What I find most worrisome about today’s Republican Party is not that I disagree with their values or principles; it’s more that their leaders don’t seem to have any. Instead of providing a coherent platform, meaningful solutions or a vision of a better future, GOP leaders subsist on a reflexive and parasitic rejection of anything advocated by the left, from public health to clean water to fighting child poverty. This allows them to maintain their outraged-victim narrative and persecution fantasies while avoiding the effort of actual governance. And, as the country crumbles under their obstructionism, they get to leverage that very destruction as proof the government doesn’t work, which is somehow never their fault despite the fact that they are the government.
Combine this contrarian mindset with reality-television politics that force politicians to be ever more extreme to stay relevant and it’s not that surprising to hear American leaders quoting Hitler, defending slavery, venerating dictators, banning books, spreading space alien conspiracies, denying science and advocating civil war. They’ve created a party that rewards whatever is most shocking, vile and cruel. They never speak of what they believe in, what they want to create, who they want to help; all we ever hear from the GOP is what they’re against, who they hate and how they plan to hurt them.
While this is all frustrating to liberals like myself, it’s an absolute betrayal of the GOP’s own constituents, who presumably only support the party because right-wing media has so thoroughly convinced them that Democrats are evil and scary and out to get them. As long as this lie holds — as long as GOP leaders can successfully shift the blame for their own failures — conservatives will continue to be fleeced and manipulated by their power-loving representatives.
Governance by obstinacy is not without consequence. It’s no coincidence that red states are worse off than blue ones in terms of average income, life expectancy, poverty rates, gun deaths, murder rates, drug abuse, maternal mortality, school quality and healthcare outcomes. Essentially, Republicans are harming themselves, their families, and their communities just to “own the libs.”
As a thought experiment, imagine what an effort to ban leaded gasoline, DDT, or asbestos might look like in today’s political environment. I suspect that right-wing commentators would instantly brand these common sense health measures a “woke conspiracy” by “radical leftist Democrats” to “take away our way of life.” (Note that Trump actually did try to promote an asbestos revival during his presidency.) It wouldn’t be long before Fox News was promoting “freedom fuel,” hawking fireproof MAGA hats, and touting the health benefits of ingesting insecticide.
It’s no secret that the right-wing media ecosystem was deliberately built to promote the interests of the rich (see “Dark Money,” by Jane Mayer). While universal healthcare, immigration reform, or a green new deal would greatly benefit nearly all Americans with better health, longer lives, more jobs and a cleaner environment, these policies would cut into the profits of the ruling class. They therefore use their propaganda apparatus to convince the rural conservatives who would benefit most to oppose such changes.
Those Americans who put their trust in right-wing media and politicians end up as unwitting pawns, sacrificing themselves for the wealth of the wealthy and hamstringing efforts by moderates and liberals to actually solve our country’s problems.
Unfortunately, we won’t be able to meet our collective challenges without the cooperation — or at least an end to the obstruction — of right-wing leaders. Career politicians, Fox News bobbleheads, and the MAGA faithful may be lost causes, but we can at least stop rewarding their provocations with the outrage they seek or treating their constant objections as anything other than a ploy for attention. At the same time, the rest of us need to start engaging with one another in person, face-to-face, to quell our mutual fear and find common interests not mediated by those who thrive on division.
Hopefully, after yet another electoral blowout next year, the GOP will finally decide to be about something more than stoking fear and anger over culture war nonsense, because it will take a lot more than self-righteous animosity and resentment to keep America great.
Urie is a lifelong Idahoan and graduate of the University of Idaho. He lives in Moscow with his wife and two children.
