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Empty Rhetoric, And The Precipice

I do not intend to say that there are no valid concerns about the influence of giant multinational corporations over the national and international interest. What I do intend to say is that as long as tech companies are governed by wealthy, mostly white, educated liberals and progressives, there will be plenty of resentment that can be repackaged as fears about corporate influence. The Republican Party is still driven by populism on the one hand, and resentment toward urban white liberals and progressives on the other. Unless and until some trust-busting instincts issue forth in policy prescriptions, I'm calling this out as dishonest.

And this populism does have a tinge of racism, if not more than a tinge. You can't absorb the old Democratic "solid South," change nothing, and not be held back by regressive racial attitudes. The fault comes in for the political organization when you lean into it intentionally.

That's what conservatives--whatever that means, anyway--are going to have to wrestle with: Do you want to be associated with something that primarily stands for the prevention of a multiracial participatory democracy? To put it more plainly, a political party that stands or falls at the present moment upon making it harder for people to vote--especially when making explicit efforts to restrict those who it knows are unlikely to support it--is an obscenity against any form of representative government.

Fear of the other, and an extreme negative partisanship, are the most likely explanations for what is going on. The state of Georgia right now is considering a bill to make it a crime to hand out food and water to those who stand in line on election day. It is unconscionable, and indefensible. They are also moving to restrict voting on Sundays in the early voting period, knowing that Black churches organize to vote on that day. Democratic turnout swung Georgia for Joe Biden in the presidential election. A political party that completely surrenders the notion of persuasion in elections, but resorts to cheating--and that is what it is--is no longer a political party, but a cadre. And I won't even notionally be a part of it. You can say whatever you want about policy at the high levels of the Democratic Party. We can talk about anything you want, from abortion and sexual politics, on down the line, and I would probably agree with you. But the GOP no longer functions as a political party in any meaningful sense.

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