If there is one very cold comfort to be had from the shit-show confirmation and approval of a likely would-be rapist, perjurer, and far-right partisan to the highest court in the land, it’s that it clarified for millions of Americans that this country doesn’t have a Trump problem so much as a Republican Party problem. Under the cover of a fake FBI investigation, GOP senators were happy to approve a justice whose personal character, much like the president’s, rendered him unfit for high office. There’s a good case to be made that it was Brett Kavanaugh’s very Trumpian performance before the Senate — in particular, his testimony following that of Christine Blasey Ford — that cinched the deal. In this, you can see the outlines of a deeply disturbing synthesis between traditional Republican goals embodied in a justice like Kavanaugh — aggrandizement of the rich, repression of the poor, disenfranchisement of left-leaning voters — and a Trumpian style that rouses resentment, rage, and fear to push forward the traditional goals while rewarding the base with defeat and humiliation of women, minorities, and other purported enemies of true Americanism.
Pieces by Josh Marshall and Adam Serwer this week argue variants of this point, and should not be missed if you want to understand some basic facts about our current political reality. Serwer in particular has been on fire this week — I can honestly say that if you’re not reading him, you’re missing out on critical insights into American politics, both generally and on more specifically on the Kavanaugh front. A piece titled “The Guardrails Have Failed” makes the chilling case that the Kavanaugh nomination embodies that GOP’s dissolving of the lines between the three branches of government, and shows a belief in party over country that points the way to great abuse of power to come.
Equally crucial, though, is Serwer’s recent article about the role of cruelty in Trumpian and GOP politics, which gets at a central fact and conundrum of where we are. Drawing on the history and social dynamics of lynching, he makes the case for the central role of cruelty in the ability of Trump and Republicans to advance their agenda. As Serwer puts it, “It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.” As if this weren’t bad enough, he ties this cultivation of rage and punishment to Trump’s re-definition of the rule of law:
Only the president and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process.
Serwer’s peroration capture something of the depravity and challenge of our moment:
Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.
Serwer doesn’t say so explicitly, though he hints at it in his final line, but this presidential-level appeal to the worst impulses of his supporters not only rallies support against those deemed un-American, but provides a near-perfect cover for the monied interests of the GOP to continue to fuck over and otherwise exploit the rank and file GOP voter. The Kavanaugh appointment captures this perfectly: as much as Kavanaugh will be sure to vote to restrict abortion rights and the suffrage of minorities, he’s as sure to screw over working Americans through anti-union rulings and other votes on behalf of corporations and bosses at the expense of everyone else.
I started off by saying that, if nothing else, the Kavanaugh nomination process made it that much easier to see that our true problem is not just Trump as our president, but a GOP that both absorbs and elaborates on his awful politics. Of course, while it is good that the truth is now more evident, the nature of this truth is awful almost beyond words. One of the two major American political parties has embraced anti-democratic attitudes and policies, whether it’s the encouragement of hate against political opponents, protection of the president against overwhelming evidence he received the assistance of Russia to gain the presidency, or the continued push to make it harder for ordinary Americans to vote. The party has embraced these policies not only as (bad) ends in themselves, but as a way to further strengthen its grip on power and prevent the other party from using democratic means to win elections or implement progressive policies.
It may be that I am still raw from the success of the Kavanaugh nomination; but it seems to me a warning that worse is still to come in terms of the GOP’s willingness to gin up hatred and revenge to drive forward their agenda. They started the Kavanaugh nomination at least pretending he was a moderate, judicious guy; they pushed the nomination through by having him go full Trump, as recounted by Josh Marshall. This lesson will not be lost on the party as a whole. While even a short while ago I might have thought this to be a good development on balance — both for revealing the lack of daylight between Trump and the GOP, and for the way it might promise to let the mass of citizens see the true nature of the party — I am less secure saying so today. The forces being mobilized are primal, violent, and incompatible with the mutual tolerance and respect a democracy requires.
Equally unsettling is that so far, the GOP sees this path as a way to win, no matter the damage to American democracy. And this gets us to the heart of the crisis: how does the opposition beat back this threat, and regain control of the narrative of American democracy? I am less sure than before that the revenge politics of Trump on behalf of a minority of the population will naturally provoke an overwhelming backlash, or that the backlash isn’t without its dangers. It seems more important than ever that the opposition engage in a frank, far-reaching discussion about the nature of American democracy, both in order to understand our goals, and, perhaps just as importantly, to describe the peril in which the contemporary GOP places the American experiment. It seems that whatever set of rules the Democrats have been playing by have been an abject failure, not only in terms of the party’s loss of power, but also as measured by its lack of success in protecting our democracy itself.
Beyond the specifics of what Democratic goals should be, it is far past time that they embrace a messaging strategy that puts openness and democratic consensus as the center of what the party stands for. This would stand in vivid opposition to the Republicans’ policies of bait and switch, in which working Americans are continually sold out and democracy itself undermined. Such an approach should include a determined effort to describe GOP policies for what they are. As a ballpark example: while the events of the Kavanaugh nomination are fresh in everyone’s minds, we need to talk about the way the president and the GOP essentially embraced an anti-woman, pro-rape worldview in which women are always lying about being raped and immoral men can continue the practice with impunity. This Republican rhetoric threatens women with real-world consequences, and stands as an irrefutable example of the second-class citizenship to which they’d relegate half the population.
This issue also opens up into the crucial question of how to counter the GOP’s embrace of cruelty and mass sadism as a political tool. Any successful strategy will hit back hard against this meanness. It is safe to say that beneath the surface contempt and cruelty one finds the weakness and cowardice of those who can only feel good if someone else is feeling bad, and who only make their views known when they are surrounded by sufficient numbers of their cohort to provide cover or anonymity. Donald Trump is a coward; his followers are cowards; and Republican officials are cowards. I don’t know if we can’t get them to feel shame, but I do know that behind their viciousness is a fundamental weakness, and we should exploit this fact in all its facets, whether in trying to understand how they can be persuaded back into comity with their fellow citizens, or how to make a larger argument about the invalidity of their politics.
This last point sometimes feels to me like the biggest challenge of all: how do you fight anti-democratic hate in a democracy? How do you continue to hold out an open hand to citizens who’d deny you full participation in that democracy? A hard burden and challenge has been placed on the democratic opposition, whose goal is not simply to rip the country to shreds so long as their cohort ends up feeling good, but knitting the country together and reversing the forces of inequality, greed, and insecurity that have allowed Donald Trump to emerge like Mothra from the radioactive cocoon of the GOP. How do you fight back without embracing the same mentality of zero-sum competition and treating your opponents as illegitimate?