The GOP and Its "Base": Holding a Wolf By Its Ears
I'm so fed up with the goosestepping Republican Party and its neolithic "base" that I've become open-minded to some fairly extreme measures on how to deal with them - especially since the failed January 6 putsch. A student of history, I've contemplated some measures other countries have tried in the past we might adopt as models:
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: This was Mao Zedong's decade-long campaign to transform Chinese society on a grand scale using radical means. Central to this campaign was the Cleansing the Class Ranks Movement, aimed at eliminating "traitors, spies, capitalist-roaders, counter-revolutionaries and members of the Five Black Categories." The latter comprised landlords, rich farmers, rightists, counter-revolutionaries and bad influencers. Mao relied on masses of revolutionary youth known as the Red Guards to carry it out. A key element of the GPCR was the Down to the Countryside Movement wherein intellectuals, bourgeoisie and other counter-revolutionary "running dogs" were sent en masse to the hinterlands to labor shoulder-to-shoulder with the enlightened peasantry.
A variation on the GPCR was the Khmer Rouge's driving Cambodia's entire urban population to the countryside after seizing power in 1975. Thereafter, original rural folk were known as the "old people" and were favored by the regime. The transplants, "new people," were treated harshly. Albania, under Enver Hoxha carried out a GCPR-lite, centering mainly on collectivization, indoctrination and a war against religion.
The trouble with the GPCR and its variants is that millions died and millions more were persecuted. As Chairman Mao famously said, "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs." It's just so un-American. Also, as a bourgeois "intellectual," I'd be one of the first face down in a ditch. But - and hang with me here for a moment - as with most policies, one can extract the good from the bad.
For example, who can argue against getting rid of traitors, spies, capitalist-roaders, counter-revolutionaries and members of the Five Black Categories? Why, Donald Trump encompasses all of these and then some and the Dems, at least, are doing their patriotic best to convict him and banish him from higher office ever again. Just like Mao did with Liu Shaochi, Peng Dehuai, et al. Trump and the entire Sedition Caucus are unarguably traitors, as are the deoderant-free, IQ-deficient, dentally challenged horde that stormed the Capitol. Frankly, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and the nation would benefit greatly from harvesting sugar beets in Castaway, Idaho alongside the QAnon shaman, pedestal thief, boots-on-the-desk grinning idiot, camp Auschwitz loser, laptop purloiner-girl and the rest. The Gym Jordans, Coo-Coo Gohmerts, Rand "Maskless" Pauls and fellow travelers are, if anything, rightist "bad-influencers" whose talents would be better placed de-mudding hoes on the newly built "Bernie Sanders Turnip Kolkhoz #59" in Whodat County, Louisiana.
Soviet First Five Year Plan: To accelerate industrialization and socialize agriculture, Stalin in 1929 decreed forced collectivization of agriculture. Trouble is, the eggs broken to make this communist omelette practically broke the entire country. Leaving all that aside (including millions of needless deaths), again, there are some discrete elements worth considering for application in our own country. For example, the Sovs dispatched 25,000 - "Twenty-five Thousanders" - "socially conscious" industrial workers into rural areas to speed up collectivization. We could round up the 8,000 Capitol Hill besiegers - call them the "Eight Thousanders" - and send them to Trump country to raise living standards and get those fine citizens to trade in their opioids for more guns and ammo, or something like that. Moreover, in need of cheap labor to implement collectivization and industrialization, Stalin simply had millions arrested on trumped up infractions to be used as slave labor. While we have laws against that, some variation on this theme might be contemplated.
Having served in communist countries, I met a lot of people who had been sent to "re-education camps" for years as a means to launder out reactionary ideas and transform them into "new socialist persons." Imagine our very own (constitutional) gulag archipelago from Mount Washington to Waikiki where we could re-educate millions of our fellow misguided citizens, scrub their minds of QAnon and make them learn the Green New Deal.
Denazification: Right after World War II, the allies sought to rid German and Austrian society of Nazi thought and institutions. Ten percent of the population had been outright party members, with millions more members of affiliated mass organizations. Major Nazis were denied all but menial employment. Lesser offenders were given limited job opportunities. Educational campaigns were carried out to teach Germans about democratic government and human rights. While the Cold War truncated denazification efforts, they were nonetheless fairly successful.
I particularly favor this model. First, expel all 147 members of the Sedition Caucus from Congress and deny them all work other than polishing floors or cleaning carburetors. Next, ban QAnon ideology just as Nazi ideology was banned in Germany. Then launch a nationwide educational campaign to teach fat, dumb, happy Americans all about democracy. Finally, just as ex-Nazi officials who went through denazification were issued Entlastungszeugnisse - Clearance Certificates - to allow them to re-enter society, we could require similar certificates of ex-Trumpists after they pass the Citizenship Test required of all immigrants before being granted U.S. citizenship.
Taming the Wolf: Yes, these models for restoring our society to sanity and responsible citizenship are the pipe dream of one overthinking and under utilized ex-diplomat trying to think outside the box. After all, that's what diplomats are supposed to do. Come up with fresh ideas on how to solve thorny societal and political issues and all that.
Back here on earth, there are achievable policies that can be passed to address the terrible state of our increasingly balkanized population.
"We have the wolf by the ears and feel the danger of either holding or letting him loose," Thomas Jefferson said about slavery. Substitute right-wing populism for slavery, and the GOP for the U.S. Republican leaders, who have coddled and benefited from this 21st century wolf now find themselves in danger of being devoured by the beast they've pandered to and fed. They, frankly, deserve no pity. Let them be eaten alive. They've had it coming.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration needs to urgently push through legislation to correct structural distortions ranging from voter suppression to gerrymandering to reform of news and social media. And to help correct the underlying catalysts feeding far-right populism, legal, civil rights and economic policies must be put in place to reduce the damaging wealth and income inequalities that sustain hopelessness and resentment.* To accomplish all this, they must act as partisan as the Republicans have up to Trump's fall from power. This means getting rid of the constitutionally questionable filibuster.
If we don't enact change, then we, again, must heed Jefferson: "Even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."
See also:
*The Lessons of Theodore Roosevelt: How to Escape Our Second Gilded Age