They aren't. The same mentalities jolt through both. The difference is that they are now becoming everyday, happenstance, banal--again, through the cold-blooded thinking that so deeply belongs to 45. Others of his party are copying it, operating within implied permission that they may do so. This wasn't happening before. It's happening now.
But it's the same thing, though not as violent of course, as the assassin who wandered into that synagogue and opened fire: The bad things in our world are their fault. They must be stopped. We are the ones who need to stop it because we can. We do what we have to do and God will stand as the judge of our actions. The ends justify the means--just this one time.
Yes, I know. Nobody's voiced the idea of infusing religion into the Wisconsin legislature's current debacle, in which the Republicans, still in control of the assembly and senate, will be removing the powers they have given outgoing and defeated governor Scott Walker and keep incoming and winning governor-elect Tony Evers from getting them. In doing so, they officially pronounce that they are against peaceful, relenting transitions of government; against what the people of Wisconsin said they wanted; and against anything less than a complete seizure of power.
It's not governing they care about in the least. It's power and its maintenance. Democracy functions best when the losers relent and live on until the next election. The Republicans won't. They can't. It's now foreign to them.
Robin Vos, Wisconsin assembly speaker, sounded the vapid and pointless attempt at normalizing the ambush. First, he said that after all, the liberals (Gasp! What a smear!) would seize control--implying that that would mean the destruction of life as we knew it in this state--and where he was from, people didn't want the Democrats to take control. He also said that governor-elect Evers was being manipulated by the teachers' unions, implying that the real state of Wisconsin needed to be protected from them.
He knows as well as anyone that:
- first, elections are the will of the people and Tony Evers won that election and the respect for that win was legally earned;
- second, Wisconsin is a bit larger than his assembly district, one of 99, however gerrymandered by those of his own ilk (this election proving once again the undemocratic, power-grabbing nature of Republican gerrymandering, since that party retains a strong 63-36 advantage in the assembly despite being outvoted by some 200,000 in total); and
- third, having been a very gleeful participant in the passage of Act 10 in 2011, the law that gutted collective bargaining for only a select few unions in the state--including those same teachers' unions--the influence of those unions on the electoral process has only diminished since. (And, if Evers was supported by them, what of it? Vos and the Republicans have long ago succumbed to the very deep pockets of the Wisconsin Manufacturers' Association and that country club of business lobbying, the American Legislative Exchange Council. The last I saw, neither had the corner on justice or ethics--except for themselves.)
He, and all of us, also know that this power grab is unprecedented, which brings the last quick retort from Republicans to its knees: The idea that the Democrats would have done the same thing. Wisconsin has been a state since 1848. If Democrats would have wanted to, they would have done it by now as well. There's nothing so brilliant in this underhanded, conniving bushwhacking that needed deep plotting.
The Republicans in the state legislature, though, have assured us of one thing: When given the chance, the Democrats will respond in kind. Whenever that happens--and it won't happen soon--the Republicans will whine that they had to do it back then when things were really bad, so they should be given a one-off and the Democrats, well, you know: We expect that from them. They'll act like victims. They always do.
Does this demonization sound a bit familiar? Does this exceptionalism kind of get under your skin? Know anybody else who does this incessantly?
Scott Fitzgerald, majority leader of the state senate, has been quoted as saying that the Republicans don't trust the Democrats. Oh, really? And this will replace that loss of trust--how? This will restore confidence in government--how? And this will inspire more people to get out and vote--how?
Within that last question is the not-so-hidden agenda: Discourage voting, even beyond the excessively strangling voting requirements that Republicans have foisted on this state, without which Walker would surely have lost by more. Deal with it as a necessary evil, as another means to an end.
When an assassin walks into a synagogue and opens fire, he discourages participation, too, in something else decent to which he objected. He's alive and will stand trial; he has pled not guilty. Wait and see his sneering. It will be self-justifying. It will ignore basic concepts of right and wrong. It will declare himself as the sole arbiter of justice and, by doing so, encourage others to do the same. He will lust after the opportunity to take the stand and declare his moral rectitude in slaughtering defenseless people as old as 97.
He will, in his mind, stand above the law. Somewhere in there, he will invoke God. His God. The right God. Can't everybody see? The laws aren't good enough. They aren't sufficient to make things right. Once in a while, you just have to take things into your own hands. Otherwise, things will get out of control.
The result? Common courtesy, basic human respect, the understanding of the give-and-take of a society like ours come to a screeching halt. It doesn't happen all at once. It happens with the banality of repetition, like mass shootings, until we become so numb and overwhelmed by it that it settles into a bottomless acceptability, seeing the wanton forces arrayed against the resistance of it as impossibly suffused. The NRA is weakened at the moment, but its damage lives on. So will the consequences of this power grab. If this continues, things really will get out of control.
The Republicans in the Wisconsin state legislature have taken one giant step toward that reality. It's happening in Michigan as well. North Carolina went first, but the courts overturned that attempt. No one knows if that band-aid on a gushing wound of propriety might work this time. But they have declared themselves to be the sole arbiters of justice, not the people of the state who want to put the brakes on their utter contempt for the kind of democracy that doesn't feel good right here and now--a partial repudiation of what they would call limited government: limited to themselves and their power-mad enclave.
There are no limits to the awful effects of this assault, though--unless a response unequalled in our history takes place. We are at that moment.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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