The Dark Truth About Life in Occupied Washington
I Remember the Day they Entered the City. They Wore Red. We Wore Blue.
Does it matter that the president of the United States is vulgar?
Does it matter that the president of the United States has bad taste?
Does it matter that the president of the United States is badly educated?
Does it matter that the president of the United States has terrible values?
Does it matter that the president of the United States is a criminal?
Does it matter that the president of the United States is a sex offender?
Does it matter that the president of the United States is a pathological liar?
Does it matter that the president of the United States is a racist?
Does it matter that the president of the United States is an authoritarian?
Does it matter that the president of the United States is drawn to violence and cruelty?
Does it matter if he is a monster without a shred of good within him?
The answers to these questions might seem obvious on their face.
But the core argument of the Republican Party, the family values party, is that none of these things matter.
Their argument for the past decade has been that if you elect a vulgar, poorly educated corrupt man with terrible values—even a criminal—it is perfectly ok if the ends justify the means, if he helps us get where we want to go.
For GOP officials that has meant if he helps them keep their jobs. For evangelicals, it has meant if he helps them impose their values on the rest of America—if he helps end abortion rights and fights back against gay marriage. For corporate leaders, the ends are that he cuts regulations and taxes and gives them sweetheart deals. For many in these two groups, and for the oligarchs who pull the strings in the party, the main criteria is that he supports ways for them to get richer, to cut taxes, to help them preserve more of their wealth, to gain influence and thus advance their narrow self-interests.
For his base, the end they sought is that he fight back against a system they feel is rigged against them—which in turn has been twisted by demagogues to mean that he fights back against immigrants and people of color.
The question is, what have we learned from these past ten years of raw, principle-free, ends-justify-the-means politics?
Have those who have promoted indecency, perversion, ignorance, prejudice and grift in the Oval Office and throughout the MAGA executive branch and in MAGA states nationwide ultimately come to see the error of their ways.
Or, alternatively, have Democrats now come around to a similar view that the ends justify the means and electing flawed candidates who will vote blue is sufficient reason to minimize questions of principles and judgement aside.
Both? Either? Neither?
The Corrupting Lure of Faux Populism
Clearly, the debate over the candidacy of Maine’s Democratic Senatorial candidate Graham Platner has brought this issue to the fore. The judgment of Maine Democrats was that they could overlook troubling behavior in his past if he represented the best chance for beating Maine’s longtime Senator Susan Collins. I am still seeing articles that somehow equate accepting his bad behavior with embracing a new form of “populism” that Democrats need to win back majorities nationwide.
I raise the subject warily. That is because the issue has become deeply contentious and I find whenever I have expressed the view that he is a flawed candidate, I am immediately attacked by people or bots or both who argue then I must be a corporatist Dem or an AIPAC Dem or not want to defeat Collins.
Bullshit. As those of you who read this Substack know, I am as progressive as anyone out there. More progressive. (See my next column on why I think the embrace of socialism is one of the best things that could happen to the Democratic Party.) And I am as virulently anti-AIPAC as it gets and my record is crystal clear on that point too.
I just think that when you choose candidates for high office, they should have displayed a certain modicum of character, decency and judgment throughout their lives. That is not to say there is no place for people who have made errors in their life to contribute to society. It is just to suggest that perhaps that place is not the U.S. Senate.
Having said all that, the Platner ship has sailed.
He’s the candidate. I hope he is a good one and that his past errors were learning experience and that his transformation is as advertised. And I hope that he wins.
But there are bigger issues at play here than mere politics.
Bigger than Politics?
I know. That seems like a hard concept to get one’s mind around these days. With the survival of the nation and therefore our way of life at stake, everything is about politics to some degree.
So, perhaps a better way of putting it is whether deteriorating national expectations about the character of our leaders ultimately contributes to a cycle of cultural decline that threatens the character of our nation as a whole.
I’m uncomfortable writing about this because it sounds so close to the culture war arguments that Republicans and the right have been making for years. But, as their support for Trump and MAGA candidates and a MAGA agenda promoting ignorance, intolerance and corruption across the country illustrates, that was all a sham. They never really cared about “family values” or “American values” or “traditional values.” That was just branding. (It is much akin to their arguments that they were good for the economy or our national security…neither of which has proven to be remotely true.)
The moralizing of right-wing columnists and pols that they were fighting for the soul of America was, as it turns out, a cover for their efforts to compromise and debase that soul. They were, true to the warnings of scriptures that they often quoted but never took to heart, selling out America and Americans for a few pieces of silver.
Indeed, they promoted a twisted theology in which they sought to suggest that the best way to protect the “values” that mattered was by shrinking government to as great a degree as possible and instead through placing our faith and the future of country in the enobling, elevating and healing powers of markets and capitalism and accepting the idea that those with the most wealth were selected by virtue of the potent meritocratic processes of the marketplace to lead us and that we should surrender the power within our system to them. (See Citizens United.)
Markets, of course, have no consciences. They do not reward values or character. Indeed, they often do the opposite. The fact that the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, worth $1.3 trillion as of this writing, is also one of the world’s worst people illustrates this point. But he is not alone. There is truth underlying the notion that behind many great fortunes were great crimes and we can all think of examples that illustrate that point—beginning with Trump and the oligarch demi-monde that surrounds him.
Indeed, there is other evidence of this. The agenda of the Trump Justice Department and Treasury and its many regulatory entities has been to fire those who enforced laws designed to protect the people, shut down agencies and lay off stay whose job it was to ensure that our water and air were safe to breathe or that products did not harm consumers. Why would such steps be considered positive or liberating by the corporate class if they did not see greater profit and rewards in ignoring what was best for the public, what was right, what was good.
Not all regulations or laws reflect perfectly what our morality or values should be. But few were put in place to simply make life more difficult for businesses. They typically arose in the wake of abuses. Removing them does not help principled businesses or entrepreneurs. Removing them or not enforcing them is only of benefit to those who seek to profit from dangerous acts or unfair practices or outright crimes.
Consider that we now live in a time of the most corrupt president ever and the public has become inured to he and his family making billions in ways explicitly prohibited by the Constitution. He pardons white collar criminals in greater numbers than any president in history and some of those pardons have clearly been provided on a pay-for-play basis and most Americans barely notice. Members of his cabinet send their families out to profit from the government actions they oversee—no response. Members of Congress and the administration actively practice insider trading and the Speaker of the House argues weakly that they all have to “support their families.” Members of the Supreme Court accept gifts and their families accept jobs and fees and they rule in ways that benefit their benefactors and respond in a huff when their obvious conflicts of interest are called out.
Electing a Criminal
Electing a criminal has resulted in our all living in the most corrupt moment in American history.
Do we think that has broader ramifications? For the way businesses intend to conduct themselves in the future? For the type of people they promote?
Do we think that in turn creates an ever-greater stake for those with more resources to support candidates who will ensure that we never go back to a system in which they might be held accountable for violating the laws that once protected us?
How do such changes impact what is taught in business schools? How do they change what practices are commonplace? How do they tear at and remake the warp and weft of the fabric of our culture?
How does the war of Trump and Republicans against education, a free press, diversity of thought, a more open society, science, knowledge and facts impact this?
We know.
We can feel the cancer spread.
Dystopian Scenes from the South Lawn
In the same vein, take the values these leaders celebrate. Take the presidents UFC championship on the South Lawn of the White House. Take the celebration of violence and vulgarity and a culture that celebrates racism and misogyny, the world of the Tate Brothers and other sleazebag heroes of the so-called “populist” world that some political dimwits have celebrated a special “high T” strength of MAGA.
Does it matter that this is the way the president celebrates his birthday and the nation’s 250th? Does it matter that he turns the Oval Office into a locker room for people whose job it is to kick the shit out of each other? Does it matter if he owns a piece of it? Does it matter if they’re getting paid in Trump company crypto? Does it matter if they cheer when a punchdrunk asshole questions the gender of a former First Lady or another one offers up a Nazi salute? Does it matter if Congressional Medal of Honor winners are forced to walk along side incoming fighters thereby forcing all in the military, due to protocol, to salute in the direction of the fighters? That we are giving honor guards and Air Force fly-overs to celebrate thuggery?
What are the consequences? Are they related to electing a reality show host with no public service experience and a long history of shady business dealings and sex abuse allegations to be president? Is this an anomaly? Or is this America revealing that it is the crude and violent nation many have long argued we were?
Does it help when the Secretary of State compares the “values” of UFC fighters to the spirit of our astronauts in the past and agrees to launch a new chapter of MMA diplomacy to show the world just what animals we are or that we celebrate?
Trump has no achievements to point to that are positive for the people. The economy is a shambles. Our international standing has plummeted. Vital services are being shut down to provide more tax cuts to the rich.
And so all he has left to show he is in charge is violence and the use of force. That is the core thrust of his second term. That is the “warrior ethos” of Pete Hegseth in action not just overseas but in the behavior of the Department of Homeland Security, the cruelty to immigrants, the attacks on our cities, the recent threats of Markwayne Mullin against “sanctuary cities.”
This is the “cruelty is the point” administration…but we must ask…to what extent does it increasingly debase our society and make us a cruelty is the point nation?
The event on the South Lawn of the White House was not just evidence of the president’s vulgarity or his corruption, although it was both those things. I fear it was something darker.
Indeed, the dark claw shaped superstructure of the octagon in which the fights took place, the glaring lights and blaring music, the attendance of America’s extended thugocracy, the presence at the center of it all of the dead-eyed crime family, the low-rent Borgias who rule in this moment, and not just all these things but also what they represented, the base impulses to which they appealed, the degree to which they stood in such stark contrast to past events at our “people’s house”…it was as dystopian a manifestation as any I have seen in my life in America.
It had the feel of some comic book rendering of a society in which the gangsters and thieves, rapists and spies, the sleazy and those aspiring to enter the no-holds-barred world of money and indulgence of impulse had taken over, had stormed our capital, seized our government buildings.
Increasingly, Washington has that feel about it.
It is an occupied city.
It is Paris in the hands of the Nazis. There are the banners celebrating our peerless leaders cult of personality, the monuments he is seeking to erect to himself. There are troops in battle gear walking in the streets. The restaurants are full of guys who know someone, who are cutting a deal, who are cashing in—some from faraway places in exotic garb, some dressed in the uniforms of Wall Street and country clubs, places where crooks can blend in easily if they just choose the right outfit.
Will a day of liberation come?
Or will the crimes committed by those in charge motivate them to pull out all stops to block the return of any government that sought to respect the law and to restore honor and decency to American public life? They have huge resources. They control almost all the levers of our government. They are working hard to pare away our last remain levers of influence.
Will a day of liberation come?
Or will we each have in our minds some last fatal moment that echoes Rick’s in “Casablanca,” of his memories of La Belle Aurore on the day the Nazis entered the French capital.
“I remember every detail. The Germans wore grey. You wore blue.”
Or did that moment slip by unnoticed because the onslaught that finally destroyed our way of life did not come from a foreign army, was slower than a military invasion and then, when it mattered, much faster.
Did that moment slip by because rather than losing ground to oncoming troops, we lost it when we stopped defending the battlements of a free society—stopped even recognizing them as battlements—invisible but important bulwarks like the character of our leaders, civic virtue, the importance of public service, of caring about one another, defenses like a culture that celebrated merit and virtue and diversity of views?
I’m not sure we can know the answer to those questions now.
But I do know this, every time we devalue the things that are the real and necessary foundations of a healthy society, we invite decay—first in small increments, then in the cancer-like spread of an ugly host of other putrefying factors.
Compromise with evil—compromising what is right or good—is a compact made with dark forces, a victory for them every team. It is not wise expediency. It is short-sighted defeatism.
It is the beginning of the end.
The founders knew it.
"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private virtue, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics." —John Adams
“When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper... is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion... it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind."—Alexander Hamilton
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."—Benjamin Franklin
"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction... even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue."—John Witherspoon
"...there is an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage..."—George Washington
I hope we come to remember these truths as well and that as we look to choose a new generation of leaders we choose those who are distinguished as much by their characters as their resume or slogans, by caring for one another, by a willingness to sacrifice to help those in need, by a sense of the value of knowledge, education, and the core principles of philosophy that have proven throughout time to guide us toward the type of progress that is best and most necessary.
