American Parasite
Toxoplasma Gondii
Donald Trump‘s ascent to power in 21st Century America is a triumph of the will of sorts - a poor man’s Machiavellian masterpiece. But it’s also an example of political natural selection - an exploitation of a sparsely occupied niche in American culture. A niche that has emerged as a vast hunting ground for demagogues, as social media moved from entertainment to constant companion.
We’re seeing the consequences of this in the new predator that has emerged, and in the shift that has taken place in our democracy away from institutions that have historically sought ways to maintain a civil society. And we see it more broadly in the challenges it represents to our fundamental ideals such as pluralism, egalitarianism, and secularism in government. We see it in the literal interpretation of the 2nd Amendment and in the visible fraying around the edges of the rest of them.
Today’s Republican Party is a predator we don’t adequately understand. It no longer argues within the goal posts of managed capitalism. It advocates for a return to the unmanaged capitalism of the late 19th Century - to the economy of the Robber Barons and to the culture of the Gilded Age, an era described by Mark Twain as glittering on the outside but corrupt on the inside. If we step back and look beyond the Trumpian circus, we will see that Republicans and the plutocrats they represent are the true “free riders” in our society. They are the actual “welfare queens” of our economy - from their grossly inadequate taxation at the top, to their corporate gorging on the fruits of deregulation. And all in the name of the mythological notion of the “jobs creators” that is sold as Republican dogma.
Republican policies lend new meaning to the idea of the Tragedy of the Commons by seeking to eliminate the commons entirely - literally paving it over and building a for-profit prison in its stead. From anti-EPA policies - to the shrinking of protected public lands, from privatization of government obligations such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid - to the end of net neutrality. Republicans are rapacious in their greed, and their intellectual arguments in support of their policies are so threadbare as to be laughable.
We need to stop repeating which Trumpian policies are apocalyptic and start saying what they mean – what Republican policies mean to individuals and to the ideals of a democratic civil society. “Corporations are people, my friend”. No, they’re not.
A niche has indeed opened, and new regulation must be crafted to control this beast. Donald Trump, his presidency, and his business empire are at the apex of this GOP food chain. And while Republicans do, indeed, have more teeth than we have ass, we have to find ways to tame this beast. We have to call the GOP what it is: a parasite.
