PURE EXTREMISM
I confess that I tried to do something else this afternoon and pretty much wasted my afternoon watching out of corner of my eye the interminable vote in the House of Representatives for Speaker of the House. The first two votes stretched on forever, I took a nap and slept through the third vote waking up just as they were about to adjourn.
The drama was all in the Republican Party a party that has gotten more and more extreme through the Trump years, attacking Obama for being black, attacking Hillary Clinton’s emails, opposing masks or vaccinations for Covid, defending Donald Trump’s immorality and lies and finally refusing to oppose the attack on the capitol as they promoted Trump’s lies about having the election stolen from him. They vilified the one Republican who stood up to Trump, arch conservative, Liz Cheney, who wasn’t extreme enough. The whole party gave into lies and conspiracy theories and extremism of every kind. And they had half the country with them.
But this election was a fight between the so called moderates of the extremist party and those for whom all this extremism was too moderate, who wouldn’t be satisfied until they blew up the establishment of either party, for whom all this extremism was not nearly enough.
As I listened to the nominating speeches for arch extremist and firebrand Jim Jordan whose only desire is to crush the opposition and then listened even to his speech nominating Kevin McCarthy, what he wanted most to do was not forward any policies that might make life better for Americans but simply to insist on policies that would never be enacted and to spend his time attacking liberals and pinning them to the mat.
What struck me most about his speech and the speeches of those nominating him was that he alone was right, he alone could see the evil that was threatening America, he alone was pure. He alone was unemcumbered with occasional doubt or even a whiff of sin. His was a righteous speech. But so were the others. Chip Roy saw himself and his fellow extremists as the last hope for America to sabotage the overbearing establishment of either party regardless of who would be hurt. Matt Gaetz, up to his neck in moral problems, saw Jim Jordan as a kind of savior, saving America from itself. What struck me was how righteous, how pure, how unbendingly sure of themselves all of these firebrands were.
If you are sure that you are right and everyone else is wrong and evil, you turn into an authoritarian. Only you can save the world and anyone who opposes you should be silenced or destroyed.
THere were 434 representatives in the room representing all kinds of people, often constiuencies with opposite views of other constituencies. The only way to get along together is to respect each other and to compromise with each other. No one representative is any more right than any other.
But these firebrands were too righteous for compromise. They were only 20 out of 434 and yet they wanted everything to be done their way and if they couldn’t do things their way they would rather burn the house down.
That is what struck me, how right, how righteous, how absolutely certain they were of themselves. Hearing their certainty it would easy to be swayed by them. They thought they were good people, they sounded like good people. Who could argue with them. And yet they were all misfits and outliers. They had never made people’s health or economic standards better through getting legislation passed. Legislation would require compromise and they were uncompromising, the last of the righteous.
I don’t know how you counter a person who is that righteous, that sure of themselves, who are willing to destroy in the name of righteousness.
I guess we will find out tomorrow when the extremist Republican Party tries to handle the extreme of their own extremism.
My wife Kathe grew up in Nazi Germany. One thing that I realized early on when I wondered about Hitler’s power that silenced Kathe’s family and everyone else in Germany was that Hitler was righteous, he was a purist, he was trying to cleanse Germany of the bitterness of losing the First World War by promoting the pure Aryan race. He was a purist cleansing Germany of Jews, Slavs, Gays and any other undesirables.
Watch out for people who are sure they are right, and don’t be too right yourself.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 