THE WONDERLAND OF THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCENE

One of the most enjoyable thing about Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass is the detailed sketches of John Tenniel whose exaggerated images of normal items highlighted how ridiculous everyday life could be.  Those exaggerated images perfectly serviced the manner in which Lewis Carroll twisted the logic of so many of everyday social norms such that between the two of them, a mirror was held up to insanity of Victorian English society and government. Positions would be reversed, turned on their head, and be turned backwards so that the positions would be rendered meaningless.

I hate to say this, but the United States of America has become a Wonderland, where values held by certain political parties or by political positions have been twisted, turned around, flipped, so that they have become meaningless.  Amongst all the deformity, I have come to find myself empathizing with Alice, caught in a strange world, wanting to wake up from the nightmare or the portal which might bring me back into the world I am more familiar with, the one where the Republicans were the conservative voice of the past and the Democrats were the progressive leaning voice of the future.

The Rabbit Hole

I suppose the rabbit hole down which I fell was the nomination and eventual election of Donald Trump.  I could see the rabbit hole from a good distance away.  His style of course political rhetoric reared ugly almost immediately upon his announcement of his intention to seek the Republican nomination for presidency.  He relentlessly attacked his “fellow” Republican candidates with vile, almost libelous, vigor so much that he drew he ire of the same candidates.  He misaligned Ted Cruz’s father with suggestions of involvement in the Kennedy assassination.  He attacked former President George W. Bush regarding the 9/11 tragedy, famously stating that he observed Muslims celebrating on the roof tops of New York, a story long since debunked.

Further, a video was uncovered in which he spoke in such an ugly and derogatory way about women, a dehumanizing spew in which he talk about grabbing them by the genitals and kissing them without their permission.  He referred to Hilary Clinton as a “nasty woman,” an odd term, considering the lack of sensitivity he had shown women in the past.  More Republican officials came out against him, including Nikki Haley.  It seemed that the Republican establishment had drawn a line stating that, if nominated, it did not want to have anything to do with him, including Cruz and Haley.  

But Donald Trump did win the nomination, relying on a rage of misinformed voting public.  He pinned all of our problems on nearly nonexistent enemy, the shadowy illegal alien, covered in tattoos, bringing through United States’ borders crime in the form of drugs and violence, like ants crawling through the grass.  Our borders were a free-for-all, and the only solution to the problem was to build a magical wall which would prevent these malicious ne’er-do-wells from poring over like insect repellant.  And then, there was the horrendous Affordable Health Care Act and the terrible international agreements forged by prior presidents.  Donald Trump told the United States that everyone had been doing it wrong, and, he, and he alone, would be its savior.

How could the Democrats lose with Hilary Clinton?  Things were better under President Obama.  Despite the doomsayers, the legislation of President Obama did not send the United States into a spiral.  There were hiccups, yes.   Insurance premiums went up.  But then again, the economy was strengthening.  But lose, the Democrats and Hilary Clinton did when her email servers, the private servers which Republicans had been using to criminalize her, had revealed a number of ugly truths about her and her team.  It played into the hands of the Republicans making the election less certain. 

And then, in November of 2016, I fell in feet first, when Hilary Clinton lost the election.  I was now walking in Wonderland when nothing was as it seemed.

Welcome to Wonderland

The first sign of the inanity to follow the fall was the selection by Donald Trump of his cabinet.  In a clear act of nepotism, so oddly done, so eerily reminiscent of third-world countries who operate totalitarian regimes under the façade of democracy, President Trump found positions for his daughter and son-in-law on his cabinet, appointing his son-in-law to a record number of posts and positions that would make you wonder how the man could ever sleep.  He is also turned to a number of those people he attacked with such viciousness that the bonds of mutual goodwill had allegedly been irrevocably torn and offered them positions in his post. Most notably, he offered Nikki Haley, the same woman who denounced his chauvinistic objectification of woman, and offered her a position as the ambassador to the United Nations, which she accepted.

Further, he placed persons in positions that were antithetical to employment or positions that those persons previously held.  Take for example the Secretary of Education, the wealthy Shirley DeVos who inherited her wealth, whose children went to private school instead of public school, whose position on public education is that it should be privatized.  It is reported that her only contact with the public school system was that she served as a mentor to children in a public school, some of which she removed herself, and funded their private education.  

Or take for example, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, who as Oklahoma’s Attorney General received campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.  In the past, Pruitt described himself as a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.  Pruitt as the Oklahoma Attorney General filed suit against the EPA fourteen times.  He rejects the notion of manmade climate change. 

Soon, it came out that President Trump’s administration, and perhaps President Trump himself, may have been involved with colluding with Russia to influence the outcome of the election results.  Despite repeated denials, news agencies came forth with story after story supported with documentation of a clear connection between Trump and Russia.  Further, Trump, in his regal arrogance, explored in the public his own ability to hamper such an investigation, first by firing the man he hired to investigate such alleged claims and then suggesting that he could always just pardon himself and others for such criminal acts.  (It should be noted that President Trump is not below such an act as he has already pardoned the infamous bigoted Sheriff Joe Arpaio who was held in contempt for failing to comply with a court order.) 

The saving grace in all of this is the few moderate Republicans in the Senate, who have blocked any long lasting legislative damage, by refusing to vote for any of the ramrodded legislation proposed by President Trump, demanding that the country move towards bi-partisan efforts.  As a result, President Trump has been rendered relatively useless with no significant legislation passed in the first nine months of his presidency.

Equally Deranged Liberal Response

President Trump sole skill as a politician is his ability to deflect and guide the attention of not only the average uninformed citizen but the media and politicians as well.  He has at his hands the only tool he needs, a Twitter account, which he dangles in front of everyone like a shiny cat toy waiting for everyone to take a swipe at and to forget all about the past malfeasance on his part.

Most recently, he has tweeted that those NFL players who take a knee during the playing or singing of the national anthem are SOB’s who should be fired.  Prior to this, through his tweets he began escalating a war with North Korea who are currently testing rockets sufficient to deliver a nuclear warhead to the shores of the United States.  The response to President Trump’s tweet regarding the NFL was almost immediate, and, the outcry to the injustice of the President’s remark brought on additional protests of players taking a knee or refusing to come out of the locker room while the national anthem was being played.

What did the protest amount to?  Outside of a few high school football players being cut from their team, no one was fired.  Free speech was not diminished at all.  Sure, uniforms were burned.  But then again, what a inspiration to those taking a knee, knowing that people were exercising the same free speech the athletes were.  But then what about North Korea? 

I think what frustrates me more, what I think is more backwards is the response that most liberals had towards the strange and sudden outburst about Confederate War Memorials.  While I consider myself a liberally-minded individual, I took a directly opposing view of most liberals, a viewpoint which I could not reconcile with most liberals’ appreciation for our freedoms, including freedom of speech.  Liberals relish in their love of self-expression, the right to protest injustice, to express their love, even when that love is non-traditional or grates against traditional or religious values. And yet, that love for self-expression only permitted those expressions which fell within the realm of what those liberals deemed was the “right” kinds of expression.  “Hate speech” was not tolerated.

But what is “hate speech.”  Some speech is clearly hateful, indisputably.  But some speech is more complex than that. 

President Trump appealed to a whole population of people with a simple proposition, that all aliens had one motive, to take away by criminal means that which every citizen of the United States holds vital.  This is clearly wrong.  But more importantly, this is clearly an over-simplification of a set of complex factors leading persons to seek to enter our country illegally.  Liberals recognize this.  They understand that people seek refuge in our country because they are escaping oppression.  Others liberals see as seeking a better life.  Not every person entering the country illegally seeks to do the United States harm.

Yet, for liberals, there is only one reason for the erection of a Confederate memorial, and that is to remind everyone of the South antiqued view that the institution of slavery is okay and that whites are superior to blacks.  There is the simplistic notion that the only purpose for a Confederate memorial is for the sole purpose of offending others while solidifying the position of “white” supremacists.  What has resulted is the wanton destruction of a number of memorials across the United States with a clear disregard of intuition of law and government.  There is a clear lack of faith in a system upon which liberals so often rely upon to express their own unpopular views.

Racism is wrong.  Yes.  Unequivocally.  Yet, I forgive and love the racist.  I permit, along with the U. S. Constitution and its Amendments, the right to be wrong, because, I would rather live in a country where I can choose to be wrong if I want to be than in a country where I am forced to be shown what is “right.”  And I think, deep down, most liberals do too.

So why am I on the opposite side of this issue?

Compassion Fatigue

The result of this, the wandering around in the Wonderland of the United States of America, is that I am fatigued.  I find myself just not caring anymore.  It is a helplessness and a hopelessness grounded in the fact that very little makes sense politically to me anymore.  Logic does not carry the day; affiliation does.  As a result, I feel like I have been disenfranchised, wandering through a much of inane traditions and notions which are more about themselves then practicality, that somewhere along the way, the Constitutional premises which promised so much got twisted up and flipped so that now up means down, left means rights.