Cultic Practices

The earliest reference I can find to suggesting Reagan belongs on Mt. Rushmore is 1999. "History has already vindicated Ronald Reagan's positions, and we should honor him appropriately for his achievements." Five years later Reagan was dead, and the push began anew.  

There is just one problem. It can’t be done.

I was at Mount Rushmore last year, and I asked one of the National Park Service rangers about adding Reagan’s visage to those of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. He said it would be impossible. There is simply not enough space to add another face, and besides, it wouldn’t be safe.

Well, there wouldn't be just one problem.  But still, it just can't be done.  Some people wanted to see Trump put on the monument; not the least of those people being Donald Trump himself.  CNN reported Trump talked to Gov. Noem about the possibility.  Of course, it's a national monument, so South Dakota has no say in the matter.  He also denied talking to her, for what that's worth.  Just a few weeks ago he complained he'd already be up there if he were a Democrat.  (The only Democrat on the mountain is the "original" Democrat, Thomas Jefferson.  Washington eschewed party labels, and TR and Honest Abe were both Republicans.) So, sure, he didn't talk to Noem about it.

See what you can start with the simplest of Google searches?

I raise this because we are hearing once again that Donald Trump has converted the GOP into a cult, with himself as its fearless leader.  The biggest problem with this complaint is all the "never-Trumpers" (who must be GOP to qualify; the rest are just Democrats or don't like Trump) who were Reaganites and Reagan acolytes for the past 40 years.  More than a few of them wanted to see Reagan on Rushmore, or on a dollar bill (well, something larger than the dollar, but anyway) and probably canonized, if Benedict hadn't retired.

There was a ferocious cult around Reagan, from the moment he was nominated.  And it lasted until Donald Trump became the new cult leader.  There are historical parallels to this.  Texas was a one-party state, and that party the Democrats, from Reconstruction onward (Texas was a state for only a few years before it joined the other Southerns and seceded, so those few years barely count).  As the Democratic party became more and more identified with liberal causes, but mostly with civil rights and equal justice for blacks, Texans proclaims the party had left them, and almost overnight went from solidly blue, to solidly red.

Texas didn't really change at all.  The labels changed, but the politics of the state went on as ever before.

The GOP didn't change because of Trump.  The voters (the "base") did what they were expected to do since the days of Reagan:  they followed Dear Leader.  Reagan was a ditzy old man even before the Alzheimer's became obvious, and his handlers knew how to handle him.  Trump was a clod of dirt in a suit, but nobody handled him and he didn't handle anything except his iPhone.  But the differences between Trump and Reagan, or either man and their supporters?

Not worth bothering about.  Mostly distinctions without a difference.  Trump was more nakedly racist and nativist and xenophobic, but then the sequel always has to play into whatever latent strengths the original had, if only to strike the familiar chords.  And those chords must always be struck harder in order to sound.

So now is the GOP going to "destroy democracy"?  They tried with Trump, we are told.  Truth is they tried half-heartedly, at best.  Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz had no plan at all to stop the election of Joe Biden.  They didn't want the responsibility for the Constitutional crisis.  Just as Donald Trump doesn't want the responsibility for the raid on the Capitol (and whether any actually leads him to answer in court is still an open question).  But the people who physically entered that building are being held responsible, and the trials will take years to finish; not because they will be protracted affairs, but because there will be so many of them. The public is fully behind this:  who do you think is giving all those names to the FBI?

Trump and the GOP are going to "destroy democracy"?  Hardly.  Democracy is the rock upon which they founder.  Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are not comic book villains who want to take over the world.  They've seen the work of government and by and large, they don't want it.  Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz don't want to pass bills, a la Ted Kennedy or Bernie Sanders:  they want to get in front of TV cameras.  Nice work, if you can get it.  Frankly, if democracy was so fucking fragile an election scandal would founder it, we'd have failed in the days of the "machines" that bought and paid for votes.  The system we have now is worlds away from the corrupt practices that passed for legitimate within memory green of some old enough; some of it going on in the 20th century just passed. (Lapham’s Quarterly recently featured an issue on "Democracy" which included a selection from the memoir of Harpo Marx, who recalled going to vote with his grandfather, a non-citizen and unregistered voter.  He and his grandfather rode in a car sent by the local "machine" to get him to the poll, get his vote, and take him back home.  Both grandson and grandfather, at the time anyway, considered it a grand part of America.) The past isn't over; it's certainly not that long passed.  If we the people could destroy democracy, we'd have done it by now.  We didn't do it in the Civil War, we didn't do it in the Great Depression (came much, much closer to anarchy and chaos then), and we're not going to do it now.  Trump is not Vladimir Ilyich Ulonov; he's not going to master mind anything.  The "audit" in Arizona already has the cockroaches scurrying just because the DOJ came in and fumbled for the light switch.  As a country, we've survived violent suppression of the vote and subtle suppression of the vote.  The only lie was when Justice Roberts declared the year of jubilee and eviscerated the Voting Rights Act.  Democracy in America has always been a blood sport, and the winners have always been at war with the losers, and the fix has always been in, and the prospects for peace have alwasy been awful.

What else is new?

The GOP became a cult of personality when they canonized St. Ronnie as the second coming and son of George Washington.  Now they've anointed Trump, just without all the historical palaver or any obeisance to good sense.  Reagan had least had popular appeal.  Trump is as appealing as a road apple.  If Democrats lose offices, it will be because Democrats run lousy candidates at the local level.  Same as it ever was.  With a little bit of luck, or a little extra push from the state Democratic party, Beto O'Rourke could have retired Cruz.  But where are the Betos of yesteryear, today?

We gotta figure this out, and the first issue is not to whine like the Republicans and motivate our base with outrages about their politicians.  The opposite of that is not "bi-partisanship" (which voters don't really give a wet snap about); the opposite of that is accomplishment and good candidates.

The GOP has neither, and they have a demented old man as their figurehead.  Let them wear that albatross.  Give the people someone to vote for, and a reason to vote.  The GOP is a cult now, not a political party.  Trump will bear them all into the sea, and good riddance to the lot of them.  They are not an essential unit of democracy.  The nation will get along just fine without them.