It’s difficult to see the forest for the trees, especially when you’re deep in the woods.
Take this article from the Associated Press pointing out that “conservatives” in rural America have progressed from just resenting Democrats to hating them.
It’s easy to see that these bottom-dwelling ignoramuses are just letting their atavistic lizard brains out into the open. It’s frustrating and maddening that this minority has managed to capture so much of the election machinery in America that they have stymied the majority will for over four decades.
But this story, like the daily barrage of stories about “conservatives” behaving badly all over the world, is just a symptom of a massive sickness that sweeping the planet. It is quickly coming to a crisis.
What we are witnessing is the collapse of the Enlightenment.
All the progress in science, government, and technology that has been made in the past four hundred years is about to face the greatest backlash in history. And it’s all because “conservatives” can’t and won’t adapt to reality:
They won’t face the reality of a worldwide pandemic and make the changes necessary to deal with it.
They won’t face the challenges of true democracy, preferring the politics of power to the politics of peace.
They won't accept the equality of people who differ from them.
They won’t behave responsibly toward others, preferring their own selfish desires to the needs of the many.
“Conservatives” all over the world are coming out into the open with their hatred and bile. They are aligning with strongmen against all the enlightened governments of the West. The recent move of Fox News toward championing Vladimir Putin in Russia and Xi Jinping in China and Viktor Orbán in Hungary shows the worldwide consolidation of “conservative” venom.
The thousands of stories that surface every day about “conservatives” bursting through all boundaries of decency are the little bubbles rising to the surface of a kettle about the boil.
It will come to a boil in the American midterm elections. America, the indispensable democracy, will either stand or fall this November.
If Republicans gain control of Congress, American democracy will crumble. This is not hyperbole. It is not an overblown fear.
In just a year since the 2020 elections, Republicans are quickly passing laws in nearly every state they control to curb voting rights and—much worse—to overturn the results of elections that go against them.
If Republicans gain control of Congress, they will do the same on the Federal level. And with the Supreme Court firmly in the grip of “conservatives,” their destruction of the electoral system based on majority rule will be complete. There will never again be a fair election in America.
And that means that the decent majority of Americans will be shut out from influencing the laws and the policies of government. The majority will have to live as the minority dictates.
With the fall of American democracy, the collapse of the Enlightenment will be all but complete. “Conservatives,” who don’t understand science—or knowledge—at all, will create a fantasy world in which people like Trump are admired, in which power is worshipped above all, in which tolerance cannot be tolerated and difference must be expunged.
The fall elections in America will be the crisis of this worldwide fever. If Democrats cannot beat back the hatred with a decisive victory, the entire world will fall apart. Without the example of America showing that democracy can work, the other democracies will soon fall under the shadow of strongman politics. And the world will return to the nightmare of pre-Enlightentment politics: the strong rule and the weak suffer.
But with the Democrats in the US in disarray, with the people split between the decent but lackadaisical majority and the hateful but violent minority, how can the fall elections deliver the decisive victory that is needed for Decent America?
Only one way. The young people of America—who overwhelmingly want a decent, fair, tolerant, open, progressive, knowledge-based society—must come out and use the electoral system.
They can do it. They have the numbers to do it. They are some 70 million strong and they overwhelmingly favor the priorities of Decent America.
If they come out, all the calculations and predictions about what can happen in America will be overturned in a single day. Young people can have exactly what they want sooner than they ever thought—almost overnight.
If they would only join their massive numbers to the already-existing majority that wants precisely what they want, Republicans would be finished as a political force. “Conservatism” along with its atavistic, power-based desires would instantly become a dead letter in America, and that would set an example for the rest of the world.
But if young people don’t come out in massive numbers this fall, the fever will explode all over the world.
And in short order it will kill the hopes of democracy together with all the offspring of the Enlightenment.
Scott, You are absolutely right and it scares the hell out of me.
I do agree with everything written above. We are on the cusp of losing our semi-democracy. Semi because none of our three branches of government are representative of the people. Take the Senate for example, able to block any legislation. A voter in Wyoming has 68 times more power than someone living in California. California should have 136 senators to equate Wyoming with two senators. This makes a huge difference nationally in favor of the Republican Party, Trump's party now, Trump a far-right nationalist. Then there is computerized gerrymandering, the purge of the voter rolls, etc. Still we are some kind of democracy worth preserving, and in dire need of reform.
What you describe is true, but it seems that the non far-right side in our politics is unable to address it. Trying to compromise with fascism never worked in history. Hundreds of non fiction books have been published about Trump and the decay of our democracy, the threat of tyranny in the USA. But a few, and always the same people are the public for this type of literature (nonetheless useful). Common people don't picture what a hard far-right, anti science, anti women, racist regime, working for the very rich only and increasing inequality to the extreme, would actually mean in their private lives. Only a fiction book, a punch in the guts, can picture it in the sphere of the emotions, without exaggeration. Big publishers would never allow such a book to be published though. Fiction literature today IS escapism.
I wrote this fiction book, Mona, that I intend to publish; self publish if there is no other way. Whatever I can do, I do, to save my country from tyranny and the world from global warming (another existential threat, linked to this subject).
So, yes, absolutely, I am with you Mr. McMurrey.