The National Clown Show

I have done my best to avoid following the national clown show, aka the campaign to decide the Republican candidate for President in 2016. I think there are 17 announced candidates (or was it 27?). I do know that a man named Trump, has so far “trumped” all the others, based on being the most outrageously stupid contender, which, it would appear, appeals to those who have had their brains washed (both literally and figuratively) by years of Faux News.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a card-carrying member of the Republican Party. But I used to think that at least a few Republicans had their heads screwed on straight, even if I didn’t agree with them. Not anymore. One has to wonder what happened and why there aren’t “sensible” voices on the right staking out a claim for one of their own.

So why bother to write about them. Because this clown show is actually a very important side show in the larger circus being orchestrated by the Koch brothers, ALEC and the other tea party reactionaries. I’m not much on conspiracy theories, but it is clear to me that the anti-government strategy of the right depends on creating and constantly reinforcing cynicism among the American populace about government and politics.

Despite the best efforts of Faux News and much of the mainstream media, the majority of Americans (in many cases the LARGE majority) disagree with the reactionaries on just about every single issue. How to keep these Americans from getting involved in politics and fighting for the issues they support and how to keep them from the polls is the focus of much of the right’s activities. Voter suppression and gerrymandering can only do so much. Don’t get me wrong, these actions are a very serious threat to democracy. But cynicism can be very effective in keeping those who can still vote from going to the polls – just look at the turnout for the 2014 election, which was the lowest in the last 70 years.

So where does the clown show fit in? It turns attention away from the serious issues confronting us and it makes politics into a joke. All one sees is one buffoon after another grabbing the headlines by attacking what the government has done, consistently emphasizing the negative in order to leave the impression that there is nothing that can be done other than “to get government out of the way”.  It is one part of a strategy to disable the opposition (read Democrats) by creating Fear, Uncertainty and Distrust (FUD) among the general public.

What can be done? The fight back involves a vigorous defense of the role of government (and of the “commons” – more about that in another post) in a democratic society and of those institutions that serve the needs of the people. We need to hammer away at how Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. are essential to the quality of life for the elderly, the disabled, the poor and can be paid for by repealing the massive tax cuts for the very rich which have been enacted over the past 40 years.

We must renew support for public education, which is the most important investment we can make for the future. We must defend the Affordable Care Act, demanding that it be expanded rather than repealed, since healthcare in the richest society in history ought to be a right of every citizen.

We have to make it clear that the alternative to diplomacy in dealing with the Iranian government is another long, destabilizing war like those in Afghanistan and Iraq, only on a much greater scale. We need to emphasize that taxes are investments in our future, not burdens that deprive us of our hard earned cash. And most important of all we need to be crystal clear that black and brown lives matter and that women must have control over their own bodies.

In other words we must not give in to those who would have us compromise, tone down the rhetoric, duck and weave when controversial issues (say Obamacare) come up. We must resist the temptation to moderate our demands in order to broaden our appeal to those in the middle (as if such a thing still exists), since all this does is move the “middle” further to the right. It is a strategy that has seen progressives loose again and again over the past 40 years. This is the appeal of candidate Bernie Sanders and non-candidate Elizabeth Warren.

To paraphrase a former Republican candidate for President, extremism in the pursuit of justice is a virtue. In my opinion it is also a strategy for winning.