VIEWPOINT / A NATION DIVIDED

By W. Timothy Weaver, Ph.D.

As a nation, we are divided into halves, one not resembling the other. As if a cell gone wrong, one half has inherited two copies of the mutated allele. It has taken on the appearance of a recessive gene, one unseen for nearly 90 years in the western world. This cell appears to be a throwback to authoritarianism and fascist tendencies that arose in Europe and America in the 1930s. The other seems to be a continuation of the two-century experiment dedicated to forming a more perfect union. 

The recessive gene has metastasized and spread. Now we see an entire political party without a single voice to speak for enlightenment, for openness, for the most basic democratic norms of equality, fairness and justice. The GOP has succumbed to Trumpism and the very worst instincts of our nature—fear, bigotry, hatred, arrogance, deceit—and a renewed embrace of segregation broadly defined. In foreign policy, the entire party has abandoned 60 years of western thought regarding Russian expansionism and oppression. Now, a sizeable majority of Republicans support Putin and his imminent invasion of Ukraine. Josh Hawley is one example of this anomalistic shift in the party.

The GOP is a simulacrum of the former party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush. How is this metamorphosis possible in so short a time? Trump was the match that ignited the underlying and festering strains of anti-intellectualism, disgust of government, and the growing violent movements once hidden by the forests of the mid-west, the western plains and by the isolation of rural America. This festering caldron of hate and resentment, stirred by a sense of anomie and being overpowered by change, had been somewhat latent until Trump. We occasionally read about militias, the Timothy McVeys, the Ted Kaczynskis, and the Amon Bundys of the far right. These have seemed like isolated events. 

Then came Charlottesville and it was all suddenly out in the open. The norm. “Good people on both sides.” Now, the extreme rightwing movement is public and it is being joined by Trump sycophants in high office. Politicians are drinking heavily of the Kool-Aid, people like Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Matt Gaetz. The Boogaloo Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys are joining forces, coordinating and communicating, working together, and the totally nutty conspiracy thinking of Q-Anon is griping the right. 

Banning books has now become the recessive norm of the GOP. Books about anyone different are segregated from others and banned. In their world, transgender children are to be segregated from their peers in sports, bathrooms and social gatherings. By legislation the GOP wishes to segregate women from all others who, unlike women, have the right to control their own bodies. They encourage the refusal of vaccines and masks with the same canned response—my body, my choice. But, not for women. They seek to erase all who disagree, who seek justice, all who are unlike them. 

They seek a segregated society, a compartmentalized social order in which they share only common characteristics and values, and all others are cast aside. Blatant antisemitism, racism and homophobia are out the open. Senator Wicker of Mississippi openly hinted what the rest are thinking. Black women can’t possibly qualify on their own for the Supreme Court. They can only reach that high through “affirmative action.” They openly and collectively imply that black women could not be smart enough or trustworthy enough to take a seat on the supreme court of the United States. They condemn Biden’s decision to appoint a black woman to the Court as “quota systems.” 

They are becoming emboldened, arrogant, violent. They literally chant, “Jews will not replace us.” Trump recently exhorted a crowd to join massive protests if he is charged with crimes in New York, referring to the cases about his illegal business practices, in Washington regarding his role in the insurrection, and in Atlanta for Fulton County DA daring to prosecute his attempts to rig the election in Georgia. At the same rally, he promised to pardon the 700 people now charged with violence, trespassing, sedition and storming the US Capitol.

As a nation, because an entire political party no longer embraces the ideals of liberal democracy, we no longer have the moral authority to lead the west, to lecture our enemies or to win others to our way of life. We have lost the high ground. We are losing our democracy and fundamental shared values as a nation. We are divided like cells into two camps, one in no way similar to the other. Lincoln warned of a house divided. Franklin warned that we must work to keep our Republic. We aren’t listening.

The Republican Party, under thrall of Trump, is a clear and present danger. They resemble nothing more than a butyraceous version of a once proud political party devolved into a form totally unrecognizable. They have formed a collaborative and integrated movement, one that threatens the very institutions that have preserved freedoms in America since the founding. Trump has shown the way to transform a democracy into an autocracy led by cult leaders and breaking bread with the richest 5% of Americans who benefit financially from their being in power. The movement is not dumb. They know they need to cozy up to the Koch brothers and others who want to keep their privileges intact. Corporate money finds its way to this movement. PACs are formed daily by the co-conspirators in public life. PAC money is virtually unregulated. PAC money can be used to buy nearly anything. The rightwing PACs are fed by rightwing corporate giants who just look the other way as long as their power positions are not threatened.

Thinking about the old concept of Force Field Analysis, the only thing that will stop this movement is one opposing it of equal force, energy and resources. This is a titanic struggle for the soul of America, and not exactly as Biden was thinking. The opposing force must have an equally charismatic leader, an inspiring leader. The left needs to be reawakened. The leftist movement of the 1960s is the type of force needed, sans the violence, to oppose the right. 

This will only happen when the young people of America actually wake up and see firsthand that their future is in jeopardy. Movements start with the young. It’s hard for the old Democratic war horses to rise to the occasion. Biden is doing his best, God bless him, but the passion is with the Kamala Harris’s, the Amanda Gormans, Beto O’Rourkes, Cory Bookers and Stacey Abrams’s of the world. Passion comes from indignation. They are indignant. We need them. They are our future.

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