The banality of Republican evil
Thursday on Meet the Press Daily, Republican Rep. Tom Reed of New York tried to explain his nonsensical positions (1) on absolving Donald Trump of responsibility for the insurrection of January 6, 2021, (2) on absolving the most Republicans of responsibility for supporting the execrable former president, and (3) on supporting the current Republican efforts across the nation to ensure that elections go their way in the future.
The first two positions don’t pass the laugh test. My readers, being more than able to recognize what is right before their eyes, know full well that the insurrection would never happened without the month-long stoking of Trump and his minions; he is completely responsible for it. They also know that all reputable polls show that the vast majority of Republicans—over 80%—continue to approve of Trump, so they are completely responsible for supporting him.
But the third position is illuminating. It shows the fundamental bad will of Republicans, a character trait that infects their entire world view. Let’s get into this step by step.
When asked whether the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, Reed was very careful to say that the election was legitimate, by which he meant that the rules were followed. But he was nevertheless upset about the election.
Why? Because, he said, the rules were changed in many places to make voting less onerous in the midst of the COVID pandemic. In his opinion, this advantaged Democrats. So although the election was legitimate under the rules, Reed blamed Democrats for changing the rules in their favor.
Now how exactly did Democrats do this? No doubt Reed thinks that the expansion of mail-in voting, drop-off voting, and other adjustments that lessened the threat of contracting COVID from voting was Democrats exerting bare-knuckle political power to increase their vote totals.
The problem with this position is that it isn’t true. While Democrats did make much more use of alternative voting methods than Republicans, it didn’t give Democrats any outsized advantage over all the Republicans who preferred same-day voting. How do we know this? Because Republicans did extremely well in the down-ballot elections. It was Trump who couldn’t muster enough support—and the reasons for that should be obvious.
Of course Reed, and Republicans in general, never let falsity prevent them from holding a position. It just seems to them that alternative voting methods disadvantage them. It just seems to them that alternative methods are ways for Democrats to cheat.
This too is false. There was much more alternative voting in 2020 than ever before, yet nowhere in the nation has any evidence been found of fraud. Even all the Republican-backed “recounts” that intended to find Democrats cheating discovered nothing at all that would change the results of the election.
But Reed is still upset by the legitimate expansion of voting options in response to the threat of COVID. Why? Because, he said, Democrats were “better” at using power to push the election in their direction.
If you watch the interview, you will see that Reed says this in the most matter-of-fact way, as though he imagines everyone agrees that politics is about power and that the whole point is to use power to get ahead.
He takes that as such a given that he followed up by saying that Republicans have to get “better” at using power to win elections. By this, I take it, he means he is 100% behind the current renewal of Jim-Crow-like voter suppression laws and new-fangled voter nullification laws that are now all the rage in the red states.
Reed’s attitude drips with bad will garnished with childish spite.
Despite the fact that providing alternate voting options was intended to—and actually did—help people, and despite the fact that the increase in alternative voting produced no advantage for Democrats and no fraud—despite all that, Reed and Republicans like him can’t help but believe that Democrats must always be up to no good. This is pure prejudice, pure hatred—all without any evidence of hostility or malice on the part of others. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect example of bad faith.
And on top of that, Reed’s reaction to his own irrational prejudice is to promise vengeance for the non-existent offense. Republicans will act even more wickedly. They will use whatever power they can muster to concoct new rules that help no one but will hurt their enemies. They will try to stop Democrats from voting. And if that fails, they will insert Republican lackeys into the electoral process and give them the power to overturn the vote if Democrats win. They will be “better” at doing evil than Democrats. That will show them. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect example of childish spite.
Now we get to why this little example of the Republican mindset is so illuminating.
The bad faith and spite of Reed’s performance strikes decent people as utterly banal. They seem like mere personal character flaws—uncritical self-centeredness and lack of empathy.
This appearance of banality covers the depth of the evil that fuels Republicans and so-called “conservatives.”
As Reed’s response shows, Republicans take it as given that politics is about power. They want power (which is what they really mean by “freedom”). They fear—more than anything else—people they dislike having power.
It never even occurs to them that politics might be about something else. It might be about justice. They can’t conceive of this because justice has to be a sharing of power. It places limits on power. It forces power to bend to equality and decency. That is why the Republican party cannot tolerate Black Lives Matter, taxing the wealthy, voting rights reform, and now even democracy itself. Where Decent America sees simple demands for justice, Republicans see only demands for power.
When President Biden said on Thursday that Trump “values power over principle,” he went directly to the core of Trump’s hold on the Republican party. Republicans continue to idolize him because his obsession with power matches theirs, because he is willing to come out from behind the shield of banality and call out to the pure evil that seethes at the core of Republicanism and “conservatism.”
On January 6, 2021, Trump whipped up a mob and convinced them to leave the shield of banality behind. Decent America saw on television what lies beneath the banality. It is ugly, violent, power-hungry, and wicked.
It was so apparent that even masters of the banal appearance felt compelled to denounce the evil that Trump released. McConnell, McCarthy, Graham and others blamed Trump publicly and tried to dissociate themselves with the mob.
But within weeks they saw that their base wanted to withdraw behind the shield of banality. So they made up with Trump and patched up the excuses used now by Reed and others to pretend that Republicans are merely full and bad faith and spite. This indecent front is their defense.
Decent America is finally waking up to the fact that the banality of bad character is just a protective front for the negativity that seethes within Republicans. Obsession with power is not just a character flaw, not just an ideological preference. It is pure evil. And the only corrective is to oppose it with a massive push for justice.
Biden’s speech on Thursday spoke to the pure good that animates those who cry out for justice. Now we must wait to see whether Decent America will erupt with a demand for justice in time to prevent Republican evil from destroying us all.