The Deconstruction of America

The Deconstruction of America

The Rest of the World Sees It; Why Don’t We?

"I think there are some MAGA Republicans in the House who know the damage that it [debt default] would do to the economy, and because I am president, and the president's responsible for everything, Biden would take the blame.” 

 Joe Biden at G7 Press Conference

That so-called “culture war” pits the majority of Americans against a sizeable minority who are “heels-dug-in” White Christian nationalists who define their values very carefully. You might take at face value their statements that our gun culture is about self-defense or that mental illness is the culprit. But the United States has such a multiple of civilian gun violence, other than countries at war, that we would literally have to have dozens and dozens times more of mentally ill people than any other country on earth. We are 4% of the Earth but have 44% of gun suicides. Only 1 in 30 US civilian gun homicides is deemed legally justified. Look deeper. Look at cultural identity. Owning a gun is an essential part of self-identity, a resurrection of pioneer and later rural America, of so many rightwing Americans. But the rest of the world sees this polarization of identity for what it is.

“At least seven nations have issued advisories to their citizens who intend on traveling to the U.S., citing serious safety concerns in recent years. New Zealand, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Venezuela and Uruguay have each urged precaution for travelers when visiting the U.S., due in large part to gun violence.

“In the first weekend of May, eight people were shot and killed at a busy Dallas-area mall after a 33-year-old gunman opened fire, wounding at least seven others before he was fatally shot by police. The previous weekend in Oklahoma, a convicted sex offender shot and killed his wife, her three children and two of their friends before he killed himself, according to police. And just two days prior to that, a man shot and killed five neighbors, including a 9-year-old boy, after the family asked him to stop firing rounds in the air as a baby tried to sleep. The suspected shooter was arrested after a manhunt that lasted several days.” Yahoo News, May 17th.

The radical right does not care if we lose a few billion dollars in tourists staying away. In fact, they are more inclined for the United States to withdraw from internationalism, from trade to defense treaties, and become entirely self-sustaining. Very much a pioneer ethos. And very much both unlikely and economically impossible. They eschew “wasteful” spending and regulation on environmental conservation, climate change is not relevant to their view of America (“God promised…”), Ukraine is not relevant, people of color don’t belong here (but it was those early pioneers who fostered the slave trade), non-white/non-Christian immigrants are not welcome, marriage and gender issues were established centuries ago and need to be preserved intact, we cannot ourselves become slaves to science (particularly those biased liberal doctors foisting vaccines and abortion on all of us), etc. etc.

The Republican Party has allowed itself to become the MAGA Party, as close to pure White Christian nationalism as we have even been since the Civil War. But what is particularly unusual about that current shift to the extreme right is the new leadership and controlling voice in the GOP members of the House of Representatives. That GOP constituency of fewer than two dozen ultra-conservatives self-labeled the “Freedom Caucus.” The little group that wangled and traded to elect House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the fifteenth vote. And McCarthy has aligned the entire House GOP vote, so far, into the Caucus’ camp.

“The group takes hardline conservative positions and favors social conservativism and small government. The group sought dozens of times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Established as an ultra-conservative alternative to the Republican Study Committee, the group initially emphasized fiscal conservatism and concerns about House rules, favoring budget cuts and a decentralization of power within the House of Representatives.”

The battle over raising the federal deficit is an excellent battleground for the Caucus. Essentially, they want to undo past legislation, signed into law, that spends money on efforts they vehemently oppose. By capping the budget under their demands, much of Biden’s boasted legacy would vaporize. “The House Freedom Caucus said it’s calling on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to suspend his negotiation on raising the debt limit with the White House and instead focus on getting the House-passed ‘Limit, Save, Grow Act’ through the Senate.” Washington Post, May 18th.

With political polarization at a new high, the extreme right is provoking an equal and opposite reaction from the House Progressives on the Democratic side: “The hard-line House Freedom Caucus says the GOP demands are nonnegotiable, and has urged McCarthy to refuse to make any concession. The speaker needs the Freedom Caucus’ support to keep his job, and his ability to deliver votes for a compromise no one will love is untested.

“Biden is a surer bet on that score. He has navigated his party’s internal debates for half a century, including in similar debt ceiling negotiations in 2011 and 2013… But he, too, faces incipient rebellion. Progressive Democrats have threatened to revolt if the president agrees to impose new work requirements on benefit programs such as Medicaid or food stamps… Like the Freedom Caucus, many progressives say they don’t think their side should be negotiating at all.” Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, May 21st.

However, here’s the Freedom Caucus’ dirty little secret as they fight for a complete acceptance of their demands (implementing their view of the nation) as a condition to lift the debt ceiling: They do not believe that the United States can continue as currently configured, that a complete collapse of the economy vis-à-vis the rest of the world is exactly what we need. In such a collapse, they would have an opportunity to replace the current America with a ground-up rebuild into a White Christian-led nation, completely self-sustaining, pulled back from the rest of the world, and ready to purge liberals from every corned of political power.

In short, “my way or the highway,” and if the debt ceiling does not rise and the nation is plunged into economic chaos, perfect! This little secret is underscored by the fact that the majority of guns, particularly semi-automatic assault rifles, are owned by red state conservatives. There is Freedom Caucus “right thinking,” and everything else is irrelevant and begging to be purged. China and Russia are loving every minute of this battle.

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless at least a few Republicans get real or Biden takes a chance on side-stepping this debacle with an interpretation of the 14th Amendment that might void this pattern of debt-ceiling votes, descending into chaos just might be the plan that could force us into that White Christian nationalism authoritarian movement that is flexing their political muscle, so far, very effectively.