In 2002 then-President George W. Bush pronounced Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the axis of evil and a threat to America that had to be stopped.
It is easy to recognize an external enemy to a way of life, but what do you do when the enemies operate in clear sight? In 2020 a new axis may be deemed a threat to the nation. This threat is not external but internal. This axis of destruction presently consists of three components: the GOP, conservative news media, and the fundamental/evangelical church. The new axis of destruction is against democracy.
The result of the 2020 presidential election has laid bare the system’s fragility and exposed the people’s real enemies.
When one listens to GOP members, the word cowardice seems to be the most apropos in defining their behavior. One only has to listen to Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, who, when interviewed on “This Week,” lied with great alacrity about ballots in the state of Georgia. His performance was enough to convince any rational viewer that the GOP is not guided by this nation’s prosperity but their power even if democracy must be destroyed to maintain it. The GOP has done more than sell its soul to the highest bidder. They have become the epitome of the enemy of democracy.
There have been Republicans who acknowledged President-Elect Biden’s victory and have upheld the principle of democracy. In state after state, judges, whether Republican or Democrat, have dismissed baseless lawsuits filed by what has become a traveling circus led by former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani. State Attorney’s General have certified election results sometimes more than once. Even Attorney General William Barr declared the election void of fraud. It is unfortunate that in this present state of politics, they must be recognized for only doing their job, but the reality is that some of them have faced death threats.
The rest of the GOP from Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mike Braun, Mitch McConnell as well as many local GOP officials will be defined with what will be their epithet as written by Charles Dickens in his novel Great Expectations “In a word I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I have been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”
The GOP has enabled a direct assault by remaining silent as the President is engaged in a campaign to strong-arm Republican officials to overturn their state’s election. If this were happening in any other nation, the United States would be condemning it like the hypocritical Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denounced Venezuela’s election as a charade.
Conservative news media deliberately allowed the spreading of lies and myths to expand their viewing audience to bring in more advertising revenue. Organizations from Newsmax, One America News, Sinclair Broadcasting, and Fox News (Chris Wallace being the exception) have engaged in a race to the bottom in their competition for viewers. The United States is undergoing a disinformation campaign analogous to Russia in its intensity and success in transforming GOP supporters into mindless robots. Like the Hearst Publications of the 19th century that fed stories to the public about the Spanish American war, conservative news media has exasperated a negative situation for the sake of profit.
The fundamentalist/evangelicals have proven to be more like the New Testament Pharisees who were willing to give up Christ to save their power by allowing their enterprises to be used. In a quest for a vessel to carry their message, they provided Trump with the imprimatur of a god-like calling, which elevated him to a cult-like status amongst their supporters in the pews. Watching people such as Paula White spouting gibberish about African angels or Kenneth Copeland laughing as if in a Stephen King movie, it is clear that a segment of the church was willing to sacrifice their dignity for access to a corrupt administration. Unfortunately, they have gone along so long with this con job that it will be quite difficult to reverse course. They have been saying how God has spoken to them, and to change course would suggest that perhaps they never heard from God. Pastors such as Robert Jeffress and Mike Huckabee, who both declared Donald Trump the winner of the 2016 election, before the electoral college voted, now say that Biden has to wait for the electoral college to declare him the President-elect. The hypocrisy and buffoonery of these so-called religious leaders not only attacks the foundation of democracy but undermines the real message of the gospel they claim to believe.
This unholy trio has chipped away at the American democratic experiment by their complicity in an American President’s attempted coup. Whether Americans are taking the present attack seriously enough to understand that unless this is fought against, the nation as it is known will dissipate within a generation. Economist and conservative philosopher Thomas Sowell said if Biden won the election, it would signal a “point of no return.” Whether this was said out of senility or plain allegiance to a corrupt party, perhaps he didn’t recognize the threat that Trump posed to this nation. If a person with the conservative bona fides such as Thomas Sowell is this beholden to a corrupt party, the situation is bleaker, than people would understand.
The question is, how shall this attack be counteracted. There is no doubt that a large segment of Republicans are die-hard conspiracy theorists who will not be convinced by facts. Nonetheless, there are Republicans who are appalled by the actions of their party leadership. Whether they are willing to forgo support to force their party to change their current mode of operation is another question. Those who profess real conservatism as their political North Star must find a way to re-organize their party or create a new one to compete with the GOP. This will not be easy. While this may lead to losing for a while, maybe a long-term result is that newfound integrity will be established.
The mainline church has a role to play in this problem presently faced by the United States. Many people within the faith community have been fed a diet of false theology predicated on empire rather than the true gospel. The prosperity gospel has been perpetrated upon naive and theologically ignorant parishioners, while a theology of empire has led to a nationalist form of faith. The mainline church must make a clear and direct appeal to people of faith that the so-called fundamentalist/evangelical theology is at best misguided. The mainline church must become more proficient at social media and other ways of reaching the faith community outside its present sphere of influence. They must become a loud competing voice within the public square. The message they must deliver is not one of a political endorsement but rather one that maximizes the common good by emphasizing service over self-aggrandizement. Mainline denominations should not make a mistake made by New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan in what was described as “mutual backslapping with the president “during an April conference call with Roman Catholic leaders. They must not become so enamored with access to the Oval Office that they blur the lines between support for an issue and partisanship. One must remember that some church bodies have done more harm to their theological integrity by protecting pedophiles than any legislation about abortion or birth control. Some denominations such as the Southern Baptist conference and Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have an opportunity to redeem themselves by refuting their allegiance with the epitome of what was once their racist theology.
It may be too late to reverse the conservative news media propensity to disseminate lies and propaganda. There is a vast audience for conspiracy theories, which translates into revenue. Despite numerous attempts at setting the record straight, most Republicans believe Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Perhaps the real media has to engage in a form of triage to engage those who have not given up their common sense. The media must do more than compete with conservative news organizations. It has to find a way to discredit news agencies, when appropriate, that seek to serve as propaganda tools. Legitimate news organizations must cease their penchant for presenting both sides of an issue when one side is an obvious lie.
Giving free airtime and a platform to positions that have been disproven does not inform the public but confuses it. A lie does not deserve equal footing with the truth.
The most effective tool in counteracting this axis of destruction is the electorate itself. A positive note is that this axis of destruction represents a minority of the population. The fact that the Republican party seeks to maximize its voter turnout while adopting strategies and tactics to intimidate and decrease voters who they know will go against them says all you need to know about the most effective tool to fight this pernicious attack on democracy.
The nation needs vibrant political parties who compete on the basis of ideas. While the GOP diminishes its integrity, the Democratic Party has an opportunity to speak with people who are Republicans with integrity and have grown wary of their parties’ elected officials and leaders. The language of healthcare, job creation is appealing to both sides of the aisles.
The present GOP, conservative media and fundamentalist/evangelical triumvirate is a corrupt, clear, and present danger to the American form of democracy.
Benjamin Franklin might have been prescient when asked “what do we have a republic or a monarchy”, gave the response “a republic he said if you can keep’ Our job is to keep it.”
More than likely, the United States shall get through this crisis. Nonetheless, political immunity to these attacks on institutional norms will diminish over time. The next person that the fundamentalist/evangelical, conservative media, and corrupted GOP supports will engage in a more intense, profound, and perhaps successful attack on the democratic system. Nietzsche said “out of life’s school of war what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” The present system will not be destroyed in the near term despite the recent attacks. Whether the nation will come out stronger remains to be seen.
What is at stake is not a particular policy or ideology but the idea of Democratic institutions. The nation is lucky that the present attacker is without intellectual capacity or a political center beyond self. The country will dodge a bullet: This time!!