Category Archives: Culture

Political Legitimacy is a Shared Fantasy

I remember clearly from one of my Political Science courses the professor asking the class, “When is a government Legitimate?” The answer is when people accept it as legitimate. There is no objective test, rule, or criteria that can be applied to determine legitimacy it is something acquired through consensus often an unspoken and intuitive attitude.

Donald Trump and worse yet major elements of the Republican Party have gravely and perhaps irreparably damaged the legitimacy of the U.S. Government.

Andrew Jackson, a president many hold in contempt, still recognized the legitimacy of the government even after losing in what he considered by way of ‘a corrupt bargain,’ in 1824.

Richard Nixon after losing a closely fought campaign in 1960 to Kennedy, a campaign that many felt had been influenced by potential corruption from Chicago, recognized the new Administration’s legitimacy.

Al Gore, after losing critical court battles but winning the nation’s popular vote, conceded the election to Bush and did not challenge the process as illegitimate.

In each of these cases there were some who refused to accept the outcome as legitimate. There always are but critically not the principals involved. Not the candidate themselves and not the leaders of the parties, this is not the case for the 2020 Presidential contest.

Trump is a lying narcissist, a damaged emotional wreck of a human being immature and unable to act in any manner other than greedy self-interest. (An Objectivist hero you might say.) His refusal to accept that he actually lost the election was not only predictable but heavily predicted. Because he occupies the office of POTUS that alone is enough to damage faith in the government’s legitimacy but when his refusal became a litmus test for national Republicans the damage to our nation grew.

Cowed, subjugated, and terrified of the base that they had spent decades cultivating GOP politicians refused to acknowledge the truth that Trump had lost. They filed laughable suits, they implored state government to overturn the election and made motions to disenfranchise millions of voters. And those that did not participate in these direct assaults on the very nature of our government turned a blind eye to the carnage, implored that this was simply ‘the process’ and coddled the mad child-king as he shredded faith in our system, as he destroyed legitimacy.

Foolishly they believe that once the administration has passed, they will be able to return to a pre-Trump state, but time flows in only one direction and it can never be rewound. The bell has been struck, millions of people now believe that this election was illegitimate, and that the new administration is inherently criminal.

I fear that McConnel, Fox News, and all the rest have given birth to many more Cesar Sayocs.

Reagan’s Party is Dead

Love him, loath Him, or be utterly indifferent to him there’s no denying that Ronald Reagan stood at the head of a massive movement in American Politics. Where Goldwater failed Reagan succeeded at seizing the Republican from the ‘Rockefellers’ and made it into the American Conservative Party. Ever since his victory over Carter in 1980 and his follow-up unprecedented 49 state crushing of Mondale in 84 Reagan has been the standard and the platonic ideal for every GOP national candidate until Trump.

The horrid truth, I think it is horrid no matter from where you approach it on the political spectrum except as a Trumpist is that Trump now commands the GOP more than Reagan.

In 1980 Reagan won nearly 44 million votes, about 19% of the entire American population supported him. 1984’s titanic victory came with Reagan winning 54.5 million votes and increasing the percentage of the population that supported him to 23%. (These percentage are of all people in the United States not just those eligible or just those who bothered to vote.)

With the 2016 election while losing the popular vote but winning the electoral college Trump gathers 62.9 Million votes, about 19% of the total population, comparable to Reagan’s popularity with more raw votes.

This year’s election the results are looking like Trump increased his vote total to 74.1 million votes representing a popular support of about 22% very nearly the same as Reagan’s but with a fanatical base of support willing to discount actual facts about the election outcome and equally willing to jettison decades of conservative positions for personal loyalty to Trump.

It has been 32 years since the GOP’s idol occupied the White House and with Trump his ghost has been exorcised from the party. The first real test of Trump command of the party and its candidates will come next month when we see how many national Republicans are willing the incur the child-king’s by attending the Inauguration of the new president.

Why is Trump’s Support So Damned Stable?

One undeniable fact of the entire Trump administration and his candidacy both in 2016 and 2020 is that his popular support from the voters of the Republican party remained steadfastly high no matter the external factors.

When Trump arrived on the major political landscape via that golden escalator ride down, (in cinema elevators and escalators down are symbols of trips to hell but this was for us and not for him though time will ultimately tell) he leapt to the head of the GOP pack has remained there ever since.

His policy proposals were outlandish and often violated Republican ideology such as promising to raise taxes on the wealthy and promising to give every American access to full, cheap health care. Some took this to be a sign that the GOP base didn’t have the same policy desires as the GOP elite.

Once in office however his administration when it took decisive legislative stands stood firmly for the usual GOP goals including a massive budget busting tax cut for the wealthy, a legislative attempt to repeal the ACA, continuing judicial attempt to repeal the ACA, and massive deregulation. Hardly the package he ran on, but his voters clung tighter to him.

Trump also repeatedly violated GOP trade policy, instigating trade wars that directly and adversely impacted the rural communities that are the core of GOP voter support, but the GOP voters stayed true to the man.

A pandemic swept the nation and as of this writing a quarter of a million American have died of the disease and Trump shows no remorse, no sympathy, and no cares for anything dealing with the outbreak other than his own political fortunes and yet his support from the GOP voters is unwavering.

His corruption and graft are plain. His administration is filled with people charged with serious crimes. He turned a blind eye when an American resident was murdered. Unemployment exploded. But his support is unchanged.

Why?

He has given them judges, but all Republican presidents have given the base the judges that lean towards gun right and restricting abortion and yet their approval rantings rise and fall with the news unlike Trump’s.

The answer may lie in what has remained unchanged in Trump since that escalator ride. It isn’t policy. It isn’t programs or the economy or the health and wealth of the nation.

It is his petty vindictive cruel treatment of those not of his tribe. The mocking, insulting, crude treatment of all those outside of his circle and the circle that his base consider ‘true Americans’ is his only constant. This is what they love. This is the clarion horn that calls them to battle and devote themselves to this corrupt man.

The New Soviet Man

The central and critical element off a democratic system is that the loser of a contest accepts defeat and legitimizes the contest. Without this there is no democracy. The Soviets of the USSR allowed no elections because they were unwilling to accept any result which did not validate their authority. One party rule assures that you never, ever have to concede. Concession is democratic and refusing to concede is anti-democratic.

Trump refuses to concede. The GOP, with few exceptions, is either actively refusing to concede along with him or playing silent and hoping that their cowardice is unnoticed. Trump and the GOP are being anti-democratic.

Let’s be clear. This is not ‘waiting for the process.’ The process as it had been established and conducted for generations has been followed except by Trump and his acolytes. The votes are tabulated, when one candidate has a lead that mathematically can’t be over some by the remains votes the state is called, when enough states are called that the candidate has more than 270 electoral college votes that candidate is then the President-Elect.

In November 2016, to this nation’s horror, that was Trump when he breached the ‘Blue Wall’ and won WI by 22,748 votes, MI by 10,704, and PA by 44,292. Neither his opponent nor the Democratic party refused to concede for weeks, He was the President-Elect.

Biden has rebuilt the ‘Bule Wall’ with his victories in WI by 20,546, MI by 147,393, and PA by 66,334 and with the additional victories in AZ and GA his election is unassailable. No recount, which typically shifts votes by about 500, is going to change this outcome. Joe Biden is the President-Elect. To insist that Biden shouldn’t be referred to as President-Elect is undemocratic, undermine faith in the integrity of the election, and fuels the dangerous conspiracy theory that vast voter fraud is responsible for Trump defeat. With millions of devoted followers, some of whom who have already acted with political violence, remember the mail bombs sent to Democratic politicians, this is not only dangerous to our political institutions but to the citizenry as well.

Each supporter of the conservative movement has a choice, accept the results of a free and fair election by rebuking Trump and his lies or refuse to concede, damage our democracy, and become the New Soviet Man.

Another Cliffhanger

I despise cliffhangers. Books that leave you in a lurch for 20 years, television programs that think it’s cool to have massive dramatic shifts at the close of a season, and nail-biting presidential elections, all are terribly frustrating.

As I write this the states called for Biden total to 253 electoral college votes with Trump’s total coming up to 214. Biden needs just 17 more to win the election, Pennsylvania does it, as do any two of the other five so the odds favor Biden but until the votes are tabulated we will not know.

What is clear is that the massive crushing destruction of Trumpism has not occurred. Even if Trump is defeated, which seems likely, the electoral attraction of Trumpism will remain a potent force in Republican politics. His blatant racism, sexism, and cruelty will be a weapon available for politician with an equal lack of moral but with great talent and intelligence to wield against ‘the others.’

White, male, grievance politics are not equivalent to conservatism, but they have displaced conservatism as the motivating force in GOP ideology. There are valid issues and questions that can be approached from a conservative perspective, what is the proper role of government in the economy? where does the line lie between an individual’s rights and the collective good? These questions have nothing to do with wanting to ‘own the libs’ or inflecting suffering solely for the point of suffering. There is nothing conservative is disregarding the painful death of nearly a quarter of a million Americans because it is disruptive to your election or ignoring the rule of law because adhering to it brings a painful price.

America’s future is very much in doubt.

The Central Dilemma of Economics

The central dilemma of economics is often presented as ‘people have infinite wants in a world of finite resources,’ and I would say that it is generally true, but it misses one vital aspect. That while there are in fact finite resources individuals are in general incapable of perceiving the limitations and emotionally react as though resources were in fact infinite.

Electricity is a limited resource, generated from limited resources and distributed by limited system but an individual’s relationship to electricity, at least in rich nations, is that it is always there in limitless amounts. Food, material good, are all produced in quantities so vast that it becomes nothing more than an abstraction in same way that a single death is a tragedy and 200,000 thousand a statistic.

However, when the resource limitations are stark and undeniable, survival and disaster situations, people do not act like engines of infinite wants. Contrary to most disaster and post-collapse stories people in general do not become self-centered engines of destruction and exclusion but often become more generous and supportive to others, including strangers.

On any scale beyond a few thousand people and with resources that feel infinite economics central dilemma applied in full force, but what happens if very tightly contained and constrained environments that last indefinitely?

That is one of the central questions in what is likely to be my next novel. It should be fun to explore.

The Exorcist is a Very 70s Novel

I just finished re-reading William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist. The story by now is familiar to nearly everyone interested in horror fiction. Young Regan McNeil is possessed by the spirit of demon and her fiercely atheist mother Chris McNeil after exhausting everything the worlds of science and medicine have to offer calls upon a Jesuit priest suffering a crisis of faith Father Karras and an aged but experienced exorcist Father Merrin to save her daughter.

Published in 1971 The Exorcist displays some interesting hallmarks of that period in its construction. Now, I am not referring to disco music or leisure suits but rather the way extra-sensory perceptions and abilities had been absorbed into the public consciousness.

What started in science-fiction print media and had grown throughout the 50s and 60s, telepathy, prescience, and telekinesis became accepted wisdom, along with pyramid power and ancient astronauts.

What does this have to do with a novel about the demon Pazuzu possessing the body of 12-year old Regan McNeil?

Before Karras can appeal to his Bishop for permission to perform the ritual of exorcism he must first eliminate the possibility that the phenomena associated with Regan are natural and explainable by the science at the time. This includes the shaking of her bed, objects flying about her room, and Regan possessing knowledge of events and languages unknown to her.

As Karras grapples with the enormity of the possibility of an actual possession his faith, already shaken, is undermined by the explanation that all the strange events may be caused by telepathy and telekinesis. This is not a by-product of Karras being a person who is weak in his scientific knowledge or understanding, he is a trained and respected psychiatrist. The novel, though published in the early 70s, is so infused with the popular wisdom at the time, that this priest of science considers telekinesis are rational and scientific justification for observed events.

I was a teenager in the late 70s and re-reading the novel for the first time in many decades it is a strange deja vu sensation to be brought back to that unique period in American Culture.

My 9-11 Memories

While 2020 seems an endless treadmill of terror the 19 years between today and 2001 seem like a flash that passed with the swiftness of a hummingbird’s dive.

September 2001, I worked the overnight as a specimen processor at Quest Diagnostics. I ran a machine that took very little active thought and throughout the night usually listened to a ‘boom box’ tuned to a local radio station. One the morning of September 11th, as often happened, the radio’s reception turned spotty and the station alternated between clear signal and migraine inducing static. Just before reception failed entirely, I heard a breaking news report that an aircraft had apparently collided into the World Trade Center.

My first thoughts were that some light general aviation aircraft had lost its way and slammed into the building much like in 1949 when a B-25 Mitchell had struck the Empire State Building. Tragic, people had died, but not a monumental news story.

Unable to get any further news I completed my shift and left for home. At the bus stop, in those years I was bound by mass transit, a young man listening to a handheld transistor radio with a single earpiece pushed into his ear said that one of the towers had fallen.

I did not believe him but kept quiet. So often in the immediate moments after something breaks on national news there are rumors and exaggerations and still with no knowledge of what exactly had happened, I was disinclined to believe the most sensationalist version of events.

Disembarking from my bus I stopped off at a 7-11 on the way back to my apartment and on the televisions playing in the store saw the horrible truth. In that moment it changed from being a ‘news story’ to history we were living through. I called friends and woke them up and as the day passed dread for our future grew.

Since that day, September 11th, 2001, we have been in constant war. Thousands lost their lives and it’s difficult to assess that we have made any meaningful progress since then. The culprits directly responsible have mostly been dealt with but the underlying conditions have scarcely changed and the toll it has taken on our national character, it opened the door for American to be known as a nation that tortures prisoners, it incalculable.

It is no test to be moral when times are good the test is when anger burns the blood, when vengeance enflames the mind, that is when the test truly comes and people discover who you really are.

It is up to us to change the tense of that verb, from who we are to who we were.

Is the Mafia a Militia?

A common action among firearm rights supporters is to organize into independent militias invoking the phrasing of the second amendment as a support for their actions. This is often combined with a fairly strict anti-government mentality and a stated readiness to combat the government should it overreach. This bravado has been on display this year with displays pf tyrannical government overreach such as public health measures combating a lethal global pandemic.

The Mafia and organized crime in general whether it be Russian international criminals laundering millions of dollars through real estate or Baltimore youths dealing in street drugs are all armed and anti-government are they too also militias?

The question is ludicrous of course they are not but what divides the ‘militia’ from the ‘gang?’

It is important to remember that when the second amendment refers to a ‘well regulated militia,’ it is speaking of a common and well understand definition. The militia was an irregular force that could be called up and activated at the state’s requirement. The need for individuals to have a right to bear arms was essential as the militias were not funded and supplied by the several or individual states. Each man brought his arms and the commander of the local militia, and these were men of wealth and property, financed the heavier arms such as cannons. It is clear from history and intent that the second amendment is an individual right that supports the militia’s existence.

But any group of people with arms are not a militia.

When a group of people self-organize to enforce the law as they see it, pass judgement on guilt, and met of punishment, they are not a jury they are a mob and are not conducting a trail but a lynching.

As with a jury a militia is an arm of the state. A citizen can arm themselves to prepared to fulfill their duty to the state as a member of the militia but the activation and deployment of the militia is a state matter not one of personal preference or self-aggrandizement.

If you organize, cross state lines, and commit likely crimes you are not a ‘militia’ you are a gang.

Was The Cold War Just Over Tax Rates?

From the post-World War II period through to 1991 the United States of American and its allies engaged in a deadly game of brinksmanship utilizing nuclear bombers, middles, and artillery, with the Soviet Union and its allies for the fate of the world. We were assured that this was a war that pitted democracy, with the First World, the USA and its allies, against the tyranny Second World, the USSR and its allies with humanity’s future balanced on the knife’s edge. The USSR’s collapse ended the conflict and revealed a corrupt, monstrous system if lies, propaganda, and murder.

And the American Republican Party can’t let the war go.

In any two-party system each of the two major parties are a coalition of interests ideally with a few unifying themes or goals and for the second half of the 20th century what unified the GOP was a dedicated stance against the USSR and communism. Bereft of that binding force the GOP floundered for compelling arguments for its election and finally settled on culture war issues that satisfied its religious wing, energized it racist elements, and the business elements provided the control rods required to keep the entire pile from going super-critical and melting down. Beginning in 1994 more and more of those control rods were removed until 2016 provided the final crisis, sent the entire stack critical, and released the rampaging nuclear monstrosity that is Donald J. Trump.

And now we have reached a point where a majority of the GOP finds more than 170,000 pandemic deaths ‘acceptable,’ and in order to retain their minoritarian grip on power our votes are being undermined, the Post Office is sabotaged, and very concept of democracy is under assault. So, what was that Cold War victory for? Was it just to preserve low taxes for the wealthy? Was the entire conflict about biblical literalism? It must have been because it seems the only charge the GOP knows to deploy is to point at their opponents and with mouths agape like the 70s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, scream ‘Communist!’ And like that movie it is an idea out of time and out of place with the moment.

Robert Mitchell Evans

Literary Saboteur