Americans Don’t Want a Civil, Constitutional Government, They Want Their Way

A functional government for the benefit of all people. It’s what I used to think the goal of most people involved in politics is. The idea was that what’s good for the greater good was good for the country, and that we need a functional system that drives us towards those goals. This meant making compromise, even though we all hate compromise. This meant having norms within our system, even if sometimes those norms meant we didn’t get to win every political fight. This meant living in a Constitutional system, where all branches and levels of governments did their jobs.

In the past year, I’ve realized that’s a pile of garbage, and most people don’t want that. There are parts of the Republican Party that are actually excited by Greg Gianforte body-slamming a reporter who dared to ask him questions he didn’t want to answer. There are portions of the Democratic Party and the left that want to ignore the $400 billion a year price tag for the single payer health care bill in the California legislature. Republicans have successfully denied the consensus of climate scientists for close to a decade now, and still claim that climate change is a hoax. One party is becoming violent and authoritarian, the other has a left-flank that wants to have a purge of those they have re-defined as neo-liberals and warmongers- including their elected party leaders. One party literally wants to destroy the functions of government and silence their critics. The other party is debating the basic decency and positive impact of their greatest achievements- including the Affordable Care Act and the full Presidency of Barack Obama.

I’m not going to say the two parties are equal in any way right now- what’s happened to the Republican Party in the age of Trump is alarming and horrifying- but their activists are increasingly sharing one similar trait- they want to win. They want to win more so than they want to adhere to norms, accept basic facts or accept checks on power. Everyone likes the CBO, until it says their pet legislation is terrible for a functional government. Everyone likes the filibuster, when the other party is in the White House, but both parties have taken significant steps to destroy it in the Senate in recent years. Disruptions of speakers on campuses and violence towards reporters on campaigns are up, which is to say that respect for the First Amendment is way down. Acceptance of formerly shunned radical groups, socialists and white nationalists, is way up. The legitimacy of perfectly legitimate elections is challenged so routinely that illegitimate ones end up getting a pass. The citizenship of lawful citizens has been questioned, in part to de-legitimize voters one party doesn’t like. Facts are just being removed from the public realm, especially scientific research. All of this is bad for a fact-based, sober-minded democracy. People don’t want that though. If the White House Press briefing goes the way of the dinosaurs, so be it- we want to live in our own worlds, with our own facts.

I obviously have my own strong opinions on Donald Trump and his followers, like most people do in this country, but I have even stronger opinions on what this polarization means for America. If winning at any cost is the new mantra of political activism, all the time, our Constitutional system is going to get trampled, regardless of who is in political power and for how long. There is obviously a time for direct action and principled battle- I can think of no better example than the Civil Rights movement- but what is acceptable in pursuit of human rights is not necessarily how every day politics should go. If we’re going to re-write the rules to pass more and more extremist legislation, only to then see the other party grab power and re-write that legislation to their extreme liking, then the instability in our political system will be debilitating.

Ultimately, what’s more worrying than the tactics is the lack of acceptance for facts. When facts don’t back up your position, that doesn’t make them not facts. Price tags and tax rates matter on legislation, and perhaps the U.S. House should have waited for those things before voting to revamp the U.S. Health Care System. The same could be said of single payer bills popping up in states and in Congress, which ostensibly hope to re-shape the budget and tax code and give a new benefit to the entire public.

I’ve come to a basic conclusion- most people in American politics want their way more than they want a functional political system. All this talk about norms and the Constitution is just puff, and it’s there to shield us from the reality that government and politics is turning into a no-holds barred war, a national temper-tantrum from some to insure they get what they want. This isn’t good. It needs to stop. Great societies cannot function in this manner.