We are entering yet another holiday season when the world seems to be coming apart at the seams.
The evil Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, is threatening to assimilate Ukraine no matter how many hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and conscripts he has to sacrifice.
The venal and corrupt Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, is threatening to wipe the entire Gaza strip off the map to distract from all his crimes against the state, which actually abetted the horrendous Hamas attack on October 7.
“Conservatives” in several European countries are threatening to bring down their governments unless they get the power to destroy their democracies and establish autocracies.
And here in America, the “conservative” House is threatening to throw gas on all these fires unless they can extort some vicious “compromises” that will inflict serious pain on immigrants. On top of that, they are poised to shut down the government as blackmail for other evil “policies” they want to enact against the will the majority, like defunding most of the programs Americans really want. And of course, they want to conduct a sham “impeachment inquiry” to provide video clips to run on Fox News to keep their mindless minions riled up about Joe Biden’s supposed criminality—to compete with the images of Trump being convicted of seditious conspiracy in the coming months.
And other “conservatives” are hard at work denying abortions to even the most medically endangered women, trying to expunge as many voters as they can from the rolls, and trying to set up another, bigger violent coup if they can’t steal the 2024 election to reinstall Trump.
Decent America would feel a lot jollier if “conservatives” went on holiday and never came back.
Why are they getting even worse?
Because they are unwitting pawns in a battle of historical forces that has been raging for centuries and is now coming to a climax. It is the battle between the Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment. This final battle is taking place on the field of politics, where the Enlightenment is represented by liberals and the Counter-Enlightenment is represented by “conservatives.”
During most of the post-World-War-II period, the world’s “conservatives,” knowing that liberals were in the ascendency, decided to pretend that they themselves were actually champions of the Enlightenment, but they insisted that their rationality led them to conclusions that were contrary to the conclusions of liberals.
By pretending to be rational, “conservatives” played the game on liberal turf, conning everyone into arguing with their fake rationales. They continually shifted their positions, used fake data, and generally drove really intelligent people crazy with their sophistical and self-serving faux reasoning.
But after the election of Barack Obama in 2008, the moronic hordes that provided the voting base for pseudo-intellectual “conservatives” and their billionaire backers could no longer be contained within the bounds of fake rationality. A black man in the White House was too much for them. Their hateful racism and vile “Christianity” burst the bounds of pretend decency. Since at least 2010, Republicans have been openly hostile to all Enlightenment principles.
They no longer pledge allegiance to the Constitution; they prefer to make up their own Constitution. They no longer hew to the rule of law; they prefer to strive for the law of rule. They no longer believe in civil politics; they prefer to win power by any means, even fraud and violence.
All this is happening not only in America but all over the globe. It is most historically significant in America, however, because America was the first Enlightenment nation, the first attempt at rational self-governance, the first world power to demonstrate the practical superiority of Reason to Power.
Republicans are getting worse because the crisis is approaching. The whole world knows that the 2024 American elections will settle the battle once and for all. Putin knows that if Trump becomes president again, the Russian empire is as good as reconstituted. The autocrats and “conservatives” of Europe know that Trump will poison the rational world order initiated by the United States after the war, and that this poisoning will make the world safe for dictatorship again. The corrupt Arab potentates who were only too willing to flout international norms and bribe Trump and his relatives during his presidency will go right back to openly buying off everyone. And the absolute dictators in Asia, such as Kim in Korea and Chi in China, will finally be emboldened to attack South Korea and Taiwan respectively. The return of Trump will mark the end of enlightened self-governance the world over.
And that is precisely what Republicans want. They see that unless they cement minority rule through pure power in 2024, they will never have power in America again for the foreseeable future. They see that the will of the majority of decent Americans is, and always has been, against them. They see that more and more of us have caught on to their selfish perversion of democracy. They fear that we will finally turn out in unstoppable numbers at the polls and eject them from power once and for all.
But they cannot help themselves now. They have gone too far to turn back, to pretend once again that they are rational actors. Watching them become increasingly irrational, increasingly brazen, increasingly lawless, and increasingly shameless, it is difficult not to see a demonic force compelling them to reveal their inner wickedness in order to clarify the nature of the sides in the historical battle. This is a Manichaean conflict: the forces of evil are “conservative,” the forces of good, liberal.
The nature of the confrontation is so clear that Republicans can no longer hide their wickedness. Trump is pure evil, as are those who continue to worship him. He is so obviously evil that the only thing Republicans can do to distract from his evil appearance is to pretend that Joe Biden is somehow more evil than Trump—a position that is laughable to anyone except “conservatives” who needs an excuse for their reprehensible “beliefs” and behaviors.
So if there is little to be jolly about this holiday season, it is because we decent Americans have not yet risen up in our righteous might and struck down the evil “conservative” minority that is making current life miserable and endangering the future of humanity.
Let us all resolve in the New Year to sweep down on the polls next year and overwhelm the “conservatives” who are determined to destroy everything for the sake of power.
Then we can look forward to a jolly holiday season next year and a brighter future for the whole world in the decades to come.
Oh—and the Schadenfreude of watching the world’s “conservatives” gnash their teeth as they become powerless to stop the march of the Enlightenment toward freedom and peace on earth.
Hi, Justine. Thanks for subscribing!
There is only one way out—providing that the Trump fascists don't start their civil war before the election. That is to wipe them out at the polls, to make it clear that decent Americans are not going to stand for this "conservative" bullshit any longer. Our plan has to be to convince all the people who are still resigned that each one of them can do one simple thing to save themselves and the nation: simply go to the polls and vote against every Republican they see on the ballot. It really isn't a lot to ask. We need to get four a five friends together, go to vote, and then go out for lunch or dinner to watch America be saved.
It's not a complex or overly strategic. It's just doing our duty.
Thank for writing to refreshingly frankly about what America is facing. I wish we had a plan. We need A PLAN. I’m a recovering academic, and most of my academic friends have a helpless resignation. “My act of resistance is continue my scientific research…” etc. The house is on fire, and saying so is still generally regarded as an hysterical act. Hoping for the best is hardly a strategy. It’s lazy, and it’s a symptom denial. I do think more of us would face the miserable truth if there were clarity - or even ideas - concerning the way out.