Joe Biden has now made a second speech about how America’s MAGAs are horrible people bent on ending democracy. And then he asked us to vote. I guess it makes sense to mainstream Democratic Party voters, but from my perspective, it was very concerning. For example: “extreme MAGA Republicans aim to question not only the legitimacy of past elections, but elections being held now and into the future” and they are the driving force of the Republican Party which is going to “suppress the right of voters and subvert the electoral system itself” which means “denying your right to vote and deciding whether your vote even counts” and they’re doing this with premeditation (i.e., before they’ve even lost, they are claiming theft of the next election, just like Trump did during the 2016 and 2020 elections). They have already “emboldened violence and intimidation of voters and election officials” and there are “300 election deniers on the ballot all across America this year”. Obviously, this is “damaging, it’s corrosive, and it’s destructive”.
Why am I concerned? Imagine the king standing on the ramparts bellowing out a horrific summary of what is happening — explaining that an army of bloodthirsty psychopaths is about to breach the gates — and then he says, “So, we all need to vote. We need to vote against this madness!”
I mean… I guess?!?
Does he really think that voting is going to end the violence? Surely, he understands that the violence is only going to get worse and that we aren’t really voting “yes” or “no” to violence but rather choosing the form of it. The question is really, “Will the MAGA violence come from government agents or independent fascists?” The latter is the better option.
Moreover, his defense of democracy falls completely flat given that he and the rest of the mainstream Democratic Party are right of center. “We are capitalist. That’s just how it is,” explained Nancy Pelosi a while back. That means that capitalists are the ruling class of their ideal society. It’s better than MAGA fascism, but it isn’t democracy — not really.
“Democracy means the rule of the people, not the rule of monarchs or the moneyed, but the rule of the people,” Biden said. True! Can we have some of that democracy from the Democratic Party? Can you all throw “the moneyed” to the curb (or maybe even under the bus) and rule for the people? Ironically, the Republican Party is actually more democratic in terms of how responsive it is to the demands of its constituency in comparison to the Democratic Party — it’s just that what Republican voters want is fascism.
The Democratic press is just as useless as Biden himself in terms of navigating this moment in history. As I’ve mentioned before, Heather Cox Richardson is extremely well-informed, thorough and intelligent, but like others in the Democratic media has these strange blind spots. For example, in her piece covering Biden’s second anti-MAGA speech, she implies that the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband will finally make people see the light and reject MAGA fascism. If a capitol riot that killed five people and involved thousands of others wasn’t enough to bring people around, why would a lone wolf attack on a congressperson’s house? To address Margaret Sullivan’s concern, no, the American press is not up to this moment that we are experiencing and that includes Heather Cox Richardson.
Let me tell you about how MAGAs are responding to the hammer attack. They are giddy. They are excited to see what happens next. They’re horny about it. They want to help future horrors happen. The left knows that MAGAs will never see the light. We’re hoping that something will happen to make the Democrats see it.
The Democratic Party — including leadership, voters, and base — does not understand the Paradox of Tolerance. In short, if a tolerant society chooses to tolerate intolerance — including intolerant ideologies and intolerant people — that creates the opportunity for intolerance to snuff out tolerance altogether. Sitting around demanding tolerance, decorum, and adherence to standard procedures does not work against an enemy hell bent on destroying all three. The Democratic Party does not know what to do about MAGA fascism; their paradigm offers absolutely no way forward.
Yes, you should vote. Yes, you should vote against the MAGAs and for the less-authoritarian, less-horrific vision of the Democratic Party. But the MAGAs aren’t going away and if the Democratic Party can’t figure out how to deal with them (and their own party’s hypocrisy), things will get much, much worse.