A storm approaches this August evening as I sit with a friend at a curbside table. It is Restaurant Week, and we are not to be deterred. The political storms threatening our constitutional republic are of greater concern.
I have written many times about the pathological narcissist who left the White House reluctantly nineteen months ago. Yet it is still hard to believe that so many of our fellow citizens are ready to follow him off a cliff in trashing public norms, the rule of law, and decades of social progress. But then they do not see it as progress. Essentially they want to burn down the house while the rest of us are locked in it with them.
Things are going rather well at the moment. Joe Biden and the Democrats have a string of legislative wins, including the greatest response to climate change ever enacted, which passed without a single Republican vote. Democrats’ hopes for holding onto the Senate, and maybe the House, are getting a boost from what Mitch McConnell politely calls the low quality of Trump-endorsed candidates. Democrats and moderates are being motivated by the right-wing Supreme Court’s overturn of abortion rights, which set off an orgy of repression in red states.
At the same time, the growing fascist voices do not bode well for our civil order. New York Republican Carl Paladino called for Attorney General Merrick Garland to be executed, then said he was being facetious. Luis Miguel, a Republican candidate for Florida’s House, was barred from Twitter after he advocated making it legal to shoot FBI, IRS, and ATF agents.
Opening Pandora’s Box is a lot easier than chasing all the demons back into it.
After a generous helping of calamari, the shrimp and scallop risotto is too much of a good thing. I am unused to so much food at one sitting; it’s leftovers tomorrow. I finish with a light tiramisu. My Dupont Circle neighborhood is an oasis. But how will our pleasant summer evenings survive mounting social unrest? If you worry about supply chain problems and inflation now, imagine what further chaos fueled by right-wing intolerance would do to the economy.
Anti-abortionists view forced birth as a divine mandate. They have always been with us, but are now empowered by Trump and his stacked, radical Supreme Court. And those who come after Trump, like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, may be more disciplined and effective tyrants.
DeSantis says, “We must fight the woke in our schools. We must fight the woke in our businesses. We must fight the woke in government agencies. We can never, ever surrender.” What Nazi terror is this Churchill wannabe projecting onto us? Racial and gender diversity?
“Woke” may be an annoying term, but the idea that it merits an armed response is as deranged as Chuck Grassley saying IRS agents will menace small business owners with “AK-15s” (confusing AR-15s with AK-47s). Demonizing trans people has replaced the Red Menace. Employees at Boston Children’s Hospital received violent threats after false online claims of gender-confirming surgery for children.
Serious conservatism requires intellectual humility and respect for facts, not reflexive belligerence. If Republicans’ constitutional originalism were more than a pretext, they would stop reading the right to own semiautomatic weapons into the Second Amendment and restrict us to muskets. Their idea of freedom is that the rest of us are free to agree with them. As it is, their unhinged rhetoric incites deadly violence.
The silver lining is that every time Trumpist incitements lead to tragedy is a chance for the fever to break and for some MAGA mobsters to come to their senses. So far, though, that is not happening. Republicans change voting laws in state after state to lock in one-party rule even as they refuse to concede the last election and insist it was rigged, possibly by a dead Venezuelan dictator. The unreality they inhabit feeds on itself.
This renders unthinkable the prospect of Republicans retaking Congress and (in two years) the White House. Building and sustaining resistance to an oppressive national regime would involve considerable difficulties amid a cacophony of social media trolls, right-wing propaganda outlets, government crackdowns, and armed militias.
In the next two months, before the fascist nightmare overtakes us, supporters of diversity and tolerance must mount an unprecedented get-out-the-vote drive. Time grows short. It is wearisome, having to battle just to live our lives. But the demons are nearly upon us.
Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist at [email protected].