A lot of Americans are upset and fearful about this presidential election. Why is this election so emotional for so many of us?
In America today there are two fierce cultural movements representing two radically different world views that are being championed by our two major political parties. The tension is real and intense. Americans believe that we are choosing our future culture in this election. And they are right. If Trump and Vance win this election, our democracy is probably over. They may try to pretend that that is not true, but the Project 2025 playbook that Trump’s close allies have created, is a blueprint for completely altering the foundational structure of our government and they have already been interviewing and promising jobs to Trump loyalists. In the process of turning the country into an autocracy (dictatorship), we will be thrust into a time of upheaval as the rabid right deconstructs our government and tries to deport people of color- some of whom will be people who have lived all or most of their lives in this country (The Dreamers).
Some people can see what is coming if Trump is re-elected, but most Americans are not thinking about the future that way. The deciders of the outcome of this election will be some of the most uninformed Americans in our country thanks to the Electoral College which gives outsized power to the battleground states and the thinnest sliver of voters who, amazingly, say they haven’t made up their minds yet!
That’s why this election is such a big, scary deal.
THE VP DEBATE CONTAINED A BIG TELL
At the very end of the VP debate on Tuesday, October 1st, Tim Walz directly asked JD Vance whether Trump lost the election of 2020. Vance failed the test. This was the most important moment of the whole debate.
Walz roasts Vance on Jan. 6. In a night that largely belonged to Vance, Walz finished strong — and gave Democrats a viral clip for their pro-democracy message — by asking his opponent whether Trump lost the 2020 election.
- “Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance responded. (And then tried to change the subject).
- “That is a damning non-answer,” Walz shot back, … twisting the knife with a reference to Vance’s predecessor: “Mike Pence made that decision to certify that election. That’s why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage.”
The reason this was the most important moment in the VP debate was because it defines the stakes of this election, namely, whether our country will continue as a democracy or be dissolved by an extreme, far right Republican party that plans to end our democracy, replacing it with a dictatorship that will not allow another free and fair election to happen ever again. In other words, our country would become more like Putin’s Russia and Orban’s Hungary.
The reason the rightwing wants to erase our democracy is that the GOP has become a minority party whose ideas do not align with the majority views of Americans. The MAGAs fear they will not win free and fair elections in the future especially as the more progressive younger demographic comes of age and votes in larger numbers. Most of that demographic is repulsed by the rabid right. So Republicans have to pretend the elections are fraudulent and create a distortion force field bolstered by propaganda from friendly news outlets.
In the VP debate JD Vance did a good job of amplifying that alternate universe, trying to pretend it will not be chaotic and portraying it as a real nice, cozy, happy place to live. He tried to make it look good, calm, and reassuring. But Vance made MAGA world sound a whole lot better than it will be if Trump is re-elected.
We should not be fooled. We know Trump. If he gets back in power we will have wall-to-wall chaos and lies. We know what Project 2025 will do- it will upend our democracy and replace it with a culture that appeals to far right extremists, Christian nationalists, and the religious right.
Vance sounded sane and reasonable but he spoke fast and spouted lies as Trump does.
- No, JD, Trump did NOT support Obamacare.
- No, JD, Trump did NOT leave office peacefully.
- No, JD, the Haitians in Springfield are NOT illegal aliens.
- No, JD, the Biden/Harris administration does NOT have a bad record on our economy- our economy is the envy of every other country on earth and our stock market just hit an all time high.
- No, JD, the Biden/Harris administration did NOT stop drilling- gas and oil production are higher than ever before.
Most of Vance’s lies went unchecked by Walz or the moderators leaving listeners with misinformation. More important, Vance was not called out for being the spineless political chameleon he is. Vance was once the progressive darling who said Trump was America’s version of Hitler and meant it. He has now completely disowned his anti-Trump ideas in order to ride Trump’s coattails into power.
RETRO WORLDVIEW
Donald Trump and JD Vance are leading a retro worldview movement in our country. They want to return us to a time when our culture was more clearly defined, more Christian, less diverse, women didn’t work or have those aspirations, they had traditional roles and stayed home raising the kids, men, especially white men, had advantages just because of their skin color- getting better jobs, better mortgages for their homes, getting ahead in the world.
In this retro world, successful men are alpha males who get to grab pussy if they are powerful enough, run the world, and get what they want without having to worry about #metoo or Black Lives Mattering, your pronouns, or telling jokes that offended blondes or anyone else for that matter. In this worldview they should not have to compete with Black and brown people or with women to get ahead. They are born with advantages.
Retro worldview has been joined by some other groups that include people nostalgic for the past for other reasons and Christian nationalists. Some people of color, especially men of color (young Black and Hispanic males) are attracted to the alpha male image and the angry young man burn-it-all-down ideology of the so-called new rightwing. People of color are being tolerated by the white supremacists and Christian nationalists so that this minority view political party can cobble together enough voters to win the next election. Men of color searching for their own power and a more ascendant place in America will never gain full fledged acceptance by the MAGAs many who are white supremacists at heart.
For MAGA Republicans, to win elections as a minority party, they have to cater to some ugly people and do some ugly things.
1) They have to cheat to win.
They have to find ways to suppress the votes of Democrats. Many Democrats are voters of color who live more often in the cities of America. Marc Elias, Democracy Docket, writes about the huge number of legal challenges he and his team of pro-democracy lawyers are seeing filed by the current MAGA led Republican Party to suppress the vote especially in the battleground states.
Here is what he says:
- September was the busiest month for new pre-election voting litigation in recent history and probably ever. In all, 34 new lawsuits were filed — 15 from those protecting free and fair elections and 19 from those attacking them. Compare that to September 2020, when a total of 12 lawsuits were filed, and the dominant narrative was that the courts were being flooded with litigation.
- During the last four years, our politics and culture have changed. While Donald Trump is a reason, he is not the only one. The transformation has been accelerated by the acceptance by the entire GOP that it is not a majoritarian party.
- It no longer aspires to win the most votes. It no longer celebrates popular mandates. Instead, the party increasingly changes the rules of elections to allow a minority of voters to wield power.
- First, it optimized itself to exploit systemic advantages — the Electoral College, the Senate and gerrymandering. When those failed in 2020, the GOP turned to state legislatures to enact new laws that tilt the scales in its favor. Still unable to prevail, the party has embraced the ugliest form of voter suppression and election subversion.
- Inevitably, the courts have become a critical part of the GOP’s plan. Once insistent that “activist judges” stay out of elections, Republicans are now insistent the judiciary do more to aid their cause.
- This explains why September 2024 was a historically busy month for litigation and why October will be even busier. In 2020 and 2022 the courts withstood these pressures. For democracy to prevail they will need to do so again. (Democracy Docket)
2) The MAGA Party has to appease a core base
The core base is full of people who are not the greatest human beings. They tend to be pretty uninformed, self-centered, outraged, greedy, intolerant and mean spirited. Why? It’s part of the MAGA worldview that winning is a zero sum game. If you win, I lose everything. If I win, you lose it all. There is no “common good” in this worldview. Cruelty is the point. Grievance is the point.
This MAGA worldview is also restrictive. It’s a “my way or the highway” ideology. In MAGA world, fetal protoplasm is a baby. Therefore you will be forced to carry to term against your will as soon as you are pregnant. MAGA world does not tolerate anything other than conformity. They don’t accept the idea that people who are born genetically female or male have the right to transition to a different gender. They don’t think same sex marriage is okay. You are wrong and they are right. You must conform to their rules. This is partly a reaction to a rapidly changing world that many of these people cannot navigate without feeling fearful. And Trump got them into his cult when he lit this dumpster on fire with his fearmongering.
3) They have to deny reality
Reality is not their friend. Trump is the perfect person to lead this movement because he lives in a reality of his own making and has done so for many years even before becoming president in 2016. The idea of an alternate reality world that MAGAs accept as the “real world” only works for people who are willing to suspend their connection with truth and facts.
Fox “news”, Breitbart OANN and other so-called conservative platforms and social media sites amplify conspiracy theories and the MAGA alternate reality. Without the support of those platforms this pretend world would collapse and there would be a chance for our country to return to a two party reality based system where we start with the same facts and discuss our differences in terms of policy alternatives.
Many of the younger people who are part of the MAGA/Trump Retro World also wander around in the subterranean internet warrens where strange ideas and overheated conspiracy theories are hatched and grown. People like Curtis Yarvin have become celebrities in these overheated internet realms. Who is Curtis Yarvin you ask? Look him up. JD Vance is in with Yarvin and Peter Thiel who are to the right of the MAGAs in their extremism. They intend to crush liberal democracy. Some are concerned that the goal of the far far right is to get Vance into power with Trump with the expectation that Vance would be their even more extreme dictator forever once Trump is out of the way.
Trump and Vance are willing to lie shamelessly to get into power. An example of how they deny reality is Springfield, Ohio and another are Trump’s lies about federal assistance after Hurricane Helene. JD Vance and Trump are falsely insisting that Haitians are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Trump is claiming that Joe Biden is not responding to Governor Kemp in Georgia to get Georgians federal assistance after Hurricane Helene. Trump and Vance lie because fear mongering and demonizing Democrats works to get frightened people to vote for them.
To keep our democracy, the GOP needs to be reality based and solutions based–willing to work with Democrats to fix our border policies, for example, instead of exploiting the border for votes by falsely claiming that illegal immigrants will slit your throat, rape your daughters, and vote illegally. No they won’t. Immigrants would risk criminal indictment and deportation if they did try to vote, which they are not trying to do. But just wait! this will be the Big Lie 2.0 that Trump will try to use to wrest victory from the jaws of defeat if he loses this election.
REAL WORLD/ FUTURE WORLD
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz represent a worldview that is radically different from the MAGA worldview. The Democrats stand for inclusion, acceptance, multi-culturalism, diversity, freedom, opportunity, and the idea of the “common good”. It’s a “rising tide carries all boats” worldview. Harris and Walz stand for the future because the truth is that we are already a multiethnic country. We need to accept that reality if we hope to progress as a country and, better yet, we would do well to welcome it. The potential is awesome if we can get over our intolerances.
You will hear Kamala Harris talk about the “promise of America” which is shorthand for the idea that if you work hard you should be able to get ahead based on who you are not the color of your skin or on the basis of your sex or sexual identification.
The reason Harris and Walz are the right choice in this election is that they stand for the opportunity to reclaim our democracy and realize a better America where we reaffirm our freedoms and rights and spend our time and money making Americans lives better rather than dealing with incessant division, chaos and outrage.
It has been 9 years of Trump/MAGA chaos and outrage, culture wars and grievance. Are you tired of it yet? If you are, vote early for Harris and Walz and get everyone you know who want to vote for them to vote early. We could end this nightmare and get to a better country if Harris and Walz win big.