Lacking a Moral Compass, Republicans Resort to Core MAGA Values to Navigate the New Political Landscape*
It will backfire
I often wonder why so many people find the need to denigrate others based on race, gender, and other immutable differences. In today’s world, retreating to racism, sexism, and misogyny — old-school devices the privileged use to control — betrays deep insecurity, the need to build up oneself by putting down others, and the inability and lack of curiosity and integrity to join issue on the merits. These irrational, hate- and fear-based mechanisms strongly project proponents’ fundamental inhumanity, exposing their own intellectual weakness.
As a political strategy, however, racism, sexism, and misogyny continue to resonate, at least with the like-minded. Hopefully, very few undecided voters are so small-minded.
Colbert I. King’s Opinion in The Washington Post gives “a heads-up to the energized and enthusiastic young voters who are being drawn to the Harris campaign in huge numbers.”
“You are going to see your candidate subjected to the most blistering, vile and specious personal attacks based on her race and gender. The effort, to be sure, is aimed at villainizing her with those who are undecided. But it’s also intended to tear her down in your eyes; to distract and demoralize you; to dampen the high spirits that are driving you toward the one goal that is above all this presidential election year — winning — which depends on voting. Let nothing stop you from getting to the polls. Because Election Day 2024 will decide who will govern and uphold democratic values.”
We have seen the attacks on Harris before.
DEI stands for “‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives aimed at increasing representation of women and people of color in the workforce to address longstanding inequities and discrimination. The term ‘DEI hire’ is now used to suggest a person is not qualified for their role and has been chosen on the basis of their race or gender.”
Hungarian antisemite Sebastian Gorka, of all people, characterized the Vice President as a “female Black diversity hire,” suggesting she is both unqualified and has not earned the right to be either the Vice President or the Democratic nominee for President, but is so positioned solely because of her race and gender. Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway who coined “alternative facts” for inhabitants of “Earth 2,” see Note below, appears to have confused whom she was describing. Slightly more subtle than Gorka and others, Conway alleged Harris “does not speak well. She does not work hard. She should not be the standard-bearer for the party.” We have seen the attacks on Harris before.
“Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has emboldened people with racist beliefs to express them, according to rhetoric experts, critics and past public opinion polling.” As racist and sexist attacks fly, Republicans grapple with how to take on Harris. Republican Party and congressional leaders, however, have cautioned membership to tone down their inherent racism, sexism, and misogyny in attacking the presumptive Democratic nominee or keep those attitudes to themselves. Republican leaders urge colleagues to steer clear of racist and sexist attacks on Harris.
Even as Fox, Trump, and inhabitants of Earth 2 redouble their efforts to control and persuade through ignorance, hate, and fear, I am hopeful we are finally beyond the tipping point where the impact of these racist, sexist, and misogynistic tropes is the opposite of their intended effect, especially among women whose rights are being decimated, younger voters with renewed interest in social justice, and large blocks of minority voters who are outcome determinative in national elections. According to Jelani Cobb in The New Yorker, Kamala Harris Isn’t Going Back, “[t]here is reason to believe that more mature, humane voices will prevail, or, at least, that they’ll now have a fighting chance.” He explained:
“This year, we find ourselves yet again questioning the durability of outmoded presumptions about race and gender. It’s as if the nation has been running an experiment in which, at eight-year intervals, we test the impact of different kinds of identities in national elections. The constant in this experiment has been Trump. Amid the myriad provocations that he has authored, it’s easy to forget that his political career began with a campaign to convince the public that Obama was not born in the United States. Trump moved on to the high-volume mendacity and misogynistic contempt that characterized not only the 2016 campaign but also the Presidency it delivered to him. The past week has seen him awkwardly trying to figure out how to hate Harris from scratch. . . .
“This week, Representative Tim Burchett referred to Harris as a ‘D.E.I. Vice-President.’ It was a feckless jab that presumed that there is something shameful about operating in arenas where people like you have traditionally been excluded, but it also disregarded the fact that Harris has years more experience in elected office than Trump and his running mate, Senator J. D. Vance, combined. A deluge of memes has taken aim at the Vice-President’s personal life and dating history. Yet such assaults betray a transparent desperation — feeble barbs hurled from the mezzanine.”
Vice President Harris has proven herself in a relentlessly difficult environment that the historically privileged created to prevent her from succeeding and to make her fail if she does — something these racists, sexists, and misogynists have, by design, never had to endure. As a bridge to younger generations of democracy-loving Americans, Kamala Harris is an inspiring, authentically positive candidate on America’s future. She is vastly more qualified in every conceivable way than the alternative.
Note: Rachell Maddow and Nicolle Wallace have drawn comparisons between the inhabitants of “Earth 1” and “Earth 2” when it comes to alternative facts and realities.
R.VanWagoner https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner publishes. https://richardvanwagoner.medium.com/subscribe
*My brother the very talented fiction writer and novelist, Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, deserves considerable credit for offering both substantive and technical suggestions to https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner. Rob’s second novel, a beautifully written suspense drama that takes place in Utah, Wyoming, and Norway, dropped on November 17, 2020. Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple Bookstore and your favorite local bookshop, this novel, The Contortionists, which Rob himself narrates for the audio version, is a psychological page-turner about a missing child in a predominantly Mormon community. I have read the novel and listened to the audio version twice. It is a literary masterpiece. The Contortionists is not, however, for the faint of heart.