to cap future spending at 2022 levels to cut “the wasteful, woke, and weaponized federal bureaucracy.” They also demand further business deregulation and more work requirements for programs like Medicaid.
Are House Republicans playing the Godfather by making an offer that Democrats can’t refuse? Or are they making an offer the Democrats must refuse? The money they want returned is already borrowed and committed and Democrats would commit political suicide by destroying the policy achievements of the Biden Administration. House Republicans are trying to put Democrats in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” dilemma.
But, if we look behind House Republicans double-bind move will we discover a very costly and thoughtless bluff? Wouldn’t it be a fraud on the American people that terminates Republican ability to attract voters, piss off their donors, and self-inflict a permanent loss of credibility? My next post will address how we accomplish rule of law removal of these threats to our system of governance.