A very wise man once advised not to “accept assumptions until you are dead certain nothing better is on offer, but once embraced, only the indisputable should force you to release them.” Our current crisis, and the struggle to effectively confront it, has everything to do with the assumptions we have adopted, recently rejected, and are considering taking to heart now. Make no mistake, the fate of the nation and the world rests on this shuffling of intrinsic attitudes.
MAGA’s destructiveness comes directly from a zero-sum relationship with so many established premises our country’s experience has validated. Like the absurd basis of its Sauronesque master, Fox/AM, Trumpism rises and falls on how many it can convince to shed fealty to the basic assumptions it slanders 24/7. On every meaningful issue of our time, climate change to Civil Rights, public education to tax policy, gun ownership to NATO, the MAGA gospel is no different from any Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity installment from yesterday or ten years ago. Whatever the deceitful mainstream media beguiled you to believe is a lie.
Relentlessly shrill Mark Levin, perhaps the most volcanically unhinged of the entire nihilist echo chamber, has a tried and true way of introducing pathogens into his ugly monologues. He’ll shriek some heretofore off limits absurdity, some libelous attack on a person or common assumption, and then declare “there, I said it!.” Something like: “Obama was a pothead. How the hell did he get into Harvard?! … there, I said it!” His wretched implication is twofold: first, Levin is the utter profile in courage for saying this publicly; and second, listeners should thank God a hero like him has liberated them to repeat this previously repressed controversy.
When Limbaugh prattles about climate change, he never presents it in terms other than “the drive by media wants you to believe this.” Of course, “this” is the entirety of decades of scientific research, thousands and thousands of hours devoted to developing accepted consensus… an assumption we could rely on for solving the problem. It works the same way for virtually everything else. NATO didn’t keep the peace, it merely fleeced us and eroded our sovereignty. Food stamps aren’t a critical safety net for the most needy, a tiny sliver of domestic spending; they are a scam for cheats and bankrupting the nation while forcing a veteran to go without.
A close friend of mine, who would go full Trump if he wasn’t such an otherwise decent person, seems always looking for examples to justify unabashed MAGA sympathies. The latest is a story he heard from a friend about a family who drove up in a luxury automobile and paid for a dozen jumbo jimmy Maryland crabs with food stamps, thus proving beyond dispute both the rottenness of the program and the multitudes out to soak taxpayers. Skin color was never mentioned; sadly, it didn’t need to be. To my friend, the tale formed an unarguable basis for a set of assumptions sufficient to indict do-nothing freeloaders specifically and “libs” in general. Moreover, in the binary choice between Trump and the alternative, what else could he do?! When I trashed the imbecility of such conclusions and expressed my disappointment in his inane reasoning, he suggested I “get a hobby.” Another beautiful relationship sullied at the crossroads of Trumpism.
Yet and still, if MAGA is an existential emergency created by the destruction of previously accepted propositions, what of the assumptions relied on by its opponents, sanity’s deliverers? Tuesday dramatically narrowed the options of who will wear the mantle and do battle with ruinous Trumpist despicability. At heart, what really differentiates Bernie Sanders from Joe Biden is the basic assumption his campaign holds to vis a vis what has befallen us since 2016. Trump as merely the corollary of a broken system, or an unprecedented pox that renders any ambitions beside his removal meaningless. The crux of the choice facing us.
A “Berner” I know very well speaks for most of his fellow travelers when he condemns the Democratic National Committee with near the same visceral exclamation as the GOP. To his eyes Hillary, and presumably those who supported her, got what they deserved in 2016. It’s unfortunate the alternative turned out to be so particularly bad, but a Clinton Presidency would have been near as intolerable. The current feeling among the Sanders faithful holds DNC Chairman Tom Perez with as much disdain as his GOP counterpart Ronna McDaniel, a Trump door mat. The memes they toss around originate from the very Russian troll operations as those posted by the wretched core; indeed, many are the same. Surely, things will only deteriorate if Super Tuesday’s results are any indicator. A candidate is responsible for his supporters. Sanders seems increasingly disinterested in providing light between himself and those amplifying his rhetoric.
The notion of MAGA as nothing more than a concurrent symptom of our systemic corruption is fully at odds with what has transpired since Trump took office with only the agenda of pandering to his base’s subterranean sensibilities. To accept it requires a skewed set of priorities that issues grossly insufficient importance to L’Enfant’s habitual lies and relentless divisiveness, not to mention dangerous incompetence. Really, at the bone’s marrow, it embraces Fox/AM’s broad strokes… the nadir existed before Trump was sworn in. Trumpies will tell you that means anything else is an improvement. Berners will contend the differences aren’t important enough to distract from the opportunities at hand. That’s called six of one, half dozen of another and, at least to me, it’s a disqualifying premise.
As for Biden, why wouldn’t we want an experienced West Wing hand taking the reins after government by Sean Hannity? Eight years at the side of quiet competence seems just the type of bullet point on a resume we should be looking for right about now. The true disaster of Trumpism is the wasteland of talent it creates in the executive branch. There is zero doubt a Biden Administration will attract the best and brightest for the daunting mission of repairing our government infrastructure and the war now unleashed on the very mission statements of its departments. If MAGA has proven anything it’s how destructive pandering to the notion federal services are the enemy can be. Biden has been clear from the start about his intention to reset, something wholly at odds with Sanders’ titanic pledges.
Four years of Trump demands remediation and repair before ambitions can be pursued. Moving forward on the assumption this political framework we now suffer is capable of “a revolution” after enduring a riot is not idealist, it’s at best delusional, at worst disingenuous. I wish that weren’t so, but it is; and if I’m not buying, it’s a certainty the legions of far more skittish voters aren’t either. There is little doubt few could chew Trump up like Sanders; not many demand accountability like he can. Nonetheless, the baggage of his brand, and the assumptions its agenda requires, creates too much background noise for his best work to be effective.
Finally, the elephant in the room, the specter still rarely discussed, is the promise Trump and his wretched core are not going to cede authority in a constructive, perhaps even peaceful manner. The rabid frothing of Trump’s rally incoherence will only magnify as the election nears, particularly if his prospects diminish. There is every chance the one who evicts him will be forced to spend the transition prying the office from Trump’s cold tiny hands. Biden’s relationships run deep throughout the institutions responsible for peaceful transference of power, the military included.
All hands will need to be on deck when it’s time to swab the vestiges of nihilism’s term in office. Mobilizing such an effort will be far more difficult in the face of “the socialists are coming” hysteria Trump and his Murdoch megaphone will be ceaselessly screeching after a Sanders victory. The unprecedented measures that may be necessary will be perceived quite differently from Biden than from Sanders. One narrative will focus the spotlight on an authoritarian refusing to cede power. The other will be addled by the false sidebar of a socialist seizing office.
Last night the President of the United States mused that “his gut” told him official fatality rates of a burgeoning global pandemic were too high, and the actual numbers were less than one percent. He also declared most cases of the Coronavirus would be mild enough to suffer through at the workplace. Think about that, a shot of DayQuil and nose to the grindstone; after all, we have my four-year plan to meet, right?
If there is a central lesson one hopes this Presidency confers, it’s that no matter how many times a lie is told it never blossoms into the truth. However, the opposite is also correct; just because a fact becomes common wisdom, and is repeated time and again, doesn’t render it less true. Four more years of Trump is ruinous to our nation and the world. Moreover, the damage already done can not simply be ignored and built upon; it needs to be rectified, new safeguards installed so it never happens again. A Presidency dedicated first and foremost to those bare essentials is fine by me. And make no mistake, where that leaves student loan forgiveness and medicare for all is one hell of a lot closer than if MAGA stays in office. That’s an assumption nobody can dispute! BC