What should be the immediate and main reaction of democratic and progressive people to recent Democratic legislative victories and executive actions by Biden administration – the latest is last week’s executive order to forgive a portion of student debt? Seems simple enough to me – welcome these measures and contrast them with the policies of the GOP, while at the same time utilizing these victories to mobilize old and newly registered voters to elect Democrats – even the worst of them – on election day.
To yield the cultural struggle – abortion, homosexuality, transgender rights, multiculturalism, racism, patriotism, and so on – to the Republican Party and MAGA movement in favor of an election strategy that singularly focuses on “economic” issues will likely backfire. In contrast, a far better strategy is to organically blend the two together. The conservative Andrew Breitbart’s assertion that “politics is downstream from culture,” (meaning that to win elections, it is necessary to first shape cultural perceptions of voters) may be overdrawn some, but not by much.
I would like more information (and I suspect it will come), but I have to applaud the decision of the Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland to conduct – not a “raid” – but a lawful search of Trump’s Mar-a-Largo home for government documents that should have never been in Trump’s possession.
As expected the Maga crowd, which include most of Republican Party leaders and office holders, went bananas, making all kinds of fraudulent claims as to what Garland was up to and issuing all manner of threats if they get back in power.
But that should surprise no one. What this lawless gang likes to do, if allowed, is to intimidate any challenger and silence any critic to their fascist like ways. And that we can’t let them do.
To Garland’s great credit, he didn’t shrink from doing the right thing; he refused to be intimidated, to retreat. He took his case into Trump’s home, albeit complying with legal requirements, but knowing full well that blowback would be immediate, shrill, and threatening. In doing so, Garland has given all of us a political lesson, which can be summed up this way: at this moment of grave danger to democracy and social progress, don’t shrink, do the right thing, speak truth to illegitimate and lawless power.
If you listen to many prominent leaders of the Republican Party, it is easy to think that Timothy McVeigh inhabits their mind and rhetoric. In a recent interview, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassly said,
“Are they going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s (sic) already loaded ready to shoot some small business person in Iowa with these? Because I think they are going after middle class and small business people because basically they think anyone that has pass-through income is a crook and they aren’t paying their fair share and we’re going to go after them.”
If this comment were an outlier it would be one thing, but it isn’t. It’s the mainstream message of the Republican Party. What to do? Challenge this fascist rhetoric in the public square and, above all, vote and organize others to vote this fall.
