When Will “This” End?
On Being Committed To Democracy During An Onslaught Of Authoritarian Gaslighting
In my travels across America this summer, I have had random conversations with Lyft drivers, airport travelers, grocery store cashiers, etc. Invariably, a common question comes up. The question is “How long is this going to last?” The This refers to surviving inflation, the threats to our democracy; the threats to our autonomy based on gender, sexuality and race; mass shootings occurring nearly twice a day, the political environment and the environment environment.
The This seems to permeate around us like the mist in the Percy Jackson novels, which transforms a monster’s appearance into a form that is recognizable to the human eye. In those movies/books, ordinary humans going about their day-to-day activities do not see what are in fact three Furies, hideous creatures with bat wings, claws and fangs. Instead, they see a bunch of harmless elderly people.
We certainly have challenges enough. Yet, on top of those challenges, we are seeing and feeling an onslaught of political gaslighting and resulting violence like never before in my lifetime. I believe there are two goals behind it: (i) silence or eliminate anyone who stands physically or ideologically in the way; and (ii) cause ordinary bystanders to shut off their minds and hearts so that they turn their heads and look away. The latter is my focus for this post.
What Is Said Should Matter And Have Meaning.
As I have previously discussed, former President Trump has created a production to set a false narrative around the 2020 election. The New York Times quoted Republican Representative Mr. Meijer, who refused to repeat the lie that the election was stolen:
“The important thing isn’t believing it [the Big Lie], it’s saying it,”
“I can’t tell you the number of times somebody said, ‘You don’t have to believe the election is stolen, the important thing isn’t believing it, it’s saying it,’” Mr. Meijer recalled in an interview. “That is what a Republican is supposed to do right now.”
That’s right, conservatives who do not believe their own statements are nevertheless repeating them ad nauseum. Blind submission is authoritarianism. The greater the number of people who stick to the prescribed narrative, the more easily identifiable are those who are within and outside of former President Trump’s orb.
By stringing multiple often inconsistent and illogical narratives together, outsiders become overwhelmed. After all, how is an individual going to beat back the vomitus deluge? Overwhelming outsiders with so much gaslighting makes them weary and feel like their individual efforts don’t matter. It’s like piling an extra ten pound weight on someone during a marathon. When the onslaught works, fatigued outsiders give up on trying to maintain a sense of reality or try only half-heartedly. It is how democracy falls. According to an interview with author Ruth Ben-Ghiat:
…[B]ecause once you decide that it’s all rigged and there’s nothing you can do, then you do lose democracy.
The Trumpist orb wants a narrative that disaster, violence and unthinkably civil war will erupt if they cannot go merrily skipping down their gaslit path. The paradox is that if they get their authoritarian way, we might ultimately bear witness to the most unthinkable of the unthinkable.
We have already seen foreshadowings of the unthinkable from the deaths at Charlottesville, to the separation of children from their families, to mayhem and deaths on January 6th, 2021. The escalated threats against our nation’s premier law enforcement officers at the FBI and DHS along with the doxing of children send a clear message that no one (nor their family) is safe from their wrath and revenge.
It. Is. That. Bad.
In facing this situation, there is a natural inclination to dismiss it as “It isn’t all that bad.” I do not mean to be depressing, but It. Is. That. Bad. When government workers cannot even secure top secret, compartmented information without death threats, the this is that bad.
It is soothing to extrapolate past near misses into future success: “It’ll all work out somehow. It always does. Look at Nixon.” We cannot rely on “somehow” because that is a wish, not a plan for making it happen. History is littered with failed democracies that could not or would not constrain autocratic leaders.
One of my favorite palliatives comes from Deborah Moggash’s “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”:
Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end.
Unfortunately, a whole lot of awful can happen before we see the end.
That is why I am resolved to bear witness and to keep my heart and mind open and engaged.
So, how do I make that happen? Because narrative begins with language, I start there. I ask: Does this term, phrase or description accurately reflect in my mind what I am seeing and feeling? It feels like others are doing the same.
Recently, Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr. opined that we should stop using the term “political” when we mean “partisan.” Economist and political collapse commentarian Umair Haque discusses how the term “climate change” is a Republican rebranding of the more dire “global warming.”
Why Fuss Over Words?
Fussing over language seems downright picayune to everyone — except lawyers, politicians and marketers. My legal clients would often ask in exasperation, “Aren’t you just saying the same thing in fancier words?!” My answer was always an equally exasperating, “Yes and no.” Yes, it might be the same concept, but no it is different because the nuances have significance. Part of my role as an attorney was to translate the words of my client so their issue could properly be heard within the legal realm. In politics, the language we use to discuss issues signals some shared understanding on their scope and severity. That shared understanding then implicates the policy options. I give you two examples:
Example 1: Reagan’s “welfare queen”
Since the Reagan era, our political discourse and thus policy decisions have been haunted by the specter of the “welfare queen” — a black woman driving a Cadillac and planning a Hawaii vacation. It was asserted she had defrauded the government of $150,000 in a single year — the equivalent of about $900,000 today — with the implication she had stolen much, much more. Ms. Linda Taylor, the person upon whom the trope was based, was no heroine. At the same time, she also shouldn’t have been the paradigm for a decades long presumption of fraud by destitute families seeking aid. As reported in the New York Times,
Taylor, who died in obscurity in 2002, hadn’t actually pilfered $150,000 in welfare money in a single year. Her take was estimated at $40,000 over many years, and she was officially charged with stealing around $9,000.
If we lived in a world where such presumptions should be made, why is that the woman who stole $53 Million from Reagan’s boyhood hometown did not become the paradigm for the graft of the middle class or graft within government? This woman bought 3 homes, a dozen vehicles and a farm with over three hundred quarter horses with that town’s money. She’s now sitting comfortably at home under home confinement.
Yet, I remember the early days of the pandemic, where people who had always worked were suddenly laid off and haplessly confronting the outdated and byzantine system for receiving unemployment and aid at a time when they needed it the most. They needlessly suffered because legislative policy had spent decades using an overblown paradigm as a scapegoat.
Example 2: Global Warming vs. Climate Change
Our climate “changing” sounds relatively innocuous compared to the whole planet is warming up to uninhabitable levels creating a threat to large swaths of humankind. I lived in Portland, Oregon for 20+ years. When I first moved there in 2000, summers were, well, blissfully temperate. I would chuckle as native Oregonians fled to the beaches on the one weekend a year temperatures got warm enough to be in complaining territory.
Over the years, that one weekend of high temps turned into long weekends, then into a week and then weeks. Then, the temps became even more extreme. As outdoor temperatures rose to 113, my mid-century home that was built without air conditioning — because no one ever needed it in the Pacific Northwest — turned into a dehydrating oven for humans and pets. Luckily, my family was all healthy enough not to succumb. Tragically, nearly 100 folks across Oregon died. Just a couple weeks ago, up to 43 Million Americans experienced 100 degree temperatures.
These examples demonstrate that language has consequences.
Keep your mind and heart open and engaged
I have some phrases, I’d like to add to the fuss pile. I offer them with the caveat that you should decide your own alternative words. That is the “mind” portion of keeping your mind and heart open and engaged. Once you have that, then ask yourself, “What is happening to the human beings?” Does it impact all? Some? A few? and Who? Here are 3 toppers to the fuss pile:
The so-called “culture war” is repression.
The phrase “culture war” is used widely in media. The first part “culture” makes it sound like it is simply a difference of opinion on something that is separate from people. It sounds like, “Do you prefer early or modern jazz? Or, neither?” Yet, in political parlance, the so-called “culture” in “culture war” nearly always concerns fundamental characteristics of humans like their race, gender and sexuality.
The second half, “war,” also troubles me. Who gets to declare war and upon whom? I am just going about living my life to the best of my abilities. I cannot fathom why the identity of the adult I choose to love would be considered an assault on someone else’s sensibilities sufficient to declare war.
The “culture war” rhetoric also assumes the position of being the aggrieved party. It has always felt like a rationalization for a pre-emptive strike against the most vulnerable of our society.
Then, who decides when the war has been won or reached a stalemate?
After I’ve asked myself: “Does this term or phrase describe what I am seeing and feeling?,” I look at the human impact. There are women in certain states who can not receive life saving medical care by law. If it were to happen in another country, I would call it “repression.” So, that’s what I call it when it happens in my country.
You can’t declare yourself a patriot.
In this upside down world that we coexist in with the Trump orb, it seems like the folks calling themselves “patriots” are the least democratic among us. Former President Trump called the January 6th rioters and insurrectionists “patriots” — not the Capitol Police and Secret Service who protected the Vice President, Congressional representatives and staffers from a bloodthirsty lynch mob.
A patriot should be someone who fights or sacrifices for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. When these ideals are reserved for a select group, it is fascism. Today’s so-called “patriots” seem to be fighting to either attain or maintain status on a perceived pecking order — whether it is their masculinity, white supremacy, christian statehood or a combination of all three.
My body was not placed on this Earth to make someone else feel better about their lot in life (or their after-life). Neither was yours. Depending on the circumstance, I call these self-proclaimed “patriots,” bullies, radicals, extremists, supremacists, fascists, insurrectionists, traitors and authoritarians.
Radicalized citizen militias are vigilantes or posses.
Having a local, unregulated citizens militia sounds like a good idea in theory when it is focused on, say, assisting beleaguered government departments in the event of a crisis or disaster. If my neighborhood were battling a fire, I would gladly accept aid from any group that could help.
Theory has departed from actual practice. Unregulated citizen militias in the United States are increasingly radicalized and moving toward violent extremism. Most disturbingly, the motive behind them seems to be profiteering. To quote former Oath Keeper Van Tatenhove, “[T]hey’re selling the revolution.”
There are folks who are gleefully profiting off destroying the social fabric of the nation by being anti-government, anti-women and anti-racial equality. Depending on the circumstance, I use the terms: unregulated militia, guerrillas, insurgents, or vigilantes. When they seem to have the tacit approval of law enforcement, I call them posses.
*****
I have put just a few words on the pile. I hope you will add your own suggestions and thoughts in the comments. In the meantime, bear witness while keeping your heart and mind open and engaged.
August 2022
Karen Y. Spencer
