Who’s “REAL”… anyway?
I remember watching a clip of a political rally in 2008 in which Sarah Palin (ugh… the first sign of the apocalypse) said she was so glad to be with “real Americans.” It shouldn’t surprise you that she was talking to a rally of exclusively white midwestern farmers (mostly men). But what may surprise you is that she actually drew some tepid criticism for saying something like that back then. Pundits called it dangerous and divisive. Some even called for an apology. It chilled me to the bone because I could see even back then where that kind of attitude was going.
But rather than engage in a full-frontal, all-out assault on this harebrained notion, for the most part, Dems ignored it. And the reason for that was because we all had to work so hard to defend Barack Obama and to prove to white people that they had nothing to fear in his presidency. We assumed that Palin was fringe, and that the political path forward was to celebrate diversity and inclusion, while contorting ourselves into pretzels to prove that we were willing to be bipartisan, to “reach across the aisle” and work with Republicans.
It was folly for several reasons: First, the GOP was NOT reaching back in any way, shape, or form. The opposite is true. As became obvious with so many legislative battles, compromise was a one way street. Second, it wildly underestimated how prevalent Palin’s thinking already was in the GOP, and how quickly it was fermenting into a toxic brew. It wasn’t until Trump came along that Dems started to feel like it was politically safe to call out the overt racism, bigotry, misogyny and xenophobia on the right. But by then it was too late. The white male supremacy of the GOP was past the point of any potential redemption.
In order to fully understand the existential political crisis we are in today, you must first understand how it flows directly from the deeply held, near-to-foundational/DNA-level belief of Republicans that Democrats aren’t “real Americans.” We know the “why” --the reason for that belief: white supremacy and patriarchy, which is everything that was being undermined by the in-your-face challenge of the Democratic party nominating a black man and a woman to be the chief executive of our country. The GOP vitriol was couched in “preserving our way of life,” or “protecting traditional values,” or “making American great again,” but inherent in all of that was the assertion that America was great when white men (and only white men) were in total control. It’s hard not to see that now, but it was pretty self-evident years ago. We just weren’t courageous enough to confront it then. And our mistake may destroy us.
Because when you start from the premise that blacks, women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, the young, the poor and the disabled aren’t “real Americans,” it logically flows that when they vote, their votes shouldn’t have the same power and effect as those of “real Americans.” Which fully justifies suppressing those votes, gerrymandering them out of existence, encumbering them with long voting lines, and kicking out their ballots. If all of that should fail, believing that their electoral choices are of lesser value justifies undoing referendums they vote for (see Florida Felon voting Rights), or clawing back executive powers (see Minnesota) or jamming through unpopular provisions before they can do anything (see N.C.). Heavy-handed disenfranchisement makes perfect sense if your underlying belief is that the political choices of people who aren’t “real Americans” should be discounted.
And when those people who aren’t “real Americans” send representatives to Congress, then Congress becomes something that enacts their priorities, rather than the choices and priorities of “real Americans.” Which means that the Congress itself isn’t real. Which is why it’s perfectly OK to obstruct it, lie to it, stonewall it, and undermine its functioning. It’s OK to do that because it isn’t a “real Congress,” if there are women and Muslims and gays and immigrants in those Congressional seats. That’s why it’s OK to act like the powers given to Congress in the Constitution don’t apply to a Democratically controlled Congress, because it doesn’t represent “real Americans.” And if the Constitution makes no such exception, then it’s OK for the Courts to pretend to be befuddled and confused when it comes to enforcing the power of that Congress and its subpoenas. Which then leads to the conclusion that it’s not a violation of the law if a Republican president obstructs a Democratically controlled Congress. It has to be OK. Because that Congress doesn’t represent “real Americans,” right?…. Right?
The great asymmetry of our politics, and the great failure of our political media and punditry, is that in its zeal to look “fair and balanced,” it has been utterly unwilling to confront that at its base, the GOP’s foundational, governing principle is incompatible with running a vibrant and thriving democracy. And the fact is, the converse is NOT true. Democrats have never believed that Republican votes shouldn’t count, that the acts of a Republican controlled Congressional body should be ignored, or that we should have, or even want, a country in which half of the people are made to feel irrelevant. And the reason we don’t feel that way is because--and this is the fun part--we ARE, in fact, the “real Americans.”