Overcoming Rot

The United States of America does not want for the raw materials of prosperity and a just society.

We have many, many million decent people. We have thriving, tolerant, prosperous cities full of well organized talented people. We have brought some of the best people from all over the world into our society to make something entirely new. 

We are a nation of laws, and many of our judges and civil servants are willing to act bolding to protect those ideals and standards in the face of a political leadership that does not believe in those laws, does not believe in our nation's ideals, is corrupt, and has values no better than those of the KKK and the Nazis.

As our politicians over the last thirteen months has done their best to unravel all that is good in our society, our nation has not taken it meekly. We have fought back and stopped many of the worst proposals. A resistance has been organized and people have mobilized to get our nation back on the right track. The injustices and wrongs have not been ignored or normalized. We have been steadfast in distinguishing what the American people want from what is being done in their name.

They have learned to utilize power bases like big business, the legal profession, the medical profession, mainstream media, teachers, and the academy to take on opponents like the NRA, xenophobes, and a regressive attorney-general on criminal justice policy.

The opposition has started to bring its A game to this political fight. The Trump base in falling in on itself and making excuses instead of stepping up from an accidental victory that they weren't ready for.

Government is a matter of both power and choice. Most problems in democratic government don't have a single right solution. But, almost all of those problems have many wrong solutions. Gaining political power gives you the ability to choose solutions, but that doesn't get you very far is you only have the wrong solutions. You won't make your people, or even your supporters, better off that way.

America's center-left, and even its sane center-right which is out of power within its own faction, have solutions that can work. And, those solutions don't cease to be good ideas simply because they are not implemented. Ideas to improve our society that actually work have a power all their own. People who promote failed ideas, in contrast, are prone to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The current administration has an extremely narrow base. Old, white male Evangelical Christians, the NRA and Russian political leaders and their proxies back it. The young do not. Women do not. Non-whites do not. Non-Christians do not. Our former international allies (except Israel) do not. Big businesses are, at best, lukewarm despite receiving massive tax cuts and experiencing business regulation rolled back on almost every front. Credit card Republicans are pushing discredited economic solutions and poisoning our nation's economy with attacks on education and immigration critical to our nation's human capital, and on trade.

You can't defy political gravity forever. If you keep acting incompetent and craven; if you repeatedly enact widely unpopular policies; if you keep narrowing your basis by alienating everyone else even if they are inclined towards your coalition (as conservative activists at the CPAC conference did last week); if you show yourself to have no principles; if you lie more often than you tell the truth; eventually you pay a political price for that.

No politicians can keep all of their promises. But, the more often you betray you own promises when you didn't have to, the less power your promises will have to motivate voters when you go back to them.

This administration is so bad that it has united a lot of strange bedfellows. The tribal partisan base of racist Fox News watching, talk radio listening Trump supporters may be willing to adjust their values and worldview on a dime to match their leader.  

But, conservative elites aren't as spineless even if they must feign total support in the current political climate. There are plenty of conservatives who are not comfortable having a crass serial rapist and open adulterer who endorses pedophiles, idiots and racists as their leader, even if they are holding their noses for now. There are plenty of conservatives who have an agenda other than tearing down everything done in the Obama administration who recognize that government is a necessary evil. There are plenty of conservatives who have no taste for Donald Trump's affection for Russia and don't welcome Russian interference in American elections even when it helps their side.

Principled conservatives are certainly a minority at the moment. But, when Republicans have as thin support as they do in Congress, it doesn't take many dissenters to paralyze their political agendas. Don't forget that independent counsel Mueller is one of those principled conservatives.

And, if not before the mid-terms, certainly before the 2020 election, we are going to have a recession that our political leaders and their incompetent appointees will not be able to manage well. An administration that can command only a 35% favorability rating in a continued economic boom will fall even further if the economy staggers, as it inevitably does from time to time.

There is still enough of a foundation beneath the rot to rebuild our nation into one that we can be proud of and one that can be respected internationally, so long as we cut it away soon enough. And, it can be cut away, so long as the resistance remains motivated and energized.