Well, America, You Were a Nice Idea While You Lasted

It was this weekend that I finally gave up. I have watched the steady descent of American conservatism—and its primary public vehicle, the Republican Party—into the terminal depths of the prion disease it acquired when Ronald Reagan and Richard Viguerie and Jerry Falwell first fed it the monkey-brains back in the late 1970s when I was just starting out in this racket.

I mocked it and inveighed against it. Better people than I—Dave Neiwert, Chip Berlet, the SPLC—went out in the field, took good notes, and have spent four decades warning us what was coming unless the prion disease was kept in check. Too many people in a position to do so bailed on the task: the Republicans, because the prion disease was flourishing on the radio and winning them elections; and the Democrats, because they were too polite, or too naive, or too…something to care. (Some Democrats, worse ones, even tried to break off some of the people in whom the prion disease was raging.)

The public episodes are now too numerous to mention; violence—as any number of women’s health advocates will tell you—always has been marbled through it. Now, though, the violence is general and increasingly detached from reality. Over the weekend, watching the reaction to the assault on Paul Pelosi, which also was an attempt on the life of the person who is second in line to the presidency of the United States, I just gave up.

They are beyond anyone’s reach. They are beyond logic and reason. They left democratic norms and customs far behind decades ago. They are beyond political compromise. They are beyond checks and balances, and they have drifted off into the void of a space far beyond the Constitution.

I appreciate what Max Boot (nobody’s notion of a "libtard") wrote in the Washington Post:

It’s true that, by calling out GOP extremism, Democrats do risk exacerbating the polarization of politics. But they can’t simply ignore this dangerous trend. And it’s not Democrats who are pushing our country to the brink: A New York Times study found that MAGA members of Congress who refused to accept the results of the 2020 election used polarizing language at nearly triple the rate of Democrats[...]So please don’t accept the GOP framing of the assault on Paul Pelosi as evidence of a problem plaguing “both sides of the aisle.” Political violence in America is being driven primarily by the far right, not the far left, and the far right is much closer to the mainstream of the Republican Party than the far left is to the Democratic Party.

But people have been saying this literally for decades. They all were essentially hollering down a well. They did not have large, influential media companies behind them. Their political allies were at best timid and at worst absent.

For example, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report detailing a resurgence of radicalization in the American military. The entire commingled Republican political and media, led by then-Speaker John Boehner, a reputed “moderate,” lit themselves on fire. The outcry, stoked (as always) by lies and deliberate misrepresentation, caused DHS to run and hide. It withdrew the report. You will note that I did not use the word “forced.” The DHS was not “forced” to do anything, any more than the Clinton administration was “forced” to abandon Lani Guinier. In 2009, the DHS was going to be in Democrats' hands for at least three more years. The department could’ve told Boehner to pound sand and stood by the report. In the real world, political outrage is not “force.” It only has the power that tepid resistance gives to it.

Which brings us to this weekend. Paul Pelosi gets attacked with a hammer during a home invasion and as a temporary proxy for his wife, who is the second in line for the presidency. We had Republican influencers babbling about gay trysts gone wrong, and idiot candidates trying to link the attack to their current bogus spin about a national crime wave. And this is the reaction, on national teevee, of the national chairwoman of the Republican Party. From the Washington Post:

Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said Sunday it was “unfair” for Democrats to link Republicans’ inflammatory rhetoric toward their political opponents to the attack on Paul Pelosi. “I think this is a deranged individual,” McDaniel said on “Fox News Sunday.” “You can’t say people saying, ‘let’s fire Pelosi’ or ‘let’s take back the House’ is saying ‘go do violence.’ It’s just unfair. And I think we all need to recognize violence is up across the board.”

McDaniel cited an attack in July against New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin at a campaign event, and falsely claimed that President Biden “didn’t talk about the assassination attempt against” Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, which Biden condemned. “But, of course, we wish Paul Pelosi a recovery,” McDaniel added. “We don’t like this at all across the board. We don’t want to see attacks on any politician from any political background.”

I just can’t anymore. These people are simply lost and mad. Their political party is simply lost and mad. Their political movement is simply lost and mad. Their candidates are simply lost and mad. We are on the very brink of handing the country over to the lost and the mad. The prion disease has jumped from one subject population to the general public, and in too many ways, it is creating its own reality in the national mind. We are all lost and mad.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has his three children.