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The politics of cynicism, the GOP playbook for a post-democratic America... [1]
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Date: 2022-10-20
Partisan burlesque
cynicism, noun, The belief that people are only interested in themselves and are not sincere.
The Republican Party post-Donald Trump has adopted cynicism as its motivating ideal. How else can we explain the candidacies of Herschel Walker, Kari Lake, J.D. Vance, and the prominence in the party of Margorie Taylor Green, Ron Johnson, Matt Gaetz et. al.? The post-Trump GOP is the cynical aberrant of the conservative movement that has rejected the American social contract that has evolved since the nation’s founding, The “party of Trump” has systematically shorn all semblance of democratic governing.
It has been said that the GOP of the 20th century had lived with a version of FDR envy. The 32nd president who guided the nation through a worldwide depression and a world war was able to articulate a social agenda that lifted the U.S. from a developing world power into the modern superpower that emerged in the mid-century. His social policies extended the social safety net to make possible many of the gains realized by the underserved and underrepresented groups during and after his presidency. FDR cast a long shadow over Republican politics throughout the century as the coalition of voters who found a home in the Democratic Party grew to include the poor, the middle class, and minorities. More importantly, FDR was able to appoint an unprecedented 9 justices to the Supreme Court in his 4 terms and Truman followed with 4 appointments of his own. Of the 13 appointments, 8 remained through the groundbreaking Brown v Board decision that began the recognition of civil and voting rights that extended citizen participation in our democratic experiment to most Americans.
In the single term of the 45th president, the three appointments he was gifted have put in jeopardy the gains of the past century. Of the 11 judgments listed by the ABA as “landmark cases”, 6 of them were recorded after 1950 and all included an extension of rights to minorities (Brown, Bakke), defendants (Gideon, Miranda), women (Roe), and the Tinker decision which protected students’ right to protest during the Viet Nam era. It is highly questionable today that any of these watershed decisions that advanced the rights of citizenship would be decided similarly under the conservative courts engineered by Republican presidents G.H.W. Bush (Thomas and also Souter), G.W. Bush Roberts and Alito) and Trump (Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh). The Roberts court’s recent Dobbs decision has placed Roe in its sights and is a harbinger of things to come given the partisan nature of the present court.
The GOP has discovered that partisanship trumps (excuse the pun) fairness and equality on the court, and has now determined to extend its cynical view of governance to Congress and statewide races. The GOP has decided to support election deniers, ignoramuses, bigots, and racists to exercise raw political power aimed at reconstituting the more imperfect past that we have evolved from. They not only look to slow the advancement of democracy, but they are intent on walking it back. It is as if the rights and privileges identified in our founding documents are somehow pieces on a chess board to be won or lost and not, as our founders intended them to be— inherent and inalienable.
Real V. Partisan Grievances
If one were to compare the list of grievances listed as the reasons the colonists decided to separate from England, it would be difficult to distinguish those committed by George III from those being promoted by a cynical and overbearing GOP :
He has refused his Assent to Laws... He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance... He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners... He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers... He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries... He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people... For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments... He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us...
Republicans have given over control of their party to modern-day political barbarians whose goal is not to build a nation, promote unity, and preserve equality; but rather, to foment violence and gain power by turning us against one another.
Cynicism as philosophy is neither bad nor good— it is a reality check. As a governing inclination, however, cynical leadership is abhorrent to a democracy. Democracy is built on trust and hopeful optimism. Its power to create something new and better is limited because it is reactive. When used as a blunt tool to sew division cynicism becomes a tool for thoughtless leaders— like George III and Donald Trump. The cynical Republicans employ grievances built on distortions and pique. In the hands of those who favor autocracy rather than democratic processes, cynicism turns on itself. Despots require the questioning of standards and order to replace them with an aberrant, unquestioned power. And so the party that was once known as the standard-bearer for freedom and equality— the “party of Lincoln”— has become a tool for those who advocate for the opposite.
The cynical nature of the GOP, choosing power over governance, and bad candidates over reasonable ones, is a sign of looming disaster. Either democracy or its opponents survive. H.L. Mencken’s description of the cynic exposes its weakness— they live with great doubt:
“A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”
― H.L. Mencken
The Human Owl
Trump, for his part, should check his olfactory senses because the sweet smell of his delaying tactics may be a precursor to his own demise. Judge David O. Carter just yesterday (October 19, 2022) ruled that emails from John Eastman to the ex-president constitute fraud subverting the 2020 election. The judge wrote:
“The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public… The Court finds that these emails are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States…Dr. Eastman and other attorneys suggest that – irrespective of the merits – the primary goal of filing is to delay or otherwise disrupt the January 6 vote.”
This is the same federal judge who suggested that the evidence in the filing made by the government was probable evidence of a felony. The GOP that prizes and fears Trump as its titular leader is both victim and perpetrator of the MAGA ruse spun from thin air and threatening to end American democracy. The courts are our only salvation given the present circumstances. With Republicans poised to take both the House and Senate and with Democrats in our typical disarray, it may well be left to prosecutors, judges, and jurors to decide whether democracy perseveres.
We, as Democrats, have no choice but to trust one another and put aside our intra-party differences to provide a united front against politics of cynicism— the political burlesque the Republican Party has adopted in their pursuit of power:
“The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to the light, always pursuing vermin and never hunting noble game.”
― Henry Ward Beecher
Trump and his cynical movement are courting disaster. Whether they win the day or are defeated at the polls, they are left with little more than an unhealthy questioning of what they had wrought. Their single-minded aim to tear down and destroy is their own undoing— because in the end they have no better plan, have no tools to create something better than what they disdain.
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