Not his selection to make. Not a qualified candidate. Another day at the front lines.
We view politics through the lens of our expectations, grounded within the supposition that we are all playing by the same set of rules. That in turn colors how we view the actions of the opposition. We speak of Trump as being illiterate, uninterested in facts, a liar, possessed of a short attention span, ignorant, cruel. We speak of Paul Ryan as lacking a backbone, being a fraud and an elitist. We say that Mitch McConnell is power hungry, unethical, a brilliant and fierce tactician. We say that Republican legislators in general are bat shit crazy stupid liars.
But that all assumes that the Republicans are playing the same game that we are playing, what we call democracy practiced within a two Party system. But what if they are not playing that game at all? What if they are actually pursuing an entirely different set of goals with an entirely different set of rules? What if we could propose a different game is being played that better explains what we are seeing?
For decades, going back to Richard Nixon, top conservative strategists and their billionaire backers have railed against our government, saying it was the problem not the solution, stating that their goal was to shrink it down small enough to “drown it in a bathtub”. And their policy tropes are consistently loaded with images of taxation as theft, the common good as a direct threat to individual freedoms.
They view democracy itself as being inherently corrupt, incapable of producing legitimate outcomes despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They reject the fundamental principle of one-man-one-vote, arguing that only voters who believe as they do are entitled to vote. And they use that as justification to do anything it takes to enforce that view in an Orwellian circle of illogic.
And I have not even mentioned all of the violations of norms that we are seeing from every level of the Republican Party now, violations so flagrant and numerous that I would be further taxing your patience going through them once again.
So here I want to take a leap of faith and ask what if these are not the random actions of an implausibly large collection of ignorant, vain, corrupt men who happen to be very good at propaganda and at manipulating the rules past the point of breaking to get what they want? What if these are actually the well planned actions of savvy Machiavellian strategists implemented by clever men who believe that they can bring down our system of government which they see as a direct threat to the welfare of their billionaire backers?
Look at Trump’s administration. Despite a circus like appearance of complete ineptitude bordering on madness, behind the scenes their efforts to slash regulations have been methodical and relentless. Even with the government shutdown oil leases picked up steam. It’s a miracle, I tell you!
And the rantings of the mad king only feed into the narrative they want to project that government is a joke, if not downright dangerous. Think about this. If you wanted to destroy the positive image Americans have of their government and their democracy how would you do it? You would grind its operations to a halt. Put in a conman as President who rants and raves like a lunatic while eviscerating regulatory agencies out of the public eye. You would step all over the rules of government thereby showing contempt for those same rules. And as you were doing this you would be pitting the people against one another, all the while organizing militias that could step in should the rule of law totally collapse.
In short, everything we are seeing from the Republicans fits this narrative to a tee, and there is nothing new about any of it, having been promoted over the past 50 years as the end game they hoped to achieve.
Folks, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then maybe it really is an attempted coup.
