Like the apocryphal Chinese saying “May you live in interesting times.”
These times are interesting, all right.
In other words, that quote is probably not from the Chinese, but from an Englishman who made a mistake. A bit less dramatic, eh? That is the life we are living now everywhere. Truth is relative, facts can be embellished and dramatized, and depending on which tribe you’re with, you never trust the opposing tribe, no matter what they say. Former American president Donald Trump did not invent the right-wing fever swamp, but he weaponized it like no one ever has, and used his office to push lies, racist conspiracy theories, and wild accusations against Democratic pols. So as a result, we have a situation where the Republican party has become a den of misfits and the Democratic party cannot seem to fight them effectively. We also now have climate change that is threatening our existence on planet Earth. We have Russia invading a sovereign country and thumbing its nose at the rest of the world.
Regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a fellow Substack writer has an interesting piece out. I was particularly interested in the part under the heading “Today: Co-opting Wokeism to Do a Racist Imperialism” that details why the Russians felt bold enough to threaten NATO and the free world. He said, roughly, that our culture’s complexity and obsessions with such things as intersectionality and #metoo created an opportunity for a brutal dictatorship to just basically say “Fuck all of you, we do what we want”, and just do that.
Be that as it may, we have multiple existential crises and it is difficult to focus on one. But for the purpose of simplicity, I will do just that. What I feel that I need to focus on today is the most immediate threat to my country. That would be the Republican party. I have done all kinds of stuff over the years in my comments on op-ed pieces and in blogs. I have demonized and made fun of the Republicans. I have slurred them and dehumanized them. Just a few days ago, however, I had an epiphany. I thought, How am I going to win over anybody if I make fun of them and attack their intelligence? But now I realize that we have come to a point where there is no time to convert anybody. If it was ever likely to happen on a significant scale in the first place. See, the thing is, now we have a five-alarm fire raging in our apartment house. We are in the living room next to the exit door to the hallway, and the door is red-hot. Meaning that it is about to flash over and opening the door would be suicidal. Meaning that our 250-year old experiment in democracy is about to end for a long time, if not forever. It is in-your-face obvious, as Danielle Moodie eloquently described it in this opinion piece. in the Daily Beast. The woman is not playing. But we have folks like President Biden seeming to be completely unaware that their ship has hit an iceberg.
So, I have come to the conclusion that comity and civility need to take a back seat to the preservation of our democratic experiment. The forefathers formed an imperfect union, to be sure. Slavery was legal and practiced by many on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Women were not equal. Child labor laws were nonexistent. But we were, and are, a work in progress. As Ben Franklin famously said (I see this quote a lot these days), “We gave you…a Republic if you can keep it”. He said a lot more, but that is sufficient to make my point without any distortion to his meaning.
Nobody is playing any more. I am not playing. Danielle Moodie isn’t playing. The right wing has decided that it is more important to stay in power than it is to continue our democratic republic. It is long past time to fight fire with fire. The Republicans are unhindered by ethical or factual restraints, and they have a media complex headed by an angry Australian family that regularly broadcasts right wing propaganda into millions of American homes. If we don’t fight like our lives depended on it and not try to get along with a psychopathic terrorist party, it will be our end.