Oh, great. What 2022 needs is yet another opinion piece noting that our current political environment is polarized. “Hey! Have you noticed that water is wet?”
My end-of-year variation on this well-worn theme will be to first make a few observations and to then pose a serious question to my readers who reside somewhere to my political right.
As I’ve noted before, the current Electoral College structure and partisan redistricting have contributed to the impending disappearance of moderate politicians. While I am saddened by a trend that I personally find to be undemocratic and contrary to the ideals of the American experiment, I unfortunately accept the fact that the trend is largely constitutional. Since we have allowed our elections to legally become ultra-partisan exercises, we cannot be too surprised that such elections are often won by ultra-partisans.
There are obviously ultra-partisans in both major parties. While glimpses of the occasional moderate can found in government, such sightings are increasingly rare. The recent omnibus spending bill was a surprising example of bipartisan compromise – with neither party getting everything they wanted, both parties getting something they wanted, and the American public getting a functioning government. Still, ultra-partisans are the new normal and old-fashioned statesmanship can now be found mostly on AMC and on re-runs of The West Wing.
However, there is a dangerous new breed of politician that happily draws well outside of the already distant lines of ultra-partisanship. While crackpots and conspiracy theorists have always existed, they were historically consigned to the fringes of American society where they mostly served as easy fodder for late-night comedians. It is only in our new normal that these zealots have directly involved themselves in organized politics, lustily grabbing at the reigns of an already unruly democracy.
And it is here that the “both sides are guilty” argument completely falls apart.
After the 2020 elections, 139 House Republicans and 8 Senate Republicans voted to overturn the election results. It may be old news, but just let that sink in. After numerous recounts and after losing ALL of at least 63 lawsuits related to the election, 147 elected members of the United States Congress voted to simply ignore the results of a democratic election that didn’t go their way. And this wasn’t just a one-cycle issue. In 2022, while most Republican election-deniers in swing states thankfully lost their elections, a Washington Post analysis of red states estimated that 177 election-deniers won their mid-term elections.
Unfortunately, anti-democratic actions are by no means this group’s only focus. They have also voiced baskets of baseless, bonkers beliefs and/or have strongly defended others who did:
They have embraced militant, white nationalist, neo-Nazi beliefs. They have variously claimed that all LGBTQ individuals are predators, that Jewish space lasers are a thing, that mass shootings in Las Vegas and Parkland were staged by the left as a pretext for seizing their guns, that COVID vaccines come with tracking chips, that completely fabricated resumes are just politics as usual, and that there is a “Great Replacement” campaign on the left to eliminate whites in favor of Jews, immigrants, and people of color. I could go on.
For reference, here’s just a sampling of the Republicans serving in the crazy-right Congressional caucus: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Louie Gohmert, Elise Stefanik, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, George Santos, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, and Josh Hawley.
So here is my serious question to my Republican readers:
Give me similar examples of crazy-left extremists currently serving in Congress who come even close to the above crazies on the right.
Please note:
- I will not accept Democrats whom you simply consider be be too partisan.
- For every Nancy Pelosi you give me, I’ll give you a Mitch McConnell. Both are ultra-partisans and both have acted like ultra-partisans. However, agree with them or not, neither is a threat to American democracy.
- I will not accept Democrats with whom you strongly disagree from a purely policy perspective.
- I’m not listing otherwise sane Republicans who are climate deniers, gun champions, and/or anti-abortion absolutists. Don’t give me Democrats who espouse opposite policy positions.
- I will not accept Democrats whom you consider to be socialists.
- Don’t even try to equate the fascism on the crazy-right with socialism on the ultra-left. I’m not personally a fan of either, but there are plenty of perfectly fine socialist democracies. There are no good examples of fascist democracies.
Enough with the false equivalency.
Give me names of people serving on the left that have challenged the basic tenets of democracy, who champion the violent overthrow of our government, who promote fact-free conspiracy theories, and who espouse racist, sexist, cultish, anti-science, anti-gay beliefs.
Good luck with that.
And Happy New Year!!