FLEETING EXPLETIVES
FLEETING EXPLETIVES
April 17, 2020
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” - Who will guard the guards themselves? - Roman poet Juvenal from his “Satires”, 2nd Century AD
How do we silence the propaganda of Fox News? How do we silence the disinformation of an American President who uses the forum of the White House press briefing to further his state propaganda? His words will result in the deaths of tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocents. American citizens. How do we silence the First Amendment when it is used as a weapon against us?
November will be an epic battle to restore America. If we succeed, we will be in a position to restore Democratic institutions and regulations that provide oversight on corporate excess – this time. We will reestablish a federal government dedicated to the original tenets of American Democracy as conceived by America’s founders – this time.
Democrats see one nation, the nation organized under the principles of the liberal democracy mutually negotiated by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. We see our nation as the proof of concept of the idea conceived by the Athenian Cleisthenes in 500 BC, and by the English philosopher, John Locke. We see America as the social contract depicted by Locke in his "Second Treatise of Government” of 1689 - and by the philosophies of the Enlightenment thinkers whose ideas were the model of our own Constitution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWHHCn_7QKc
But it is time to recognize that this is not the nation that the Republican Party sees anymore. It’s no longer a party of ideas argued in the public sphere. The Republican Party of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump no longer supports the tenets of American Democracy at all. The ideology of this political movement, when examined in the refulgent light of day, is the antithesis of democracy. It is the corruption of the legal tenets that have underscored our safety, our freedoms, and our equality under the law. Instead of protecting the rights of the least among us, this new Republican Party grants elaborate rights only to the wealthy. Instead of protecting the diversity of Americans, this new Republican Party has established a state religion that dictates policy in the social sphere while increasingly inveigling its way into the laws that govern all of the nation.
There are many pivotal battles that have been won by the GOP over the last 5 decades, battles that generated the momentum for today’s Republican movement. But the battle that was perhaps the most consequential, the fight that created an irreversible momentum for this toxic form of Republicanism, arrived with the Supreme Court decision that granted personhood to corporations – the Citizens United ruling of 2010. This was the day the music died for your father’s Republican Party. This 5-4 partisan ruling was the linchpin that released the hounds on American democracy. Associate Supreme Court Justice, John Paul Stevens, argued in his dissenting opinion that the ruling represented "a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government." Indeed. The ruling resulted in unlimited election spending by corporations and the rise of Super PACs. Outside money eclipsed the “one person-one vote” notion of democracy and opened the barn door to the political disinformation that now characterizes the regime of Donald Trump. This ruling ate the First Amendment whole and smacked its lips afterward. But this Republican Party still relies upon the myth that Donald Trump is what Evangelical Christians have been waiting for. Without the support from this group, Republicans cannot win.
Trumpism is endemic to America. Democracy must be taught over and over again, because one-third of our electorate is caught up in a cult of personality. One-third of our population, America’s Evangelical Christian voters, is convinced that there is a straight line that runs from Jesus and Donald Trump. They understand criticism of Trump as another lash on his back, a crown of thorns he must wear for his apostasy against the deep state, his apostasy against the makers who disperse jobs to the needy. They believe that the jobs now vanishing before our eyes are not the fault of Donald Trump. In 2012, The Economist estimated that more than 100 million Americans can be considered evangelical, and they are part of Donald Trump’s base of supporters. This group of voters are Juvenal’s Guards. They are the watchers who watch the watchmen. They are in the Senate, the House, and they hold sway on the Supreme Court.
So, maybe it’s time to speak with them directly. Maybe we should pull them back from the edge of this tragic idea being promulgated by roadside revivalists feigning piety. Christians must make the case that Donald Trump is not the Second Coming of anything good. That Evangelicals are, in fact, witnessing what Jesus warned against: “The Great Deception”.
Instead of dismissing this very large segment of our electorate as hopelessly uneducated, we should ask Christians to remind Evangelicals of Jesus’s own words: “If anyone says to you then, 'Look, here is the Messiah!' or, 'There he is!' do not believe it. False messiahs and false prophets will arise, and they will perform signs and wonders so great as to deceive, if that were possible, even the elect. — Matthew 24:21, 24 (NAB)
If Democrats speak to each of these 100 million Americans in the language that they know and love, they can actually win this battle and finally, finally assure victory in this war to protect the future of our democracy.
