Andy Borowitz tried to make me laugh. He didn't. He couldn't.
He wrote a book called Profiles in Ignorance, in which he tries to summarize the last 30 years or so of political malapropism, in which he tries to say (at first) that both parties are guilty. As he goes along, though, he is forced to admit that the major perpetrators are the Republicans by far, hands down.
We all know this. He tries to sarcastically bring some of the biggest dolts among them back: Michelle Bachmann, Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin, blasts from the past whom we'd all like to forget. But he's also forced to take us back to the person upon which much of our horribly damaged political discourse has been based, along with the first of cults that formed around him: Ronald Reagan.
Finally! I said to myself. Someone came out and pointed the finger where it belongs: the first place where facts didn't matter, where naïveté and meanness met. The rest is a jagged line that nonetheless cascades downward irregularly, but inevitably.
Of course ex- emerges as the major miscreant, but all he did was pick up where someone else's awfulness left off. He has just become the combiner of the worst aspects of what politics shouldn't be.
He's not the problem. The problem is that way-way too many folks think he's the best guy for the top job. Still. They won't be budged off that dime. Still.
So what's the solution? Borowitz seems to think that the more we get out there, the more people will start to change their minds. I wish he were right, but I don't think so. The current rightward swing has always had a cultish feel to it, a locked-in, never mind aspect that's as ridiculous as it is scary.
People who dig in their heels won't listen. I had plenty of experience about that when I tried to get people to join the NEA. They'd heard what they'd heard, decided not to test their values, and some shut their mental doors hard. Going door to door to convince people that their thinking has been faulty can be risky, is in fact pretty insulting, and can deepen the retreat into the rabbit hole.
It wasn't as if someone had approached them for the first time and they would have that a-ha moment, now you tell me. It doesn't happen that way. When you talk to people in hopes of proselytizing them, you talk to someone who hasn't exactly been living in some upstairs cellar, hiding from information. We all get a landslide of it daily. Like most of us, they've chosen to absorb and believe some of it. The rest they've decided on, and if you hand them the part they don't believe, you're out of luck despite all the good intentions in the world.
Often, it's a belief system that you're challenging, one that can overcome whatever facts you happen to be offering. Because there are facts and there is the truth, to them made up of some of those facts, conveniently those that fit nicely into that belief system and reinforces it. It makes them feel secure and stable and able to put their next foot forward. Reality may, or may not, be related. Viewing the world differently than the one you thought existed yesterday can be scary stuff.
What needs to be done, then, is what people who've been connected to politics have heard for a while, especially on our side of the river: Get people out to vote. If Democrats to that, especially in this part of the country--and given an equal chance, which Wisconsin's gerrymandering sure won't do for state legislature and Congressional races, but is irrelevant for statewide races--they win, nearly every time.
One of the things that Democrats in particular still can't get used to is the simple fact that, no matter how righteous you want to be and/or actually are, it's about winning first and foremost. You can't make anything happen if you don't have the hands on the wheels of power.
Best example of that? Hillary Clinton. She was the best qualified presidential candidate anyone had ever heard of. Her attitudes toward significant public policies were the soundest. So? She wasn't likable enough, and way-way too many people gave up on her (amazingly) and either stayed home (the number one problem) or voted for ex-, who gave us four of the most tension-filled, outrageous years of any president, ever.
Andy Borowitz thinks that the best way to overcome this inclination is to get out there and canvass communities, not just give money to your favorite candidates, then stand by and watch. I went to try to get people out to vote in west central Wisconsin back in 2016 by simply asking them to do so. A popular response: It's none of your business who I'm voting for. That is chickenshit language I'm voting for the wrong person I know it, but I don't want to talk about it because you're going to try to talk me out of it. Yet I kept hearing it, again and again--in places where Democrats usually carry the day.
So even that might not work. But we have to continue to try. To yield to cynicism and inertia invites what's now at our shoulder: Fascism, the lazy man's government--just leave it to someone with a big mouth.
Borowitz is right about one thing: Activism, the real thing, is the best we have. Faking it by only watching MSNBC and cursing at our TV sets won't do it and won't substitute for the real thing. We know the best ideas and have known them for some time now. Plenty of people want to hold us back from them. They must be defeated at the polls, and watch for themselves as these good things are wheeled out and initiated.
So it's numbers first, ideas second. You have to win to prove your point. You can have logic and facts on your side, but it won't matter. Respect for democracy still exists, though it's been frayed by challenge. While we still have it, we still must use it to move us in a direction that's preferable. The other choice is tragedy.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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