Defeating the Maga Leader

Waking Ourselves Up To Act

It may be obvious that I don’t think the problem we are facing is the maga voter, but the maga leader. I tend to think (hope) the voter can be reached once the leader is removed.

 The maga leader is not just Donald Trump, the maga leader is not just a few of his real acolytes or the acolytes of ”silence” who some say are afraid of the maga voter.  But the solution to solving the problem of the maga voter just ain’t that complicated.

To solve the problem of the maga voter is not just defeating Donald Trump or those of his nastiest self-loathing political allies like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis.  Of course that has to be done first before there is even a hair’s breadth of a chance to transform the despair that these despotic anti-social misfits tap into.  But if that is accomplished then it is not that difficult to turn despair into hope.  Hundreds have, and do write about it.  

Usually they tend to focus on more or better education—but the issue I have is that the proposals for better education focus solely (or mostly) on educating people to fit into the very mold of the current system.  There is something essentially flawed in assuming more “knowledge” is itself the solution.  Ted Cruz went to Harvard.  Clarence Thomas went to Yale.  DeSantis went to both.  Donald Trump says he went to Wharton.  To move from the politicians to some of the educators Amy Wax went to Columbia law school and John Eastman was apparently an outstanding student at Chicago law school.  And I question if any of these were more learned because of their top-notch schooling than Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson who attended no law school at all, but gained his knowledge by the old fashioned method of learning law, just as Abraham Lincoln had nearly a century prior, and as everyone  by apprenticing themselves and studying on their own.  I read a law of law cases. I was always fascinated by it, and I did pass the bar in Virginia because I grew impatient studying to be a paralegal and had a job opportunity and they told me ifI can pass the bar I could be hired for the position.  Of course by the time I did so just passing the bar did not qualify me to be a lawyer, you had to have a law degree.  Nevertheless my accomplishment did not qualify me to be  lawyer, nor even work as a paralegal.  Reading legal decisions does not teach the procedures to file briefs, etc. as all the legalese about the ongoing Trump legal case has told me.  The position I was hired for had nothing to do with that anyway.  I was hired to research case law concerning utility regulations.  Nevertheless even though I claim no ability to practice law, I see no superior knowledge to any of the aforementioned supposedly legal minds with top law degrees to my own interpretation of law.  Or frankly to a lot of people who never read a single legal decision.  

We could continue on into any number of fields. Thomas Edison (whether he actually “invented” some of his patents or not) began as a telegraph operator, Tesla studied engineering and physics but never got a degree and of course Einstein did earn a degree in physics but was famously considered unqualified to hold a physics position except to review patent applications.  I dispute not education, but a society that considers the credentials one earns as the only pathway to knowledge, or necessarily the best pathway to  knowledge.

The approach to reaching the maga voter (who by the way are frequently credentialed) is not by such saying oh, they are just not as smart as the rest of us non-magas.  Nor is it to say well the republican party has gone off the rails.  Exactly what rails were the democratic architects of Jim Crow on, pray tell?  I would imagine the Andrew Jackson democrat was just as devoted to his injun-hating populism as any modern maga is to white supremacy.  

And then we have the opposite.  It is not only some past supreme court justices that sometimes seemed to defy expectations (and is one of the plusses of life-term tenure).  But sometimes responsibility can make many others in a position of responsibility act more responsibly.  Chester Arthur was fired from his position for corruption, then became the champion of civil service reform.   While I tend to think Lyndon Johnson was deceptive to gain power and misled other dixiecrats to believe he was as racist as they, they certainly viewed him as a turncoat.  But it is that very system of deception that makes those who take power through deception to those they supposedly represent the biggest issue.  It is all fine and dandy to make promises about representing their voters, and Ron DeSantis duly returned to Florida after the Jacksonville shooting recently, (and with the scowl on his face that showed his disdain to those he supposedly came to console;just as he scowled last year when he was telling Floridians how much he was doing for them after Hurricane Ian.)  

To restore the maga voter to the concept of hope instead of despair one needs to create an environment of hope.  To create an environment of hope then the dialogue has to be shifted from the conflict to the solution.  And sometimes actions need to be taken swiftly against those who create the conflict.  Retrospectively we can say Washington was wrong to march against the revolters against the whiskey tax.  Retrospectively we can say Lincoln was wrong for suspending habeas corpus, or Wilson for his actions against rhetorical opposition to his war policies.  I could cite numerous instances in American history.  The question is did they momentarily have a necessary purpose and did those actions accomplish their goals at that particular moment.

Certainly almost everyone would agree the Palmer raids increased tensions between labor and employers, and Eisenhower’s military national guard presence in the south could be viewed the same.  While I might say Palmer was vicious and not even many of  his contemporaries supported his actions, while most of the country thought Ike’s actions were correct.  But both had their supporters and   their detractors.  Lincoln certainly had a lot of citizens in the north that didn’t support either his war or his highhanded suppression of many “rights” in pursuing it.  At the moment it depends on what your preferred outcome of the situation is.

But overall situations have to be dealt with at the moment.  It does little good to look back, although retrospectively sometimes it can all seem bad.  Certainly marching the Cherokees from their homeland in the winter seems to have little perceivable redeemability in retrospect, nor does the Japanese internment during WWII (although there was an incident of a Japanese threat near the coast that did spark that, along with the precedent still in the memories of that time of the Irish rebels aiding the Germans during the prior war) but both actions were viewed quite favorably when they occurred.  But Washington’s actions  to suppress those against the whiskey tax was not popular in his time, especially amongst those who thought that they had just fought a revolution to not have such taxes imposed upon them.

The question thus becomes what is the outcome that is needed at the moment.  Certainly Wahington’s actions are now generally seen as necessary, Lincoln’s war efforts as necessary but some of his suspensions of rights are still debated which is nonsensical because if you think he was correct to prosecute the war to preserve the union, then his actions were almost certainly necessary.  But no one really thinks Wilson’s suppression of speech against the war had any necessary effect in the efforts during  World War I.  

But the effort I see most in common with today is the alien and sedition act of John Adams.  Condemned at the time and propagated fully as to their horror throughout the rest of our history because the Democratic-Republicans won the next election and they became moot., and therefore have remained condemned. But there (I hope) ends the similarities.  

Jefferson did support the movement to interfere with the Haitian revolution, Napoleon needed money to fight his European wars of conquest and decided to simply rid himself of most of western territories, but Jefferson nevertheless did assist in blockading Haiti to prevent any American slaves from getting any notions of their own.  But at the time of the acts, many French colonists from Haiti did flee to our shores and did stir up, at first, an effort at war-mongering, which Adams ignored because he didn’t see the Haitian expulsion of the French as negative or threatening.  And then many republican newspapers (democrat) started printing a lot of anti-Adams rhetoric that became more extreme and calling for violently removing him from office, and claims that he was illegitimately president and had stolen the electoral college.  Yes, only republican papers were prosecuted, but it was only those who propagated rhetoric of violence against the government, and there were obviously no whig papers doing so.

Now I would never had made this comparison prior to January 6, and I understand quite well everyone has been taught the Alien and Sedition were because Adams was so thin-skinned (actually false, or no more so than any other, but Jefferson was extremely thin-skinned and simply disagreeing with him on anything made one his enemy).  But maybe they were necessary at that time, maybe the rhetoric could have led to an attempt to remove Adams violently as some of the articles proposed, maybe they would have installed Jefferson, maybe he would have sent troops to aid the French in their initial attempt (that failed) to restore French authority over Haiti.  

An awful lot of maybes because it did not happen.  So let’s look at a few facts. Poor thin-skinned Adams wasn’t so certain if he should or shouldn’t sign it, but was encouraged by his secretary of state Thomas Pickering to do so, upon which Adams washed his hands of the bill and Pickering had full control of enforcement of both the alien enemies act and the sedition act.  The alien enemies act actually remains on the books.  Attorney General Palmer (along with powers granted against communist agitators) used it to deport immigrants from southern  and eastern union involved in the labor movement,  But Wilson as president used it to deport Germans and Austrians during the first world war,and Madison, who had opposed the bill’s passage, used it against non-citizen British during the War of 1812.  Pickering never actually deported any French under the act.  But he encouraged (threatened?)  the French Haitians to leave. 

The French revolution figured into the situation as well in the passage of the sedition act.  Jefferson made some startling claims about freedom and supported the resulting reign of terror as necessary to give people more freedom.  This encouraged many of the republican clubs that were sprouting up to support a similar overthrow of the new American government.  If you actually read the full texts of the newspaper articles that led to their indictments, they were much more vitriolic and much more encouraging of support to end the American government, and one called for installing Jefferson as king and imprisoning all whigs.  The excerpted snippets usually found in modern discussions mostly focus just on Adams, but many wanted to completely replace not his administration but the entire government.  There were threats against the government made by Jefferson (the vice-president) in his Kentucky Resolution with many Kentuckians and Virginians threatening secession or civil war if necessary.  

So I do see many similarities. Granted Jefferson was no Trump.  But neither were Adams nor Pickering nearly as anti-information as Ron De Santis.  The FBI says they have to try to determine which threats are real because there are so many out there.  But there are still plenty of networks using a lot of codes to send to each other, according to terrorist historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat.  She is not as positive as many that we only need fear “lone wolf” terrorists in the future as some proclaim, or that there are not any weapons stockpiling going on.  Of course I don’t know what is necessarily going on.  But I know from the maga voices around me that they still believe there will be a civil war.  

I do not believe we can let the rhetoric continue.  I think we cannot let congresspersons like Marjorie Taylor Greene call for civil war or make even the slightest threat of it from her position.  That is as much abetting (or calling for) an insurrection that should bring house democrats themselves to file charges under the 14th amendment to disqualify her from continuing to be in congress.. That should be now.  Today.  Calls for defunding Jack Smith or anyone who is involved in holding Trump accountable for the crimes that he has been charged with, should themselves be called out and removed from serving in the government.  It cannot be used only against Trump.  They are certainly abetting the attempts of Trump and should not be in office, but should be removed.  The six candidates for the republican nomination that raised their hands and said they would support a convicted Trump as the republican nomination should also now have proven they are supporting an overthrow of the United States government.  They are all disqualified by the 14th amendment.  I don’t know what other possible interpretation of Tuberville’s refusal to allow military promotions to occur as not supporting the enemies of the United States.  We have the tools.  Use them. Only disqualifying Trump and not disqualifying the others will not be enough. The fourteenth amendment makes it clear that those who support an overthrow of the government are disqualified from ever serving in government.  

Or maybe we just want to sit around and hope all of the despair they infuse is enough to end the despair.  But that’s not how it works.  Despair comes when one feels hopeless and despair does not end when someone else hopes it will.

I know a bit about despair.  After the ‘84 convention, I grew despairing.  I lost hope America could become what it promised.  I saw the reelection of Reagan would lead to more and more despair.  I forecasted the government of the United States after four more years of Reagan’s regulating the economy, concentrating it under the control of fewer and fewer, could only lead to its rather quick downfall.  If I had hoped we would ever become the government of consensus I no longer believed there was an opportunity for that.  If I had believed we were heading in the direction towards unity, I saw now that it could only lead to the complete abolition, not just of newly acquired “rights” but the conflict of the economic domination of a few would lead to an attempt to pit one another back into the hopelessness of competing for my rights against your rights.  I forecast a complete split into cultic fantasies and a breakdown of the sanity of individuals.  

I became insane, you might say.  But I did not want to accept my insanity.  I said no to it.  Government you go your way and I go my way.  I am not going to work for your bosses anymore.  I am not going to support your choices on my ballot anymore (but of course if I don't, do I support the eviler candidates' win?) If I don’t want to work for your bosses, do I have a choice to work for myself?  I never accomplished what I said to myself.  I contracted and pretended to myself that I was working for myself.  I voted for candidates I preferred but didn’t support the ones I chose, actively.  And eventually I went on my last walk that I wrote about last week.  That led to my hands being taken away. I can never push the buttons on a cell phone or a microwave again.  But I can hold things with my arms.  I am not defeated, I am not depressed.  But the world continues to be depressing and continues to attempt to defeat not just me, but many, into despair.  

Despair will not end by creating more mental health facilities to deal with a mental health crisis  that is caused by a society that prioritizes some individuals over others.  Despair will end only when the society is reformed to reduce despair and those that are truly mental ill—those who want to control others for their own benefit, those who are trying to frame society and how it thinks to their own benefit, and those who see themselves and whatever wealth they have as only belonging to themselves are straightjacketed and confined away from those they bring to despair,then hope can arise once more, people can began to clear their minds because they will be able to see freedom on the horizon, and they will be able to see the importance of themselves as individuals who contribute their talents to society.

And then there might arise everything I hoped for.