"In forty years [since 1980], Republicans went from opposing Democrats’ policies, to insisting that Democrats were socialists who had no right to govern, to the idea that Republicans have a right to rig the system to keep voters from being able to elect Democrats to office. Now they appear to have gone to the next logical step: that democracy itself must be destroyed to create permanent Republican rule in order to make sure the government cannot be used for the government programs Americans want.
When Trump says that our history focuses too much on how bad slavery was, he is not simply downplaying the realities of human enslavement: he is advocating a world in which Black people, people of color, poor people, and women should let elite white men lead, and be grateful for that paternalism. It is the same argument elite enslavers made before the Civil War to defend their destruction of the idea of democracy to create an oligarchy. When Trump urges Republicans to slash voting rights to stop socialism and keep him in power, he makes the same argument former Confederates made after the war to keep those who would use the government for the public good from voting."
Letters from an American Historian
Diehard cynical Republicans, market fundamentalists, and hardcore libertarians really and truly believe, or so I'm told, that government programs and services, social security, public education, health care, all social safety net programs, basically, are just a Democratic scam to buy votes and lock-up winning political constituencies.
"Elitist thinking is widespread on the libertarian right, which depicts modern majoritarian democracy as a calculated project of coalition building by the“nonproductive” to exploit wealthy taxpayers," argues historian Nancy MacLean.*
Of course, pols regularly do stuff to preserve their power and office; typically, hopefully, within a rule of law intended to protect the public interest. But what if a democratically elected regime becomes entirely hostile to essential government human services that vast majorities would not have access to at all without government programs? Those services mentioned above are central but there are many more, natural disaster preparedness, environmental protections, basic scientific research, etc, all on the chopping block in the first six months of this US government. There is some waste in gov to be sure and it should be regularly reviewed and rigorously checked but government is crucial to protecting communities and building a sustainable future.
Building public infrastructure and providing community services that private industry will not or cannot has been a fundamental role of governments since at least WW1, and a central motive of democratic government long before there were any Robber Barons of private industry. What happens when these important roles of government are forgotten or abandoned or deliberately sabotaged? Trump and Musk's Big Tech oligarchy and Project 2025 are what happens.
Geared to gutting government and eradicating the Deep State the current rogue regime ruling over the US is the negative inverse of the Woke Mind Virus. It's radical market libertarianism turned into a death cult. To Republicans the response is: "Yay common sense government: let's burn it [civil rights and worker rights] all down." (What could go wrong?) To Democrats the response is: How do I oppose this lawless catastrophe without becoming a target of the violent reaction and alienating my billionaire donors?
(I'm adamantly opposed to blaming Biden for Trump's popularity or Republican or Big Tech crimes, which is how the endless election postmortem always hit me. Any media favoring Trump was/is fascist propaganda. But, must admit, as the election falls farther into the rearview mirror one monumental failure of the Biden admin stands out above the rest. He had to see through the prosecution of Trump. That's it, really. That was his one job. SCOTUS was poised to let Trump off, as they did. Biden had to see this, his Dem people had to see this, and fight back against it directly. Use his bully pulpit to make the case. His passive deference to Garland and SCOTUS still fuels the animus against the Dems now. They don't fight. They get run over by the Republicans. I also chafe some at all the fight rhetoric that has been going around for the last six months. Fight what, how? Just start swinging wildly, try to hit something, anything, seems to be the dominant sentiment. Newsom's direct engagement with the gerrymandering battle is at least a specific fight. But nothing has come a long yet as specific and big as the Biden fight to prosecute Jan 6 and his predecessor's repeated assaults on free and fair elections, and which Biden avoided in the name of separation of powers and democratic decorum. And probably, to some degree, because he was too damn old and unable to put up the fight necessary. There is some small comfort in seeing the new regime choke trying to swallow the whole US (deep) state but the violence and destruction of democratic institutions has obviously become the Republican MAGA Christian nationalist cause or fight. And half the country voted for this destruction, whether they realized fully the consequences of their bigot paranoia or not. And the rest of us are hoping they come to their senses before it's too late, if it isn't already.)
For now it's revenge of the Lost Cause and Confederacy and Jim Crow and radical billionaire libertarians and Neoliberal market fundamentalists. It's over a half a century of elite panic come home to roost and getting out of this fix I'm afraid is going to take more than a woman or democratic socialist POTUS, more than identity politics or a heroic class and social justice warrior.
In the past centrist American history has comforted us (see Hofstadter) that when this kind of violent reaction and plutocratic power grabbing is put on full display, put on the ballot, instead of hiding behind the scene (in the gears of the machine), it is soundly rejected (a la Goldwater in '64). Well, not any more or let's say not yet and try to hold onto a little hope.
And as I've said it before and I'll say again: American historian Heather Cox Richardson is a public service and national treasure. Support her work.
*- What's behind this push for unfettered abundance for capital and cost-cutting austerity for everyone else? Again, MacLean: "In the Koch case, [it] is a new ruthlessness from a particularly ideological and threatened fraction of the capitalist class: an extremist minority, anchored in fossil fuels, that is breathtakingly well-funded and determined to win at any cost– and to make the transformation it seeks permanent. Through radical rule changes up to and including alteration of the Constitution, they aim to lock in the unpopular program of a tiny, messianic minority. And to stop action on the imminent climate catastrophe."
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