The Unity Delusion

 

Unity. It’s a divisive concept. After four years of Trump claiming Democrats “want to destroy you,” calling for his political opponents to be locked up, cancel-culturing journalists, and, now, threatening democracy by promoting his election big lie, it was disorienting to hear President Biden speak of it. Since our two political parties have starkly differing definitions, we know it’s impossible. 

For President Biden and Democrats, unity doesn’t mean policy agreement in all things, but common purpose when hashing it out. For current Congressional Republicans, it means Democrats don't propose anything they don’t like. Rejoining the Paris Climate Accords, for example: divisive. Unlike Trump abandoning them. Wanting to address domestic terrorism, racism, climate-change, take the pandemic seriously, create meaningful election reform. Most Americans don’t consider those divisive. Today’s Republican legislators do. Solutions, if any, will have to come from Democrats.

In the evenly-divided Senate, the fifty Republicans represent many millions fewer Americans than the Democrats. Add the Constitutionally-unmentioned filibuster and, for much legislation, the minority has veto power, which Mitch McConnell wields like a Samurai sword.

The minority rights protected by the Constitution are civil rights. Nothing in it says the minority should hold sway on political matters. Be recognized, considered? Sure. Especially back when they weren’t a haven for the insane. But preventing the will of the majority isn’t democracy. At the extreme, where Trumpism would take us, it’s dictatorship. The filibuster needs to go: something else that won’t happen.

Packing together during the insurrection, Republicans refused to wear masks. Afterward, packing side-arms, they declined to pass through metal detectors. In Georgia, several school board members remained defiantly unmasked at a meeting, despite the posthumous request of a teacher who’d died of Covid-19. This is how deeply Republicans are dug in to Trumpism.

Oregon’s Republican Party, having once produced such admirable people as Mark Hatfield, Tom McCall, and Portland’s then-favorite politician, my amazing aunt, recently selected a Qanonymizer as its senate candidate. This week they officially declared the D.C. insurrection a “false flag” operation, created to discredit Trump and Republicans. Right. Imposters: the whole maskless, Parler-posting, kill-Pelosi-and-Pence, Trump-cheering lot of ‘em. When even Oregon Republicans follow red-staters down the rabbit hole, their party has fully embraced the crazy.

Mountains of evidence to the contrary, three-quarters of Republicans still believe the election was stolen. Half think Trump should play a major role in their party’s future, seeing nothing wrong with a “president” pushing the big lie in an attempt actually to steal the election; nor with exhorting a crowd, boiling with manufactured anger, to march on the Capitol and not be “weak.” (The moronic, destructive, useless “anarchists” and “Youth Liberation Front” in Portland, by contrast, are neither supported nor encouraged by any major party.)

Momentarily bewildered when Trump didn’t show up at the last minute to take office and begin executing child-trafficking, cannibalistic liberals, Q-anoners now believe he’ll be inaugurated as the nineteenth (!) president on March Fourth. Not kidding. These are not rational people. Republicans, though, have elected several, including to Congress, at least one of whom supported calls to murder Democratic leaders. Too cowardly to censure or expel her, they put her on the education committee.

Trump will escape impeachment conviction. What consequences does the party of “law” and “order” and “personal responsibility” think he should face? None: there was no incitement, the rioters weren’t even his. No crime when the election was as fraudulent as Trump University. (They put it differently.)

Hoping to avoid taking a stand on his sedition, Republican senators say Trump’s gone, so why bother? Paraphrasing others, here’s why: Unpunished, a failed insurrection is a dress rehearsal for worse. Fearing their party’s new base, still the party of Trump, those public servants ignore their oath to defend the Constitution. Proclaimed patriotism, evidently, doesn’t include integrity. “Time to move on,” say those who pursued Benghazi for years. 

After taking office, Trump issued orders to please the minority that “elected” him and the corporations that paid for it, but which were unpopular with most Americans: undoing environmental protections, climate change agreements, worker protections, and the Affordable Care Act. His lopsided tax cuts. The Muslim ban.

In reversing Trump’s deleterious actions and introducing progressive ones, President Biden is doing what the majority of Americans want, which defines a functioning democratic republic. In its shrinking demographics and shaky future if democracy prevails, the Trumpublican Party doesn’t see it that way. Now, their D.C. insurrectionists and their Oregon party’s devolution, among many sad examples, prove how far down they’d take us.