Red, White and Who?

Representative McCarthy is on his 11th (& counting) vote to become Speaker of the House of Representatives in the United States Congress. The Speaker is the headteacher of the HoR, enforcing its rules and controlling what can happen. 

It's a political position; a Republican speaker - like McCarthy - would only allow Republican business to occur. Traditionally the party aligns behind its chosen nominee and the majority party wins. The House is open for business.

However, the Republican party's slim majority means that a 20-strong bloc of right-wing Reps are denying McCarthy the position, voting against him for various reasons.

This is despite McCarthy having President Trump's endorsement. Such an endorsement may have been a golden ticket in the past, but on this issue has little effect. Many are now speculating that Trump's hold on the Republican party - and those on the right who are most loyal to him - is weakening. (See Politico and Reuters)

This is mistaken, and typical of a short-term media emphasis which still has no understanding of the deep causes of Trump's rise. Basic analysis argues that the Republican party is moving beyond Trump. More intelligent analysis sees that the party is still led by 'Trumpism', just not Trump any more. Neither are quite right.

Trump is failing to get his way: true. But the Republican right, and the 'Freedom Caucus' prominent within it were never his to begin with. He is a part of an older story that has troubled America for far longer than a journalist's memory.

In fact, they pre-dated his rise by several years, emerging in the tumultuous post-Bush years alongside the the Tea Party (remember them?); a mass movement opposing Obama's Democrats and fears of government overreach. This movement, in turn, was enabled by the increasingly combative style introduced to Congress by Newt Gingrich under President Clinton in the 1990s.

The Republican Party had been struggling with internal divisions since Obama's election in 2008, and was shifting ever further right anyway, before it found a lightning rod in one of America's most famous billionaires. (For more on this, read Tim Alberta's superb chronicle of the period, 'American Carnage')

This means Trump - and the Trumpism he unleashed - are only fellow heads on the hydra to the Freedom Caucus, the Tea Party, the evangelical lobby, and other right-wing influences. For long, Trumpist influences were the most powerful heads, but they were still attached to a body of thought far greater than they.

Radical Republicans on the right-wing know this. They have always owed their loyalty to what their constituents want and feel about America, from well before the 2016 election. For a brief time their electorates then demanded a bending of the knee, but now it's business as usual again.

Trump, then, is a part of this story, but it is a mis-framing to say the Republican Party is moving past him as though they have unceremoniously dumped their driver on the side of the road. At most, Trump is an over-zealous navigator with a hand on the wheel. He make take back control of this movement again.

But even assuming he doesn't, the deep forces and dislocations in American society remain. There is a reason Republicans still do well at gubernatorial and state legislature level; millions of Americans are uneasy about the country they live in, and what the Democrats want for it. Many are frustrated by left-wing moral hectoring while the economy struggles; many fear government overreach; many are angry about elite privileges ('Strangers in Their Own Land' by Arlie Hochschild is worth reading here).

These are not new problems. The only difference is that Trump is no longer the vessel for them, just as he wasn't a decade ago. 

At least American politics is consistent; there seem to be no solutions either, ten years on.

Until that changes, McCarthyite chaos will continue.

Assume There Is No God

What is the most important choice you will ever make?

(Assume there is no God.)

The single clenched fist lifted and ready,

Or the open asking hand raised and waiting.

Choose:

For we meet by one or the other.

                                                  Carl Sandberg.

In the beginning there were humans, roaming around, huntering and gathering. Then some berk decided to plant seeds and come back the next year to see what happened. The result was an ancient agricultural community, settled around a stable food source. 

This community got a bit nervy about other communities in the area and also needed its own people to stop threatening the stable food source by thieving and fighting. So they chose a chap to handle all that stuff and keep everyone safe. But what happened when this community joined another community, becoming bigger and more complex in the process?

Since the 1700s single communities have spread across ocean and continent, creating new demands, and mixing with other communities in awkward ways. No longer is mere security, provided by one man or a small group, enough. Now, the act of keeping communities safe through government is a profession practiced by millions, from neighbourhood level right up to space exploration.

Which means all of your life is defined by its relationship with government. Our educational options, drunken behaviour, conservatory extensions, tree chopping, television viewings, and car buyings are all shaped by what the government has decreed is acceptable. We cannot build there because the law says no (it is our neighbour's property). We must give up our income because the law says to (it funds the provision of things we need, like healthcare).

We acquiesce to this situation. We are used to it. We are used to the understanding, both instinctive and learned, that we must follow the law; this understanding is so simple that we never register its presence - it's almost silly to point out. 

We simply make sure our actions are in accordance with this law. Even our births, marriages, and deaths are all limited by what the law requires. We sign the right papers and pay the correct fees to ensure all is proper. We grasp its 'open, asking hand', greeting the long arm of the law as an honouring companion, and don't think too much about it.

But many people break the law. Many do not accept the state's structuring of all life.

No agrarian community can tolerate the theft of crops, or violence in the streets, limiting the labour needed for harvest. Such action must be stopped. This is also the primary responsibility of the modern state: to maintain security so that citizens may contribute to common welfare. The government, and the government alone, may use violence in order to achieve this. 

If we cannot choose to live in conduct with that security, then the 'single clenched fist' will meet us. Regardless of all else we do in life - who we marry, what we do with our money, where we work - the iron fist will punish a failure to acquiesce to the state. It will deny us freedoms; it may hurt us physically, confine us to small spaces, take from our property, or even kill us. 

It is this simple. This is why most simply shake the law's hand, agree to its terms and conditions, and move on.

And nothing we do - assuming there is no God - can escape these parameters. Our only freedom is in this greatest choice: the open asking hand, or the single clenched fist?

Choose.