October of 2023 will forever be remembered as the month in which Republicans in the United States House of Representatives dealt with global and domestic chaos by . . . . shutting down the institution for nineteen days. It was like a pathetic, hyperpartisan, debased version of Henry David Thoreau's dictum from Civil Disobedience: "That government is best which governs least."
How did they get there? Eight Republican House members, upset with fellow Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy because he dared to negotiate with President Biden and House Democrats on a deal to keep the government open, put forth a motion to depose him. For their part, House Democrats refused to rally their voting bloc to rescue the Speaker unless he negotiated some kind of power sharing arrangement with them--which he of course refused to do. Thus McCarthy was removed from his post after only 269 days, the shortest reign in more than 140 years.
After nineteen agonizing, embarrassing days, what McCarthy called the "Crazy Eights Led by Matt Gaetz" decided they could support Louisiana's hard right conservative Mike Johnson for Speaker. Johnson apparently met Rep. Ronny Jackson's (R-Texas) criteria for the position: You have to be "smart enough to get to 217 but stupid enough to want the job.”
The conflict between the "Crazy Eights" (aka "MAGA Republicans") v. moderate Republicans and Democrats is typically referred to as "populists" v. the establishment. Some Democrats and Leftish pundits would argue that MAGA is not populist, but fascist. Their reasoning goes something like this: Populism is a bottom-up movement driven by mostly working class people. In contrast, fascism is a top-down takeover of traditionally [small-d) democratic institutions, typically animated by allegiance to a cultish leader. Donald Trump, the Dems argue, is the crazy eight cult leader.
For me, MAGA Republicans are neither populist nor fascist. To be truly populist or fascist requires a level of commitment to principles and public policy ideas that take hard work to formulate, advocate for, and organize movements around. MAGA Republicans don't really have much interest in policy. Their most defining trait is that they hate Democrats, and they hate anyone who works with Democrats. The moment Mr. McCarthy negotiated with Dems to keep the government open--which is another way of saying "the moment he did his job"--he was toast in MAGA world.
One of the most ridiculous parts of modern electoral politics in the USA is that it is now possible to get elected on a platform of "if you let me serve you I promise never to work with the other side." Think about the absurdity of that position when put in a job interview context:
Employer: So, Mikey, why should you prevail over all the other qualified candidates?
Mikey the Job Candidate: Because if you hire me I pledge I WILL NOT DO THE JOB.
Politics as resentment, grievance, temper tantrum, trolling, score settling, rejecting any hope of compromise before negotiations even start, and shouting into cable tv and podcast echo chambers is not really politics, at least not in any meaningful sense. Rather, it's a kind of dogmatic mania more typically found in religious movements. In fact, the crazy eight have more in common with the Manichean religion of the 3rd-5th centuries than they do with any coherent American political tradition.
The Manicheans believed in a strict duality between good and evil; everything on earth featured forces of light vs. forces of darkness. Journalist Glenn Greenwald, in his book A Tragic Legacy, argued that the George W. Bush administration was destroyed by the good v. evil mindset:
[Manichaeism is] a very simplistic idea that even early Christianity rejected as not appreciating the complexities of how the world actually is and the ambiguities, the moral ambiguities that characterize who most of us are in most situations. George Bush views the world and his followers viewed the world through this lens of pure good versus pure evil. (emphasis added).
And it’s not me saying that. He said that in virtually all of his speeches. And when you see the world that way what it means is that if you’re on the side of pure good, as he asserted that he was and we are, it means that anything that you do, no matter how limitless, no matter how brutal and immoral, is inherently justifiable because it’s being enlisted for service of the good.
And by contrast, anything that you do to those on the other side is inherently justified as well because they’re pure evil. And from the war in Iraq to the torture camps and secret prisons that we set up all of the things that have done so much damage, I think that’s the mentality that lies at the heart of it.
Today's crazy eight, MAGA Republicans have little regard for George W. Bush. In fact, they consider him to be a RINO (Republican in Name Only). Yet all they have really done is taken Bush's Manichean mindset and moved it from foreign affairs to the domestic realm. We see it most clearly in efforts to shut the government down, erect barriers to make voting more difficult, and framing existential issues like climate and infectious disease prevention as partisan.
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| Glenn Greenwald's 2007 character study of George W. Bush showed how a Manichean mindset of good v. evil animated the administration's foreign policy. Today's MAGA Republicans have taken that mindset and applied it to domestic politics. |
The state of Wisconsin has been reeling from malicious GOP Manicheanism since 2011, when then Governor Scott Walker didn't even pretend to consult with Democrats (or even moderate Republicans) before pushing the union-busting Act 10 on the state. Since then we've seen the Wisconsin GOP on a Manichean rampage: the most gerrymandered voting districts in the country, refusal to allow hearings for Democrat-sponsored bills, taking powers away from the governor's office the moment a Democrat got elected, dismantling a government accountability board that was recognized nationally for excellence, firing the Democratic governor's appointees at a record rate, holding University of Wisconsin System employees raises hostage over a disagreement over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies at the campuses, and many, many more. Indeed, Wisconsin might be the poster child for religious style persecution masquerading as serious politics.
To be clear, Democrats are not innocent victims in all of this. They have their own Manichean moments, such as the obsession with Russia conspiracies, carrying out their own brand of gerrymandering where they have majorities, and keeping their progressive wing on the margins by discouraging competitive primaries. Still, the Dems having Manichean "moments" is not the same as being overrun by a philosophy that is hostile to democratic norms, which has happened in a tragic way to the modern Republican party.
What role does the mainstream news media play in enabling a Manichean movement? I find myself agreeing with political scientist Lilliana Mason. In an essay in Politico she wrote
. . . our political news media privileges stories about conflict. This focus plays into deep-seated human inclinations to pay attention to bad things — and is rewarded with public attention. This incentivizes news media to tell Americans a story about politics that is largely about division, animosity and attention-seeking strategies — all laid over an “us vs. them” framework. Politicians know that all they need to do to gain attention is to start a fight. Very little news media focus on the hard work and compromise of governing a nation, partly because they know that very few Americans will pay attention.
Mason is the author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, which does an excellent job of showing the roots of the "us v. them" reality we are now mired in. In it she quotes political scientist Seth Masket, who in 2016 said, "The Republican Party is demonstrating every day that it hates Democrats more than it loves democracy." Seven years later, that brand of Manicheanism is stronger than ever.
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| Professor Lilliana Mason's excellent book Uncivil Agreement explores the roots of the extreme us v. them politics of our time. |
Matt Taibbi's Hate, Inc. takes things a step further and shows how promoting hate of other Americans is now the dominant business model of cable news. If he is correct, it would make sense for media to give attention to politicians who rate higher on the religious zealotry scale than on anything resembling political pragmatism.
If it is true that our democracy is on the ropes, in part because of the Manicheans takeover of one of the major political parties, what do we do about it? Here are eight suggestions designed to prevent us from becoming crazy eight style people:
*Organize at the local level with people who want to make a positive difference in the lives of others.
*Have difficult conversations with friends, family, coworkers, and others.
*Support independent media.
*Resist the temptation to call people you disagree with "evil." Use the term "mistaken" instead.
*Accept that you too are probably mistaken on a number of issues.
*If a public policy idea makes sense to you, support it NO MATTER WHO ELSE does.
*If a public policy idea strikes you as harmful, call it out even if your side supports it.
*Get in the habit of willfully seeking out ideas that you disagree with. Make sure that your disagreement is grounded in something more solid than hostility to the people stating the idea(s).
