"The Ugliness of Politics - Is It Necessary?"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“The Ugliness of Politics – Is It Necessary?”

December 27, 2021

 

“Politics is about power, the power to make people 

do what you want them to do, so that you gain leverage.”

                                                                                                                Bruce Thornton

                                                                                                                www.frontpagemag.com

                                                                                                                December 15, 2021

 

Democrats, who have failed on so many fronts in the first eleven months of the Biden Administration – immigration, inflation, COVID-19, crime, Afghanistan, China and Russia – have resurrected their nemesis Donald Trump, as a foil to promote their claim that the Republican Party “has,” in the words of Dan Kennedy of Northeastern University, “embraced authoritarianism and voter suppression” – a red herring to deflect attention from Democrats’ efforts for self-empowerment. Trump is demonized because, more than anyone, he is seen as standing athwart the federal regulatory Leviathan progressives have erected.

 

There is something bizarre about supposedly intelligent and well-informed columnists like Dana Milbank of The Washington Post and Jason Linkins of The New Republic, when they claim threats to democracy emanate from the Party that embraces limited government, free markets, deregulation and low taxes, rather than from the Party that supports greater regulation, higher taxes, packing the Supreme Court, nationalizing voting and (in New York City) allowing non-citizens to vote, while urging conformity, and censoring conservative speech on college campuses. The lead essay in the January 2022 issue of The Spectator concludes: “The transformation of free societies by bureaucratic stealth, corporatization, and end-of-world doom-mongering pose greater dangers to America democracy than do China or climate change.” Yet Barton Gellman of The Atlantic, in contradiction to common sense, calls Democrats “protectors of democracy.” 

 

Partisan progressive reporters have made the ludicrous charge that current media coverage of Mr. Biden is more negative than it was of Mr. Trump in his last year in office, an allegation my youngest grandchild would recognize as absurd. The accusation is a Trojan Horse to camouflage their own biases, displayed for four years in the discredited Russian collusion story, and now in a transformation of last January 6, from a protest that got out of hand into an alleged insurrection. Political criticism should be welcomed. But in this new world, criticism of Republicans is encouraged, while criticism of Democrats is treasonous. Jason Linkins headlined an article in The New Republic: “Is Criticizing Joe Biden a Danger to Democracy?” While he did admit that “blind fealty” is a hallmark of dictatorships (which it is), he overrode that admonition when he wrote: “…the GOP is the enemy of democracy, full stop…” Trump is an easy target. He speaks Brooklynese; he is an overweight, incurable narcissist, who speaks without thinking. Republicans have supporters in the media who are unfair in their treatment of Democrats, but the situation is David versus Goliath-like, with progressives controlling most of mainstream media, big tech companies, Wall Street, schools, universities, government bureaucracies, cultural institutions and professional sports. 

 

The arrogance of political elites toward those with differing opinions is mind-numbing. That White House press secretary Jen Psaki belittles those who ask tough questions is legion. Recently, she called Senator Joe Manchin a liar when he said “no” to the Build Back Better legislation. If Ms. Psaki had read The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The New York Sun or The New York Post over the past few months, she would have seen that Senator Manchin’s reservations regarding the legislation were well aired. In the preface to his unfinished book (published posthumously in 1856), The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: “…a man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.” That is what we are seeing among the progressive branch of Democrats.

 

Trump can be personally insulting, but he is not condescending. But we did see condescension in the words of Barack Obama when, in 2008, he spoke at a fund raiser in San Francisco about working class voters in an industrialized Pennsylvania town: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” And we saw it in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lashed out at Donald Trump’s supporters, as a “basket of deplorables.” We see that condescension in Nancy Pelosi’s and Chuck Schumer’s briefings We see it in the treatment of COVID-19. We are told to “follow the science,” with no admission that science evolves. The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) – authored by Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford and Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and which focused on protection of the most vulnerable while encouraging the non-vulnerable to resume life as normal – expressed “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing Covid-19 policies.” The document, which was signed by 60,000 infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists, was ridiculed as “fringe” by Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) and called “nonsense and dangerous” by Dr. Anthony Fauci. (Dr. Collins later resigned as director of the NIH after government documents suggested he lied to Congress when he claimed his agency did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Lab.)

 

Progressives who dominate the Democrat Party – more through fear than numbers – distort our past and forecast a dystopian future. The Founders, they tell us, were old white men who founded a nation based on oppression and slavery. They argue that 156 years after the end of the Civil War, a war fought to end slavery, we remain a “systemically racist” nation. We are, they claim, a nation comprised of victims and victimizers. As for our future, without adoption of their statist agendas and policies, racial tensions will increase, gender discrimination will persist, and man-caused climate change will bring an end to our world. A salad bowl has replaced the mixing bowl, as a metaphor for the American experience. Ignoring the economic consequences, Cassandras argue the world needs fewer not more people, and that capitalism creates economic unfairness. Yet, according to an NBC poll, cited by Frank Bruni in The New York Times in November, 71% of Americans feel the country is on the wrong track, a sense of pessimism reflected in Census Bureau numbers that showed the U.S.’s population gain in 2020 was the lowest increase on record. 

 

…………………………………………………..

 

What is wanted in this fractious political environment, where sanctimonious politicians belittle opponents and politicize issues like infectious diseases and climate change, is an injection of common sense, leavened with the good feelings and optimism of a President Reagan, who spoke of a bright future, a “shining city on a hill.” The reality is that the United States is a good nation with a diversity of free people, who have been infused by progressives with self-hatred and self-doubt. In truth, we are a mixing bowl, not a salad bowl. In 2015, 17% of marriages were interracial, up from 3% in 1967. In that same year, 39% of U.S.-born Hispanic and 46% of U.S.-born Asian marriages were between spouses of different races and ethnicities. In 1960, about 5% of U.S. women had a college degree. In 2020, that number was 38.3 percent. In 1992, among working blacks, 15.9% held a bachelor’s degree. By 2018, that number had increased to 31.2 percent. The U.S. has never claimed to be perfect, but its attractions and promises make it the most sought-after nation in the world for immigrants. We can achieve an era of good feelings. But our republic, based on ancient Western ideals, cannot be left to professionals. It requires the participation of the people.

 

In the December 27, 2021 issue of National Review, Peter Wood wrote: “The West, in its ideals, is a universal culture open to all, but always on the condition that those who hope to enter it recognize its unceasing demand to reach for those ideals that promise unity...” Political ugliness doesn’t have to prevail. We can, and we should, be optimistic for the future. But it requires study, confidence, effort and wisdom.

"Lighten Up"

                                                                     Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Lighten Up”

August 8, 2021

 

“There’s a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing.”

                                                                                                                                Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

                                                                                                                                Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852

 

 

It is not that I am without concerns, for everything that happens today is a ‘crisis.’ We live on a planet that has been around for 4.5 billion years. Over that time, it has been warm enough in Connecticut, where I live, to host dinosaurs and cold enough to place it under thirty feet of ice. By the time of the last ice age, man had been around for tens of thousands of years. He adapted. Yet today’s changing climate is said to present an existential challenge for the planet. “Woke” governments and large businesses demand diversity, equity and inclusion, but what they really mean are uniformity, unjustness and exclusion. Universities, once places for inquiring minds, have become venues for intellectual conformity. In sports, men, as transgender women, compete against biological women. Merit has fallen victim to social equity. What gives? The United States was founded on principles of personal liberty and the rule of law, derived from the Enlightenment. Should we let what has taken 250 years to create devolve into darkness? 

 

We should not. We need to lighten up. The political atmosphere has become nasty. In an essay (“Old Glory, new anger”) in the August issue of The Spectator, Peter Wood wrote: “There is the wrathfulness of the political left, stemming from visceral hatred of Trump and his supporters.” As for the Right, he noted: “Their complaint lies far deeper as they see the purposeful destruction of American values by an elite that bullies and derides them.”  Friends and family members are no longer able to air political differences without one being called a racist and the other a toady. If we are to survive as a free, decent and independent people, composed of myriad races, religions and nationalities, political leaders, the media and universities must promote tolerance and mutual respect. To achieve this, they must encourage traditional American values, like family formations and public schools that teach. They must reaffirm the values of common sense, responsibility, hard work, merit and reintroduce civility and humor.

 

The political spectrum is linear, with autocracy at one end and anarchy at the other. Understanding that, we should know where on that line our own political philosophies lie. Fundamentally, our differences are simple. Progressives believe equitable progress is best achieved with more government involvement. Conservatives believe in what Margaret Thatcher said in Gdansk in 1988: “Economic freedom and personal freedom go hand in hand.” The first depends on the ability of a few hundred senior bureaucrats. The second relies on millions of people making millions of decisions. There are gradations of belief. A few extremists are clustered at either end, believing in either the benevolence of autocracy or the benignity of anarchy. Mainstream media would have us bunched (along with them) at extremes – the “woke” on one end and “deplorables” at the other. Most of us, however, lie within a few degrees of the center. But anger divides us, and communication is difficult.

 

Abetted by vitriolic, non-stop talk radio, biased cable and network news commentators, ignorant Hollywood and sports figures, sanctimonious university personnel, politicians who see both profit and votes in discord and “woke” corporations who just want to get along, we are being pushed, unwillingly, toward extremes. Our minders are puritanical, meanspirited, stupid and humorless. For students, fear of not being politically correct has meant withholding healthy emotional release. On college campuses political debate is discouraged and mental health distress is rising. A 2019 study by the American College Health Association found that 87% of college students expressed being overwhelmed. To improve conditions, the Association suggested empowering students, launching wellness campaigns and offering a “decision tree.” Absent from suggestions were open debate or fun and laughter, the latter being a well-known antidote to tension. Remember the old Reader’s Digest column, “Laughter the Best Medicine?” But in 2018, the threat of censorship kept Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock from performing on college campuses.

 

Humor that disparages should be shunned. But the ability to laugh is important. Mark Twain looked at politics through a lens of humor: “Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress…But I repeat myself.” P. J. O’Rourke once wrote on the differences between Democrats and Republicans: “The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then get elected and prove it.” Political correctness, which abjures humor, has infected all aspects of our lives, including the National Football League. Dan Mitchell, economist and former senior fellow at the Cato Institute, recently forwarded the following: “Redskins change name to ‘Lizard People,’ to better represent the population of Washington, D.C.” 

 

Would today’s politicians be offended and find jokes about them hurtful? Would they cry ‘Victim?’ Perhaps, but so what? They are public figures, light on wit but heavy with hubris, so subject to satire. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s quote in the rubric speaks to politicians whose dancing around truths can be a source of fun. Laughing at oneself can be endearing. Lyndon Johnson once said: “Being President is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but stand there and take it.” Ronald Reagan used humor to deflect criticism from opponents. In a 1984 debate with the 56-year-old Walter Mondale, the 73-year-old Reagan said: “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” In recent years, that self-abasing humor has been missing from political discourse. Obama, Trump and Biden are noted for egos, not for laughing at themselves. 

 

Peter Wood ended his piece: “Despair breeds wrath and that fire, once ignited, will engulf us all.” If our “betters” in politics, the media, campuses, “woke” corporations, the sports world and the entertainment industry fail to dispel the anger that envelopes our nation, which is my assumption and fear, then the responsibility to find light in this darkness falls upon ourselves. Turn down the news, pick up a Wodehouse novel, watch a Bob Hope movie, take a walk in the park, try “forest bathing,” as Peter Wohlleben wrote in The Heartbeat of Trees. Visit with family and friends. Just stay off politics and discover what you have in common. Laugh. Life is short. Those of us in the United States and in other free nations are fortunate to be alive and to live where and in the time we do. To go through life angry is self-defeating.

 

Most of us have beliefs that cluster toward the center of the political spectrum. It has been, more than anything else, the media, and especially social media, that has divided us. We are after all fallible. No one, not the President of the United States, not the senior Senator from Kentucky, not the Congresswoman from California’s 12^th District, knows what the future holds. But we should not let the darkness of despair overwhelm us. We should read, watch and listen to the news with healthy skepticism and a lively, restorative sense of humor. We must lighten up.