July 19, 2022

By David Jay Morris

Remember the good ol’ days of late January, 2021?

Trump had been trounced in the election and all the machinations he employed to stay in power had come to naught.  Even the MAGA mob’s January 6th assault on the capitol had failed to prevent the transfer of power.

Joe Biden was President.  The Democrats had control of both houses of Congress. Donald Trump was facing the disgrace of a post-presidency impeachment.

Looking back, it’s hard to blame Uncle Joe for thinking that, after its long national nightmare, America’s institutions had held.  The country was finally in a place where it could start to return to normal and that this was what most Americans wanted.

Who then could complain about his pursuit of a set of policies and appointments along with a governing style that could best be described as, well, normal?

Call it “Project Normal” if you will.

After four terrifying years on the edge of our seats, lots of us finally breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief.

Two of the words most often applied to the new President and his team were “experience” and “competence.”  They seemed to have both in spades.  People around the world couldn’t have been happier to see it.

Fast forward now to July, 2022.

How things have changed.

To some of us, it doesn’t exactly seem that the wheels have completely come off the Biden administration.  No, it’s more like this oh so competent and experienced group of professionals have been overmatched by the extraordinary set of situations in which we find ourselves. 

Team Biden knows normal.  They’re very, very good at normal.  Many come from high-scoring elite academic backgrounds and have never known real failure in their lives.  For them, the very idea is abnormal…unimaginable.

The times we’re living in now are anything but normal, however, and the ordinary strategies, tactics and policies of the past – no matter how well constructed – can’t match them.

Consider this. In early ’21, it looks like we were on track to getting the coronavirus pandemic behind us.

And then Delta hit.

And then Omicron.

And now the hyper-virulent Omicron BA-5 subvariant…

Much as we’d like to be, we’re not out of the woods with Covid-19 yet.

Not by a long shot.

Then came all the supply-chain issues as the world economy started to reopen.  And the inflation that came with them…and kept going and going.

And let’s not forget the debacle in Afghanistan. 

To say nothing of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Oh…and it turns out that the climate crisis is well and truly here.

Now.

Just at the time leading scientists warn that if we don’t start to seriously turn it around by 2030, a series of irreversible feedback loops will kick in and pretty much doom us all.

Normal?

Anything but.

But wait…

It gets worse.

Much worse.

This all comes against the backdrop of an expanding, multi-dimensional attempt to replace our democracy with some sort of truly bonkers pseudo-Christian minority rule theocracy.

We’re faced with a gun and fetus worshipping cult of crazy whose members will gladly deny an abortion to even a 10-year-old victim of rape while ensuring that mass murderers can easily obtain weapons of war that enable them to outgun the police.  Their toxic insanity is spreading like kudzu weeds throughout the land and threatens to engulf us all.

Worse again, this cult is now backed up by nothing less than a Supreme Court packed with far right-wingers who seem all-too-ready to throw out not just women’s right to choose, but everything else related to the basic right to privacy – a right that has been settled judicial precedent for decades.

Thanks to a host of well-researched books and articles, interviews with experts and the outstanding work of the House January 6th Select Committee, the general shape of the plot is becoming clearer, but have you heard some of the things these people are actually saying?

Here’s an excerpt from Roger Stone’s unhinged remarks at the insurrection warm-up rally on the night of January 5, 2021:

“Let’s be very clear. This is not an election between Republicans and Democrats. This is not a fight between liberals and conservatives. This is nothing less than an epic struggle for the future of this country between dark and light, between the godly and godless, between good and evil. And we will win this fight or America will step off into a thousand years of darkness. We dare not fail.”

Or his good buddy, General Michael Flynn in San Antonio at a December, 2020 stop for the far-right “ReAwaken America” tour:

“If we are going to have one nation under God — which we must — we have to have one religion.  One nation under God, and one religion under God.”

And for their basic concept, check out these March, 2021 words by Glenn Ellmers, a right-wing political philosopher of the Claremont Institute:

“Our norms are now hopelessly corrupt and need to be destroyed. It has been like this for a while—and the MAGA voters knew it, while most of the policy wonks and magazine scribblers did not… and still don’t. In almost every case, the political practices, institutions, and even rhetoric governing the United States have become hostile to both liberty and virtue. On top of that, the mainline churches, universities, popular culture, and the corporate world are rotten to the core. What exactly are we trying to conserve?

“At a basic level, Trump understood this.”

Thomas Zimmer, visiting professor at Georgetown University, summed it up nicely in a recent article in the Guardian:

“Many conservatives don’t think the 2020 election was stolen. But they believe democracy itself has betrayed America, by allowing the ‘wrong’ people to take charge.”

None of this is ordinary.

None of this is normal.

Business-as-usual and the attitudes and policies of the past cannot hope to overcome it.

President Biden, Attorney General Garland…are you listening?

Don’t just tell us to vote in November.

We don’t even know if our votes will be counted.

You need to do more – much more – NOW.

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