My Blog Week: July 12 to July 18

A Word on the Week

The Burned-Out Asset

Civil Rights giant John Lewis died this week. Resistance Twitter (how we need Resistance Twitter these days!) got busy with this video, showing Florida governor Ron DeSantis giving all the facial mantlings of a bitch towards a better-loved rival, when responding (which he refuses to do) to a question on his reaction. Today, the president praised the confederate flag. Once upon a time, Americans who counted themselves conservative had a party. Conservatism by definition requires withdrawing from evidences of extremism, and touting the well-tempered alternative. What do GOP senators from northern states gain by refusal to comment on this escalation of racial provocations?

The Republican party’s willingly handing over the spotlight to bitches and skittish drama queens, shrinking violets, ripe-lipped old naughty boys like John Kennedy (R-La) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), at least lends impetus to our brave new egalitarian society’s brave new realities. Gender, in terms of behavior or presentation, is a construct of the culture, and doesn’t really exist. There is no girl or boy way to be, only ways traditionally taught and rewarded, largely to the detriment of women.

The GOP can flounce on madly, but the underlying desperation to rig the 2020 election, with a strategy that in part suggests class-based genocide through neglect, is for its members a make-or-break. Candidates for office need to renounce and denounce, or be assumed compliant. The nature of the evil (secret police, violent assaults on peaceful protesters, curtsying away from condemning white supremacy) isn’t the sort of thing that can fade into the background, and be forgotten when the excrescence has been extracted. Innocent until proven guilty, yes…when commission of crimes is the accusation. There are certain values that are American, and material to democracy. No one who holds these values has cause to be ashamed. No one should trade them away, for eyeing of the main chance, or fear of being bitch-slapped by a party boss. To associate yourself with evil practices, and give silent support to evil people, is to be and do all that they are and do. 

Which brings us to the question of whether Trump holds any remaining value for supporters (billionaires and foreign propagandists alike) who wanted laxer regulations at home, and a friendlier attitude towards unfavored nations abroad. After all, it’s the notion of heritage, of beliefs passed from generation to generation, that provides whatever thin justification confederate flag lovers have for their political ideas. The post-Civil War era is not forgotten? Well, this is an era we live in right now, and the hatred Trump is sowing in his many, many victims will live through the generations. He polls badly. He has no ideas other than dog whistling. He appeals to no one other than the dog-whistleable.

Anti-Trump voters are passionate. They are also courageous and committed, willing to mask up and take the COVID risk, to win their constitutionally-guaranteed bid for justice. The GOP has cultivated a voter-base who throw public hissy fits, who weep and moan at inconvenience and discomfort, and whose thinking is mostly magical.