Political fantasies and the Republican war on Americans

by Massimo Pigliucci

Sometimes I think I’m not paid enough to do this job. Well, actually I’m not paid at all, but that’s beside the point. I ought to be paid more than a large number of pundits on CNN and editorialists at the New York Times. Why? Because I didn’t believe for a minute their bullshit, a mere two years ago or so, about a post-racial America and the permanent relegation of the Republican party to minority and even fringe status within the American political landscape — which many of them were confidently predicting.

As soon as Obama was elected, the media trampled all over each other to declare the end of racism in America. All it took was one (admittedly pivotal, historical) event — the election of a quasi-black man to the Presidency — and voilà, everything from slavery to the Civil War to Jim Crow laws was going to be relegated to ancient history. It will all be an embarrassing memory, but only a memory nonetheless, nothing to do with the new post-racial America.

Except of course that it was bullshit, and of the self-evident type to boot. Sure enough, it took only weeks for the same media to start reporting on large percentages of Republicans believing that Obama is a Muslim (as if that were somehow an indictment of some kind), that he is not American (despite the public availability of documents clearly showing that he is), that he is a socialist (despite his Presidency clearly settling on a pretty moderate course from the get go), and so on. Why? Because a large number of Republicans simply can’t stand the very idea that a (quasi) black is their President. But they can’t say it in so many words (we have made some social progress since the ‘50s), so they express their outrage by embracing political fantasies and conspiracy theories.

And what about that “the Republicans are relegated to permanent minority” idiocy? Well, just look at the midterm elections a mere two years later. They got back control of the House by a large margin, they missed on regaining the Senate only because they overreached by getting in bed too tightly with the silliness of the Tea Party, and they now represent a clear and present danger to a second Obama term. Oh, and they have immediately re-started with much fanfare their war against unions, public education, the poor and the middle class, all the while further fattening their Wall Street masters (who just two years previous caused a global economic catastrophe out of sheer greed, and got compensated with billions of our dollars for doing so). The real question is: how did this happen?

There are, of course, a variety of reasons, but some of them can be understood by examining the parallel between US politics and — of all comparisons — the Italian one, which I still follow from a distance, despite having left the Bel Paese more than twenty years ago.

You see, in the 1990s Italy switched from a proportional (classic European style) electoral system to a “winner take all” one modeled on the American system — Italians have always had a fetish for all things American, from Dallas (the tv show) to Madonna (the singer, not the alleged mother of Jesus), so why not imitate the voting system of the self-professed best democracy in the world?

The result was catastrophic: overnight it turned the multi-party system that had navigated (with ups and downs, for sure) the Italian ship since the end of World War II (and made it one of the world’s seven most industrialized nations) into a de facto two-party (they call them “poles”) system where those in power have an increasingly easier time remaining there. Add to this that the Italian Right (partly through the evil genius of Silvio Berlusconi) controls the majority of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations; that it has the Catholic church on its side (all in favor of family values except when it comes to pedophiliac priests); that a huge amount of money is continuously funneled to the Right by the ultra-rich (and the Mafia); that the sheer stupidity and gullibility of about half of the Italian citizenry has reached astounding heights not seen since the Mussolini era; and that the opposition is simply inept, and you’ve got a pretty much complete explanation.

Sound familiar? Maintaining the same order so that the parallelism is particularly obvious, Republicans keep coming back and controling the agenda even when they are not in power because: a) There is a two-party system which guarantees that any meaningful alternative doesn’t have a chance from the get go; b) Republicans have a powerful and dedicated party propaganda machine masquerading as news media (Fox) that manages to manipulate and frame the political discourse for the rest of the media, plus a capillary network of “talk radio” stations throughout the country that further amplify the noise (and no, MSNBC doesn’t even begin to balance things out, and if you think so you are absolutely deluded); c) a large portion of American evangelical and fundamentalist churches support the Right’s agenda because they've bought into the peculiar concept of “morality” that suits the Republican party (where sex is a moral issue, unless it is a pastor or Newt Gingrich who commits the deed, while obscene income disparity, raping of the environment, white collar crimes and so forth somehow don’t show up on the morality radar screen); d) Wall Street (particularly, but not only, Goldman Sachs) and other super-rich individuals and corporations now have unlimited political access — thanks to a recent, truly despicable, Supreme Court decision — so that they can buy all the elections they want; e) the American public is certainly no more savvy than the Italian counterpart (creationism, anyone? Or climate change denial? Or vaccine-autism connection?); f) the Democratic party is just as spineless as the Italian center-left coalition has been for the past several decades.

The result is the continued decline — economic, cultural, and ethical — of both countries. And there is no end in sight, I’m afraid. Only three things could possibly reverse the trend, and they are all under fierce (and by no means random) fire by the Republicans: unions (see Wisconsin), public education (see everywhere in the country), and more political participation (see the Republicans’ constant assault on political enfranchisement).

Republicans — like their Italian counterparts — have managed to convince Americans that public employees are overpaid bastards who don’t want to share in the necessary sacrifices that it will take to save America (while at the same time, naturally, we keep pumping billions into the hands of the super-rich). They have also convinced most American workers that unions — certainly not perfect in themselves, but the only organized resistance against the erosion of the middle class — are a communist ploy bent on undermining “the American way” of life (which, let us not forget, despite Glenn Beck's style of historical revisionism, was made possible by an initial double whammy of slavery and genocide).

Americans — like Italians across the pond — have been bamboozled by fear mongering (the communists! the terrorists! the nazi-social-communists!), lulled by endless mindless entertainment (so-called “reality” television and countless completely inane morning and afternoon shows), and when all else fails discouraged and in many cases simply barred from voting (naturally, since in both countries the majority of those having a right to vote lean much further to the left than to the right). Ever wondered why the US elections are held for one day only, in the middle of the week? In Italy at least they take two days, and they are carried out on weekends, to maximize participation. Ever asked yourself why Republicans are so obsessed with solving the non-existent problem of illegal immigrants somehow sneaking into the voting booth, which continuously results in the Republican party passing laws and ordinances that actually end up turning away scores of legitimate voters from the underclasses, the very same ones that, surprise surprise!, tend to overwhelmingly vote Democrat?

All of this has established a de facto plutocracy in both countries — much more so in the US than in Italy — a plutocracy that keeps its power through the expenditure of huge amounts of money to buy politicians and courts, and thanks to continuous devious propaganda to convince Tea Partiers and assorted simpletons that they, the super-rich, are really on the side of Joe the Plumber.

There are only two things that can possibly reverse this state of affairs: a concerted, multi-decade, extremely canny counter-initiative by the Democrats (similar to the one initiated by Reagan more than three decades ago), or a revolution. The former isn’t likely to happen given the recent history of the Democratic party and its inept leaders (some of whom, of course, are almost as bad as their counterparts across the isle). The latter is not going to happen until things get much, much worse for the majority of Americans, as they probably will due to one final fatal overreach by the Plutocracy.

In the meantime, venting in this blog posting has gotten me a bit depressed. Anyone like to join me for a nice dry, dirty martini, while we can still afford one?