written 21 August 2022
published 28 August 2022
A Utah based pro-Trump group, fundraising by selling apparel, was recently fined for replacing "Made In China" tags with "Made In USA" tags. The grift and fraud were not remarkable, but I was struck by the T-shirt slogan: "Give Violence A Chance". Haven't thousands of years of violence been enough to show the abject failure of this path? America was designed as a system for the peaceful resolution of differences. Granted, this works better in theory than in practice, but why the push for violent overthrow?
J. Keplar, writing in the 7 August, 2022 Daily Kos, lays out why the Republicans, formally a party of law and order, increasingly advocate for violence. He addresses it in a series of five questions and answers, excerpted here.
"Q1: Why did Republicans become so extreme?"
"A1: Because they wished to tap into the fears of white, rural and small-town Americans against a changing nation."
"Q2: Why did they want to tap into this fear?"
"A2: Because fear and rage more reliably turn out voters. No matter its source, and no matter how 'illegitimate' the fear’s foundations may seem, the fear itself is real and it has an impact."
"Q3: Why do they use these tactics?"
"A3: Because emotion clouds reason. Strong emotions short circuit our ability to think long-term and more rationally about the information presented. This has the effect of making the lie more believable, and the truth feel more dangerous. Similar to a drug, the longer you use this tactic the more of it you have to use to get the same effect. The GOP's positions have become progressively more irrational and indefensible."
"Q4: Why don't they want voters to use reason?"
"A4: Because they might notice the policies the GOP are pursuing are not for the benefit of a majority of the voters, their communities or the country as a whole. Strong majorities support reducing fossil fuel usage, stricter gun control laws, and keeping abortion legal, all opposed by Republicans. In a clear-eyed democracy, the party promoting the more popular policies would have the upper hand. But a large portion of the populace isn’t clear-eyed, due to tactics that keep them from fully understanding the costs and consequences of their votes."
"Q5: Why don't they want to pursue policies that would benefit the majority of their voters?"
"A5: Because the majority of their voters at not providing the majority of their funding. Upton Sinclair said, 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it'. No other quote seems to encapsulate the psychology at work within the GOP. While this situation is not unique to the Republicans, it is not accurate simply to say 'both sides do it'. The GOP have deliberately pursued funding sources that have driven them to extremes to which there are no comparisons on the left. This has resulted in a process of artificial selection over the decades, where the party funnels the most support to the most extreme candidates in every election. Each generation becomes more willing to go further to put party line above principles and ignore the consequences to their country and their constituents." Keplar concludes, "the GOP is being driven to greater and greater extremism due to the party’s desire for ever more money, power and influence in the midst of the dwindling popularity of their policies."
We are experiencing the conflict between separation and unity. The illusion of separation, which necessarily demonizes the other, is fundamental to a mindset of violence. Only very sick people do violence to themselves. Capitalism is based on the illusion of separation and exclusive gain. Jeff Bazos is worth more than $387,000 for every hour he has been alive. Society defines him as a success, but how can that be beneficial for the rest of us, or the planet?
Every day, the ravages of the climate crisis are becoming more obvious. This is the unity of realty demanding acknowledgement for the centuries of ignorance and planetary violence. We may have only a decade to make changes significant enough to maintain our technological society, yet 100 percent of Senate Republicans refused to support any effort to make those changes. That is not party over country, but party over sanity. The only question is: how sane are the majority of US voters?
