Fever Swamp: A Journey Through the Strange Neverland of the 2016 Presidential Race

by Richard North Patterson

  So-called mainstream Republicans competed to fan the flames of outrage, poisoning political discourse. Typical was the establishment’s darling, Marco Rubio, who claimed that Obama was not simply wrong, but trying to destroy America as we know it. Republican politics became not faith-based, but hate-based.

  For the Republican base, nothing changed.

  Except, of course, their rising anger, stoked by yet more empty and diversionary anti-Washington rhetoric that only deepened their sense of impotence. Focused on the donor class, party leaders charged the Democrats with “class warfare” against the less than embattled rich, while still failing to acknowledge through substantive policies the very real struggles of its rank and file. The election in 2014 of yet more Republican senators and congressmen made no difference in the lives of the people who supported them.

  Not unreasonably, the base came to believe that our governmental and financial institutions—including the Republican Party—were controlled by an elite that was indifferent to their plight. And so demagogues like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz became the agents of their frustration and despair. Like the sorcerer’s apprentice, the party lost control.

  Among the casualties was the agenda most dear to the Republican establishment. Its insensitivity to the base has eroded support for free trade. Despite its claims of fiscal probity, the GOP continued its meretricious complaints about deficit spending—for which, as ever, it blamed the Democrats’ self-serving rhetoric about protecting Social Security and Medicare—while proposing tax cuts for the wealthy that would explode the national debt. And consider this: How do tax cuts at the top benefit the struggling middle and working classes? And wouldn’t slashing or privatizing Social Security further threaten their fragile place in our society?

  But set aside the party’s disingenuousness with respect to the economic and fiscal concerns that, in many cases, have gained it your allegiance. In other important areas the party has abandoned serious thought. Instead, the alternate reality of the GOP has created a closed intellectual system immune to fact or reason, imposing a mindless political fundamentalism on its candidates that no reflective person, least of all you, can any longer support.

  Here is the fact-free theology one supports every time one votes for a Republican candidate for president, senator, or representative:

  Climate denial. In the anti-science world of the GOP, man-made global warming is a hoax—just ask Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. This is one of many areas where the party perpetuates ignorance among its base, separating them from the populace at large.137 In a recent Gallup poll asking if human activity was a factor in climate change, 85 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of independents answered yes. Republicans? Only 38 percent. Faced with overwhelming scientific consensus, the party will not even consider how to combat this existential menace.

  Denial of evolution and general scientific knowledge. I know you can’t believe this, but a Pew Research poll showed that more than 50 percent of Republican voters don’t accept the theory of evolution. When the core of the party thinks that The Flintstones was a documentary—and none of its presidential candidates dare say otherwise—the broader implications for policies rooted in scientific inquiry are disturbing. Hence people like Trump who profit by suggesting that vaccination engenders autism.

  Gun violence. The GOP slavishly follows the NRA line. It has opposed any effort to curb gun violence, hiding behind paranoid nonsense about disarming all Americans. Its only answer to our unique and devastating mass slaughter is that more Americans should carry guns—quite literally, that the black churchgoers in Charleston mowed down by a madman should have brought weapons to their place of worship.

  Racism. Given that all of you deplore it, I can feel you bridling. But the troubling signs proliferate. Voter suppression laws aimed at minorities in states where no evidence of fraud exists. Scapegoating American Muslims—many of whom have more experience defending our country than any of us—as potential terrorists. Targeting illegal immigrants whose presence owes as much to American business interests as to their own desperation.

  Want more? Ignoring the glaring evidence of unequal law enforcement against blacks that, in some cases, includes unjustified police shootings.138 Upholding a death penalty that disproportionately targets minorities and the poor—not a few of whom turn out to be innocent.

  And still more? Gutting programs that seek to recognize the impact of race and class, often because they are deemed “unfair” to far more advantaged whites. Tolerating a relentless disparagement of our president that reeks of racism—imagine, if you will, the outcry if a black congressman had shouted “liar” at George W. Bush during a State of the Union Address. The party that claims to be “race blind” has become blind to its own tacit bigotry.

  Curbing reproductive rights. Protected by Roe v. Wade and our own privilege, it is easy for us to ignore what the GOP is doing beyond our field of vision—our daughters, after all, have access to safe and legal abortion and any form of birth control they need. But this is not so in America at large, where Republican legislatures and the Congress are working overtime to limit access to abortion and reproductive care, often at great cost to women and their families.

  The GOP’s senseless war on Planned Parenthood is only part of it. How many of us know that, due to draconian laws sponsored by Republicans, 90 percent of American counties have no legal abortion provider? How many of us have stopped to consider that no healthy family needs GOP-sponsored parental consent laws, which in authoritarian, abusive, and incestuous families can lead to the murder of a daughter?

  All this is central to the rigid orthodoxy that Republican presidents and legislators will be forced to follow, now and in the future. Mitt Romney did; Marco Rubio has; Paul Ryan will. No matter how personally attractive, no candidate will change this party until forces outside the party make dramatic change imperative.139

  I appreciate that this conclusion is depressing. No doubt many of you will object to some aspect of my indictment. Fair enough. But I doubt that you are much inclined to dispute most of its particulars—if only because you’ve acknowledged them yourselves.

  And there are still more issues to consider. Why hasn’t the GOP made creative efforts to confront the problems of struggling middle-class and working people—many of whom have now turned to Donald Trump—seeking solutions that are consistent with its philosophy? Are we squandering the talents of our young people by saddling them with prohibitive student debt, cheating our society in the bargain? Are we stifling struggling families by not trying to retrain their breadwinners?

  For that matter, what sense does this phony war on Obamacare make when the GOP offered no alternatives—even to deal with preexisting conditions or the ruinous effects of catastrophic illness? When did the GOP stop caring—I mean really caring, not offering bromides about liberating the engines of free enterprise—about the everyday life of citizens who are falling behind?

  One can debate the best policies and solutions for all this—and we should. But the GOP has utterly abdicated its responsibility to participate in reasoned governance, and so gave us Donald Trump.

  Trump’s policies, such as they may be, are a disastrous expression of bottled-up resentment among the base, a blind lashing out at all they feel besets them. Again and again, he offers phony and dangerous prescriptions that betray his complete ignorance of the most basic rudiments of governance, economics, domestic policy, and national security. He caters to racial antagonism, spreading it within the party and the country as a whole. As a man, he is an intellectually vacant and self-obsessed misogynist lacking the most rudimentary qualifications to be president. He is not simply a disgrace to the party, but a product of all that disgraces it.

  I can’t imagine you will ever choose to support him. That this is the only choice your party has given you makes it imperative to leave the GOP.

  I’m not urging you to become Democrats. I’m not even trying to win an argument. I simply want our political arguments to make sense
in the world of reality, the better to move our country forward with the goodwill and considered judgment required by these challenging times.

  So what I profoundly hope is that, collectively, you will abandon the Republican Party until it becomes worthy of the country we love in common.140 Because, in the end, a big chunk of our common future may depend on you.

  With abiding friendship,

  Ric

  Partners in Death

  The GOP and the NRA

  MARCH 29, 2016

  The tragic toll of war stupefies and stuns. In the 240 years since the Revolutionary War, we have sacrificed nearly 1.4 million Americans to war. In itself, this number is hard to grasp.

  But harder yet is to reckon the human cost—of husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters; of perished potential; of achievements and kindnesses that will never be; of families forever shattered. However justified some wars may be, war sobers us, diminishes us, cheats us. We struggle to find some national purpose to console us, some nobility of spirit to uplift us. We mourn the tragedies of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the wars of our last half century.

  In less than that same half century, from the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy until now, guns have claimed over 1.5 million Americans—100,000 more deaths than in all the wars of our history.

  Here there is no nobility, no consolation, no parades or speeches or monuments or national days of remembrance. Nothing but the indelible stain of mindless butchery and private sorrow.

  Every year, year after year, we lose over 30,000 more of us to homicides, suicides, and preventable accidents. Every day, we average more than one mass shooting—four or more people dead or wounded. Perhaps a name attaches to that day: Charleston, San Bernardino, Sandy Hook; perhaps we see a memorial service on our screen. Beneath such days are buried the deaths of eighty-eight more people that day, and every other.

  And the carnage moves inexorably forward. In the first two months of 2016, we have had twenty-eight mass shootings. In two weeks’ time, we have added the names of Kalamazoo and Hesston, Kansas, to this litany of shame. And yet nothing changes.141

  Why? It is not that America has more crime—our crime rates are comparable to other advanced countries. Instead we are stalked by something uniquely American: death by gunshot—four times more per million than the next highest country, Switzerland; twenty more times than Australia. America is the first world’s slaughterhouse.

  Most Americans deplore that. A solid majority believes the epidemic of deaths by gunshot is a serious problem; that mass shootings are something that can be stopped; and that our gun laws should be aimed at stemming these tragedies. Indeed, more than 90 percent of Americans support background checks for all gun purchases. So why hasn’t Congress taken steps to protect our safety?

  Because Republicans refuse.

  Amid the comprehensive moral and intellectual collapse of the GOP, nothing captures its utter bankruptcy more than the issue of gun violence. Lest this seem too stark, we must consider its stunning record of rhetorical and legislative obedience to the NRA.

  Start with the party’s most recent presidential candidates. At the height of the campaign season, the massacres in Kalamazoo and Kansas provoked no comment. To a person, they oppose any legislation or government measures whatsoever to prevent gun violence. Instead, their answer is more guns in the hands of more Americans, no matter how dangerous an individual may be. As for gun safety legislation, they consistently—and falsely—characterize it as an effort to confiscate guns from law-abiding citizens.

  Three of the principal contenders suffice to capture this cowardice and cynicism: “You don’t stop the bad guys by taking away our guns,” Ted Cruz says. “You stop the bad guys by using our guns, and a free and armed American citizenry is how we keep ourselves safe.” The recently departed “mainstream” choice, Marco Rubio, asserts that “gun laws fail everywhere they’re tried.”

  Attempting to outdo his rivals, the probable nominee Donald Trump claims that “we already have tremendous regulations. Now, if you look at my opponents, they’re very weak on the Second Amendment. I’m very, very strong.” Again and again, Trump suggests that the only solution to gun violence is for Americans to carry weapons wherever they go.142

  And they mean it. For example, as senators both Cruz and Rubio voted against expanded background checks to keep dangerous people from acquiring guns. Both opposed banning high-capacity magazines of over ten bullets. And on and on, for there is not a single measure to reduce the toll of death that they support.

  This opposition is not grounded in reason. Instead, the GOP hides behind a shopworn litany of excuses that do not withstand scrutiny.

  First, there are the myths perpetuated by the gun lobby about self-defense. No question that law-abiding citizens have the perfect right to buy a gun for self-defense or any other lawful purpose. Advocates for gun safety laws don’t debate this. To the contrary, they believe that, to the extent possible, the law should protect all of us—whether we choose to own guns or not—by keeping dangerous people from acquiring weapons.

  There is certainly a need for such protections. Gun ownership alone won’t keep us safe—to the contrary, the assertion that guns used for self-defense keep us safer is counterfactual. A 2012 study by the Violence Policy Center showed that for every justifiable homicide there were thirty-two criminal gun deaths. The study concluded that: “The reality of self-defense gun use bears no resemblance to the exaggerated claims of the gun lobby and gun industry.” With respect to women and domestic violence, a study by researchers at Boston University confirms a grim reality: in states where gun ownership is higher, more women are killed by people they know.

  As for the claim that gun safety legislation will do no good, it is bogus, a logical fallacy. The goal of such legislation is not the impossible—to stop every possible death—but to make it more difficult for dangerous people to kill with a gun.

  And it works. Incremental measures to stop deaths from smoking and drunk driving have drastically reduced both. Obviously, they did so without banning driving or even smoking. So, too, the effort to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and others with a propensity for violence—as the shooter in Hesston, Kansas, freshly served with a domestic violence restraining order, so tragically exemplifies.

  Which brings us to the greatest falsehood of all—that gun safety legislation means denying law-abiding Americans the right to own a weapon, whether for self-defense or any other lawful purpose. Not only would such legislation be unconstitutional, but nothing the Republicans so adamantly oppose remotely resembles the straw man of confiscation they so conveniently invoke.

  Yet again and again, the NRA and GOP deploy a preposterous perversion of the “slippery slope” argument—that any legislation to prevent criminals or terrorists from buying guns is a step toward barring gun ownership by all Americans. Bereft of rational arguments and terrified of fact, they traffic in demagoguery and paranoia. The NRA’s propaganda marks the absolute bottom of American political discourse—rooted in fear, fomented by hysteria, dependent on lies, and, in some cases, fueled by fantasies of blowing away “the other.”

  As for the assertion that the 5–4 Supreme Court decision finding a constitutional right to bear arms means that guns cannot be regulated to protect law-abiding citizens, it is nonsense. No constitutional right—including free speech—is absolute. As to guns, the Supreme Court made clear that nothing in its opinion barred reasonable regulation to protect the public safety, such as background checks to screen out gun purchases by criminals, spousal abusers, and the adjudicated mentally ill. The Second Amendment protects the rights of law-abiding Americans to buy a gun, not the rights of violent felons to endanger the law-abiding.

  When all else fails, the NRA and its Republican handmaidens traffic in a particularly distasteful brand of diversion. A lot of homicides are gang related, they argue, so why should we care? Besides, they say, many gun deaths are suicides, not homicides—
ignoring that the prevalence of guns means that a person in despair has a quick and easy way of placing themselves beyond second thoughts or the help of others. Particularly odious is the suggestion that a mass murderer like the demented young man in Sandy Hook would simply have found another weapon to wipe out so many kids and teachers so quickly. With what—a knife or slingshot?

  And, finally, this: given the NRA’s success in promoting gun ownership and opposing gun safety legislation, why aren’t we dramatically safer? Why so many mass murders? Why so many more killings than in any other first-world country? Is the only answer that more Americans should carry weapons? Do the Republicans in Congress really believe—for one tragic example—the only protection for the black churchgoers murdered in Charleston would be bringing guns to their place of worship? Do they ever ask themselves whether our society is truly that helpless?

  In truth, it doesn’t matter what Republican officeholders know or believe in their hearts. They are the NRA’s legislative arm—without them, the NRA could not have succeeded in making America the first world’s most dangerous place. Because, quite simply, they are the craven servants of the gun lobby—their services bought and paid for at whatever cost in human lives.

  They don’t come cheap. Since 2010, the NRA and its allies have spent more than $46 million in soft money alone to influence federal elections. In the last election cycle, the NRA spent $18.6 million on candidates. Throw in lobbying, and the NRA spent $32.5 million in 2015. Virtually every dollar spent on candidates went to Republicans. Along with that comes a small cadre of voters obsessed with guns who respond to whatever scare tactic the NRA comes up with.143

  What have the Republicans given the NRA in return? Anything it wants.