From the perspective of four weeks working in my garden and falling down the snake hole of the news without a column to write, modern American culture and politics seem more and more to me like dirty tricks dreamed up by what Edgar Allan Poe once called The Imp of the Perverse.
Even though he becomes a grosser parody of himself every day, Trump will always be Trump, a political puppet dancing to the tune of his own obese ego. There’s no way of getting around it, and that’s enough of a dirty trick in itself. But what’s unsettled me most, as I pulled nightshades from my wildflower bed and worked to eradicate goat heads, was the realization yet again that a whole political party, made up of millions of “decent folks,” still refuses to repudiate the president, and still embraces his grotesque view of the world, a twisted view that’s even infected the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court.
In sticking with Trump, conservatives are backing a man who preaches that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are bad for America rather than the bedrock of our national vision of equal justice and equal opportunity under law. They side with a man who preaches that the civil rights movement resulted in “white people being very badly treated.”
In championing the president, conservative America agrees with his attacks on the resurgent awareness or “wokeness” of people of color in our country who see more clearly than ever that conservative white America doesn’t give a damn about their inalienable rights under the Declaration of Independence. Their politics are accurately based on the certainty that the white patriarchy couldn’t care less about the entrenched social and economic consequences of slavery, misogyny and white supremacy in America. In fact, white supremacists and the Republican party go so far as to consider “wokeness” as an uppity moral failing that results in what they see as the cultural sin of struggling to improve your lot in life.
These conservative Americans are apparently the same people who believe it’s OK for a president of the United States to bring what amounts to groundless political SLAPP suits against his political rivals and enemies to punish them for being a part of the loyal opposition. Reuters has documented at least 470 targets of Trump’s schemes of retribution and the punishment of dissent.
Most conservatives also apparently believe that a president of the United States can commandeer almost $2 billion from American taxpayers to create a slush fund for the aid and comfort of a mob of felonious rioters who raged through the halls of Congress armed to the teeth trying to overthrow the Constitution and install a losing candidate in the highest office in the land in 2016. I’m sure if the president could, he’d gold leaf the Washington Monument and put his own face on the statue of Honest Abe in the Lincoln Memorial. Trump’s lawyers already have claimed that the president’s power is so beyond restraint that he could bulldoze the Statue of Liberty if he wanted to. As obnoxious and distracting as all this is, the deeper issues of espousing racism, carrying out political vendettas, and working to keep the deck stacked against social and economic equality for women and people of color is as abysmally un-American as anything I can think of. It makes the old child in me who still proudly pledges allegiance to the flag shudder with disgust.
The Republican Party’s war against DEI has made it irrefutably clear how low it has sunk into perfidious irrelevance. DEI is not merely a political calculus or set of corporate policies. It is a world view and a way of life that makes liberty and justice possible at all. As educator Niloo Soleimani writes in the American Diversity Report, DEI is “the beating heart of the American story – the promise that every voice matters, every person belongs, and every life holds equal worth.” It’s about “the small signals of dignity, warmth, and recognition that allow people to feel seen. When we honor these moments, we are honoring the very soul of America.” “Belonging,” he adds, “is the moment someone exhales because they finally feel safe.”
The Republican party in America has created a political world in which only people who hate other people because of their race, color, gender or political beliefs can ever feel safe anymore. And they are all so paranoid they can only ensure their peace of mind by carrying a gun.
Imagine having to worry that you’ll be added to the list of 470 political enemies that the Trump Department of Justice is persecuting. That kind of worry goes a long way toward cancelling the confidence in our culture that was instilled in us when we first understood the sacred meaning of the Bill of Rights.
It is shameful beyond words to try to take that away from us.
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
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