Politics 2021

 I don't write much about politics here anymore.  Why warn of what everyone knows is happening?  Just because the Rabid Right misuses Nazi analogies, doesn't mean they don't apply.  We are Germany in the early 1930s.  Our march to 21st century virtual reality fascism seems inexorable, if not inevitable.  

How many times did political pundits declared the Republican party discredited, disreputable and dead as they crossed one normative line after another?  But Republicans either quit or got with the fascist program, or else were punished and purged.  Now they are all but officially the American White Supremacist Fascist Party, even if many of their officeholders have zero integrity or commitment to democracy or even an ideology, and are only interested in retaining personal political power at any cost and the open taps of certain corporate supporters.

But the clincher is Covid.  Republican officeholders are creating conditions for more people to get sick and die so they can blame it on Biden.  They are sacrificing actual real lives (though mostly old people) for political gain.  Usually politicians don't do this so blatantly.  But is the American public alarmed and outraged?  Nearly 800,000 deaths officially--half a million people over 65-- and certainly many more than are officially counted, apparently aren't enough to matter.  How many lives will it take till we know that too many people have died?  The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

Whatever the historical analogies of our current rigid political and cultural divisions, the mutual disdain and distrust in any government (or science or anything else) by what seems like a substantial proportion of the population--this polititcization of everything--offers gloomy prospects for effective response to future national challenges, including the foreseeable effects of climate distortion.  And that's regardless of any electoral outcomes.   

The electorate in 2021 seems composed of one-quarter Rabid Right fascists and one-quarter surly and impulsive voters, unable or unwilling to absorb or judge crucial information, whose voting patterns is little more than acting out.  Because of them (and Democrats who didn't vote), Republicans successfully market-tested their fascism in this year's elections.  Who would have believed that fulminating members of a party that says what everybody saw happen on January 6 didn't happen, would actually win the next elections. (We will see if these elections were won on national issues or local issues plus the respective candidates.  Less publicized were some recent local elections that Democrats unexpectedly swept.)

The other half of the electorate broadly agree with one another, but obsess on what fractures them from the others.   They can be coalesced around a candidate like Obama, or to oppose a Trump.  But in 2021 no Obama is apparent. 

 President Joe Biden is fearless and a smart political operator--he knew enough to ask for more than he expected to get, and he still may wind up with several multi-trillion dollar changes for the better.  But the default position of the American media and public is to listen to very little of what a President says.  Even a politician with the skills of an FDR would find it difficult to get through.  Homegrown Hitler did, but being the Troll-in-Chief only gets you attention and a cult of personality --it can't get bring a country together around a vision or a program.  Demagogues have the advantage of evoking the violent dark side; it's harder to guide the light.  

Making a speech while standing in front of a broken bridge or a sparkling solar panel doesn't get you more than a sound bite that comes and goes.  Not since JFK and LBJ has there been a Democrat who could command attention over the noise, at least enough.  Whatever it takes to "communicate" these days, Democrats haven't yet figured it out.  In 2021, it's hard to see where that skill or voice will come from.  It's also not clear who will replace Biden and Nancy Pelosi--the Last American Hero--in effective legislating.

President Biden is less than one-fourth into his term. Things can change (though I wouldn't count on the egregious abortion/choice issue, to do it.)  Whether or not voting rights legislation is possible or can come soon enough to govern the rules for 2022 or 2024 is one of the big questions for the coming year.

But Biden will still be President for both those elections.  In the coming year--and certainly by 24--the White House should be seriously gaming out federal responses to various alarming possibilities, just as if they were the Pentagon preparing for various war scenarios.  For it seems that if the Republicans haven't gerrymandered themselves into power, they will try to negate elections and elect themselves at the state level.  And if that doesn't work, armed insurrection is next on the menu. 

 Before January 6, 2021, that might have seemed like paranoia.  Not now. So what will the federal response be to an insurrection taking over the government of Georgia?  Of Michigan?  Of reversing the outcome of federal elections?  Some folks need to be thinking about this now, and getting reliable resources ready. For the United States has enemies, foreign and domestic--and the most obvious right now are the domestic.