I’ve lost my appetite for doing “year in review” posts. This year I’ll borrow a page from Time magazine, sort of. They choose a Person of the Year; I’ll go with a parallel idea: Story of the Year.
There are all sorts of big stories to choose from. The completion of the Iran nuclear deal comes to mind. Its consequences, for good or ill, will affect international politics for years to come. The Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision on gay marriage. It made millions of gays happy but will forever be indigestible to those with their heads stuck in the Bible. Terrorism was a big story, especially the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. They awakened the public’s sense of personal danger, and God knows where that will lead. The agreements at the Paris Climate Conference were also noteworthy. They won’t prevent a planet-wide catastrophe by themselves, but perhaps they’ll serve as a constructive first step.
I was drawn to another story—one with greater import than any other: the blind Republican presidential hopefuls parading before the blind Republican electorate. The depths to which this lineup sank has no parallel in modern history, and in this assessment, I’m far from alone. Here, for example, is what Ralph Nader remarked: We have here the most ignorant, bigoted Republican presidential slate in the history of the party. Not only are they bigoted, they’re factually wrong, and in terms of their tactics, they are heating up those people in this country who are susceptible to that. They’re disgracing the party.
Well said, but to my mind, a bit generous. This collection of villains offers up gross lies, undermines women’s rights with false piety, cloaks support for oligarchs in fatuous grow-the-economy tax schemes, fans fear and hatred, and tries to top one another with bellicose threats. Yet they are far from clones. Each in his (and her) own way evokes a distinctive kind of revulsion.
Donald Trump is the vilest of the pack. He spews ethnic slanders: “[Mexican immigrants] are bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.” He insults his opponents: “Who would vote for that face [Carly Fiorina’s]!” He mimics people with disabilities. He excels at the Big Lie: “Thousands and thousands of people [Muslims] were cheering as that building was coming down.” He disrespects core American values: “[I’m] calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” And he’s devoid of modesty or moderation when he talks about his character and his business career. Of course none of this would matter if a majority of Republicans took him for a figure of fun, a harmless crank with a character disorder. But the awful truth is quite the opposite. A huge share of the party sees him as the apotheosis of the plain-spoken leader! As such, he may well become a model for any Republican who wants to galvanize the party in the future.
Ted Cruz is a distant second. The affable pundit Mark Shields has labeled him “Donald Trump with a good haircut,” a pretty accurate assessment. Their positions on immigration, taxes, terrorism, and gun rights are almost identical. Trump would “bomb the hell out of ISIS.” Cruz, whose vocabulary is twice Trump’s, is more muscular and vivid. “We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion,” he says, and adds a touch of Cruz humor: “I don’t know if sand will glow in the dark, but we’ll find out.” Trump is anti-abortion, but Cruz has made it one of his crusades; he’s adamant about defunding Planned Parenthood. He just as vigorously opposes gay marriage, and calls for a Constitutional amendment to ban it. He advocates a return to the gold standard, which would cripple the Federal Reserve’s ability to make monetary policy. While Trump is all bluster, Cruz is all guile. He calculates his demagogic opportunities and then strikes without shame. Surely, if the serpent in Eden had a human face, it would be Cruz’s. He disgusts his Senate colleagues with his lust for the spotlight, and George Will observed, “He is completely indifferent to the fact that politics is a team sport.” What could be more ironic than Cruz questioning Trump’s judgment?
Behind Trump and Cruz, and fading, is Ben Carson, a man who was born again in his youth and rose to become a world-class neurosurgeon. He’ll make a profound contribution to medicine one day if he donates his brain to science. Never before has there been such an astonishing example of compartmentalized thinking. He knows a great deal about anatomy but little of biology, physics, history, or world affairs. He does a first-class impression of a wise man speaking gibberish. Like Trump and Cruz, he is totally unfit for political office, never mind the presidency.
The rest of the pack shares the same mean-spirited, anti-social worldview, but each offers something uniquely distasteful. Straight from Central Casting, Chris Christie has the loud, swaggering manner of a mob boss. Marco Rubio, whose politics predate the New Deal, is the height of hypocrisy, styling himself as the voice of a new generation. Jeb Bush turns out to be just as dumb as his older brother and perhaps even more befuddled. Carly Fiorina is waspish to a fault. If they ever remake the Wizard of Oz, she’d be ideal as the Wicked Witch of the West. (Trump is right!) Some of the other figures show occasional signs of humanity, but the Republican grass roots wants no part of them.
Next year, the Republican Party will, inevitably, nominate a Frankenstein’s monster for the presidency. If the party isn’t fractured, he will get no less than 48% of the votes in the general election. Those of us in our right minds should be staggered right now. No need to wait 10+ months. It used to be that candidates without merit got less than 3% of the vote, and we called people who voted for them “the lunatic fringe.” Now lunacy has spread to half the country, give or take. There can no longer be a doubt that American society is dysfunctional, and likely to remain so for years to come. Just when the world needs enlightened leadership, we are incapable of offering it.
The Scratching Post 