Crazies running the asylum
"And lest the Democrats get all high and mighty about the irrational component of the Republican coalition, they should remember that they have a similar problem on their far left.”
Michael Trigoboff, comment to yesterday's blog post
"The difference is that the Dem’s 'crazies' are out on the fringe. The Rep’s 'crazies' are running the asylum."
Art Baden, comment to yesterday's blog post
Both major political parties have their extremists, people full of passionate intensity with opinions spiraling far from the center. Yesterday's blog post by Tam Moore spoke of his dismay at the direction his GOP has taken, from Eisenhower to Gingrich to Trump. I wrote on May 21 of my frustration with how badly Democratic leaders handled violence in Portland. Click. Voters saw street violence night after night and decided that Democrats couldn't keep America safe.
The crazies, we will always have with us.
Democrats chose Biden, and in doing so, denied its left flank. Bernie Sanders makes it easy for opponents to describe him as extreme. Sanders represents Vermont in the Senate, a small state with the politics of a college town. Sanders expressed an ideology that sounded 1960s-radical, not day-to-day practical. of He called himself a "Democratic Socialist," who caucused with Democrats, but wasn't one. He gets style points for independence, but he also gets the near-inevitable consequence of saying he was outside the great coalition of Democrats: They didn't choose him to lead them.
The other politically troublesome people on the political left are the people trying to sell Critical Race Theory, and the idea that racism and patriarchy are thoroughly imbedded in American culture--invisible, yet so thoroughly a part of it that it colors all relationships. The notion of the essential corruption of humanity and civilization are old thoughts in Western Civilization. "In Adam's fall we sinned all" is mainstream Judeo-Christian orthodoxy. American Transcendentalists said civilized society estranged us from our essential nature. Either way, society was corrupt. It should not be a hard sell to convince Americans that our culture gives men an edge. Traditionally, males are the default "regular" human, an idea embedded in law, culture, and language, as has been White-ness.
The "crazy" in Critical Race Theory in practice is its evangelism and its direct accusation that people who resist its truth are oppressors who need to be outed and shamed. Americans are familiar with religious and ideological zealotry. It had been more common on the political right, and still exists there. Professors are pushed out of jobs in colleges with religious affiliations for visibly "wrong thought," and homosexuals and women seeking abortion have been scolded and shamed. Seven states have bans on atheists holding public office, although by Supreme Court rulings these are not enforceable. Authoritarianism of the left is mostly new. The Democratic left was the "free thinker" and lifestyle-libertine party, the party of atheists, beatniks, hippies, and doing one's own thing. But there is the sweet joy of righteousness in pointing a finger at moral depravity in others, and some on the left have developed a taste for it. It is a political loser for Democrats, and the scolds on the left create horror stories of intolerance that circulate and damage the Democratic brand.
Joe McCarthy mapping suspected communists
This section of the left, too, has been rejected by mainstream Democrats--the Democrats who center the party. Joe Biden is neither a Bernie quasi-socialist nor "woke."
Democrats have their insufferable crazies, but they outvoted them. Joe Biden now knows not to hug women. He adjusted. He appoints women and Blacks to prominent positions so that his administration "looks like America." It is body language politics. How else does one change the default notion that White men should be in charge than by appointing non-Whites and women to many of those positions? One's default notions of who fits a category changes when one's observations change. Biden is not being extreme--unless one defines as extreme senior jobs being filled anyone other than White males. In that case, the charge of implicit bias is confirmed.
Meanwhile, the GOP has succumbed to its crazies--even if everyone in the party has not gone themselves gone crazy. Republican majorities agree that overthrowing the government to maintain Trump in office is either an outright positive, or at least not so bad as to be openly criticized. I consider the removal of Liz Cheney and the silence of Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell and other senior Republicans as strong evidence of the mainstreaming of crazy. I consider the avoidance of the issue by a savvy self-described moderate, Jessica Gomez, the new GOP candidate for Oregon governor, more confirmation. Click
Gomez
Tam Moore yesterday in this blog voiced a wish that his Republican party would reform itself from within. I wish that voices of the majority of Democrats were as charismatic and sure-footed and media-savvy as are the voices of its extremes.
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