Only the second of January and already I've broken one of my new year's resolutions! The resolution was to give no further oxygen to the outgoing norm-breaking huckster of a president and his enablers. But the cynical shit-show promised for January 6th reminds that we're not out of the woods. It's clear that, whatever happens to the impeached loser after January 20th, his most ardent supporters' attack on democratic norms and values will not abate. Why did I think his leaving would end it?
As opportunists and saboteurs mine the harbors of presidential transition, I realize I've been not just naive but in denial. The way others are denialists about climate change or income inequality or structural racism, I'm in denial about the anti-democratic ethos of the president's party - and, presumably, a good percentage of the tens of millions who voted for them in November. It's denial because I know it and refuse to believe it. Because I can't imagine it's being true.
I know about the extreme polarization of not only our population but the worlds they think they live in. Time was, people joked that all parties in the US were centrist but that's not true any more. The right's chauvinism and contempt for norms place them in league with the illiberal authoritarianism of Orban and Erdogan, far removed from conservative parties in most countries; I was agog at the chart above showing the imbalance of the wildly extremist Republicans and still centrist democrats. They - and this isn't just the politicos, talk radio shock jocks and cable hacks - really don't believe in playing by the rules, in the necessity of playing by rules if we are to live together. They believe they have a unique relationship to rules: the "God"-given right to make them, bend them, be served by them which is white supremacy.
Intuitive liberal democrat that I am I find myself asking: have Democrats become more extremist, too - the way the "cancel-culture" obsessed (and practicing) other side claims? No, and not in the same democracy-undermining way. We dream of a more perfect union, not the impossibility of union, the irreconcilability of difference.
So back to the drawing board. What should my new year's resolution be?
