You keep hearing how the take home lesson of the 2010 elections was, The American Public Has Spoken.
And just what did the public say? Just this, according to the authorized translation: We don't have a Revenue Problem, we have a Spending Problem ™.
The trouble is, like so much Republican orthodoxy, this is demonstrably false. Not only that, this problem was even worse during the 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections, with nary a peep out of the Real American People.
Thankfully, the patriotic states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, et al., have provided us a clearer version of the Message of 2010: Republicans won. Won big! Woo hoo! They are Winners, and Dems are Losers!
So hey, you Dems? STFU. Shut up right now, and while we're on the subject, make it forever.
Because it is important to understand that the voters’ 2010 message was no fleeting electoral preference. It was a statement of what the people want, now and forever. To that end, Republicans all over are offering up emergency rules suspending the freedom to entertain non-Republicanism until such time as those rules are no longer necessary.
(Putting to bed a question you might have been wondering about: Who, exactly, are the Brain Police?)
As part of making their single Big Win into an Eternal Victory, they are legislatively granting themselves permission to be sole interpreters of the public’s wishes. From there, they hope, it is but a small step to declaring themselves the very embodiment of those wishes. L’etat c’est moi! Der Fuhrerprinzip!
None of this is very surprising. You take a situation where people feel poorer and less secure than the day before, with all they’ve worked for made into an abstraction on a piece of paper (which may or may not exist) in some criminals' office, and you add someone who promises a world with no more surprises, and bingo! Fascism rears its head!
Fascism's appeal is that it proposes to subdue uncertainty, once and for all. Very popular with people afraid of the future.
Republicans know, however, that they can’t keep selling Fear Cures indefinitely, because in fact you can’t fool all the people all the time. Someone is bound to figure out that it was you that created the fear you’re selling the cure for. So (good at sales if nothing else) they sell the sizzle instead: the “principles” of small government, free markets, or individual responsibility.
Note the quotes around “principles”. Those aren't principles. They are means masquerading as principles.
And when faux principles like these are put into practice, a funny thing happens. Substituting ways of getting things done for reasons to do them creates a condition a lot like addiction: an appetite that cannot be satisfied, an unquenchable thirst for More.
And more, and more again. On and on.
So enough is never enough. Especially for those running the game.
You may remember Kurt Vonnegut’s poem, “Joe Heller”:
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel 'Catch-22'
has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Republicans have put themselves in a place where Winning is everything, and at the same time not enough. So they lust after the Ultimate Win.
The Final Win is where every other voice must be silent, to let them talk uninterrupted, forever and ever and ever. That’s what they are jonesing after.
Here is where we democrats are likely to flounder, god bless us every one.
Proudly we say, Winning is not our ultimate end. And we decline to win.
In doing so we wander to a dangerous place where, having the advantage, we don’t press it. Where we agree to shut up as a pragmatic tactic.
To a place where we settle “quarrels [with fascists] by admitting and satisfying [their] grievances through rational negotiation and compromise,” even though they’ve defined “compromise” as what portion of our principles we’ll consent to declare rubbish, and “negotiation” as us shutting up while they talk.
And then we, too, have confused principles and means, from the other end, and we court the Ultimate Loss—never taking part in the conversation ever again.
We cannot allow our nation merely be a statement some people once made and then fell quiet. It must be what we are saying, every day, on and on.