On NPR’s It’s Been a Minute the other day, I heard journalist Amanda Ripley talking about the “news diet” to which she now adheres. Because today's news is an endless recitation of horrors, Ripley developed a regimen of rationing the negativity she receives by cutting back on the news she ingests.
Today’s news, she said, is especially demoralizing because it is short on three things that human beings desperately need: agency, dignity, and hope.
Agency is the feeling that you can do something about the situations around you. Hope is the feeling that your desires will manifest in the future. And dignity is the feeling that others respect you.
It is not difficult to see why these three things are important to human beings. All of them help us to overcome life’s struggles.
But not everyone deserves to have these three things in their lives. People whose use their agency to bring about wicked ends don’t deserve to keep their agency. (Think of criminals who go to jail and lose their agency to pursue their aims.) People who hope for outcomes that will harm others don’t deserve to keep their hopes. (Think of serial cheaters whose spouses divorce them and take away their hopes to have a family.) And people who abuse the dignity of others don’t deserve to keep their dignity. (Think of rapacious capitalists who treat their workers like expendable commodities and become despised by decent people.)
Republican “conservatives” are utterly undeserving of these three human needs. They have forfeited their right to them by using them badly or denying them to others.
Just take abortion as an example. “Conservatives” are over the moon that they have managed to overturn Roe v. Wade. Their pathetically irrational “religious” dogmas justified, in their minds, the use of underhanded means to bring about their goal, which they know is disapproved of by the majority. That is an abuse of agency. The outcome was a manifestation of their long-desired aim, which they pursued single-mindedly without regard for the harm it does to the health, the dreams, and the futures of their fellow citizens. That is an abuse of hope. And the extreme incivility shown toward the majority by “conservatives” from Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas on down to the lowliest Republican “religious” bigot demonstrates how insufferable they are to others. That is an abuse of dignity.
Take any issue you please—guns, taxes, health care, LGBTQ+ rights—anything you care about. Think it through and you will find the same thing every time. Republicans want what they want and will do anything, no matter how underhanded or illegal, to get what they want—abuse of agency. They don’t care about the consequences of their demands on anyone else’s dreams—abuse of hope. And they virtually drip with unctuous self-righteousness toward those who disagree with them—abuse of dignity.
It’s long past time that Decent America cut Republicans “conservatives” off from these three human needs. Republicans amply deserve to be deprived of them.
By sweeping the elections this fall and confounding all the political pundits, Democrats could finally give Republicans what they so richly deserve. They could finally take control of all the levers of political power, expand the Supreme Court, and swiftly pass laws that will hold America over until the rising tide of progressive young people makes it impossible for “conservatives” ever to win again—and there’s nothing they can do about it. That’s depriving them of agency.
By voting overwhelmingly for decent Democrats instead of toadying or MAGA Republicans, the majority could make it unmistakably clear that they will not allow Republicans to turn America into a “conservative” hellhole, and that the Republican dream of authoritarian power will never become manifest. That’s depriving them of hope.
And by crushing them at the polls, Democrats can hand Republicans the degradations
the Republicans fear most—loserdom and a future of being disregarded in public deliberations. That’s depriving them of dignity.
It’s sad that Republicans have chosen this path. They went to the edge with Trump because they only care about power.
Now, for their many betrayals of decent Americans, let them live in feckless, hopeless ignominy.
No one deserves it more.
Thanks Scott!!!
Oh, Scott - just when I'm approaching the depth of my doldrums, I read something from you that gives me hope, in that you see so clearly what the right is up to. Their forced-birth future will lead to much death - and their goals bring death, at times, to my hope. Thanks for all that you do.