Arizona, AOC, and a defense of the imperfect
Yesterday, while I was abed after feeling like having been run over by the little old lady from Pasadena, I tried to avoid the news as much as I could. I spent my day watching Champion's League football, finished the Paris-Roubaix cycling race, and imbibed medicinal bourbon. And I napped.
But, I have a blog to run, and essays to put out.
On one of my forays online, I saw that the Arizona supreme court ruled that an 1864 law which banned abortion in almost all instances overrode a 2022 law which sought to replace it.
Now, consider this. Arizona was a territory in 1864, not a state. The idea that a law from territorial days had pride of place over a state law which replaced it is something only a radical right wing court could say with straight faces and moral certitude. Perhaps the conservative majority on this court smells its own farts, thinks them roses, and believes that Donald Trump will be ushered into the White House next year, by hook or by crook. Therefore it doesn't care about public opinion. For an indication of how this has absolutely upended Arizona politics, even Kari Lake has come out in opposition to this ruling, as she knows this will galvanize liberal voters to turn out and scupper any hopes she has at the empty Senate seat. As I wrote yesterday, 2016 was a fluke. MAGA is doing everything it can to replicate that this year, but so far all it's doing is energizing the Democratic-liberal base, with attacks on abortion, the transgendered, libraries, and other targets. In 2016, this country was not prepared for hostile actors, foreign and domestic, to manipulate our elections. Now it is.
People on the right are tired of liberal democracy. They are tired of a pluralistic society which affords the greatest freedom to the greatest number of people. They want a dictatorship and to impose their own world views upon the entire population. The reasons they do so are varied—from religious obsession to ethno-nationalism. But at the root of it is a desire to obtain power, and exclude everyone else from it.
However, it's not just people on the right. As the graphic heading this essay shows, those on the left of our politics are none-too-enamored of liberal democracy either. As Banquo says, they think this time the laws of politics and history can be overturned, and they will be welcomed as liberators after a fascist regime. In fact, the likely outcome will be the fate which befell Herr Thalmann: a bullet to the back of the head in a concentration camp.
Liberal democracy is imperfect. It requires compromise. It requires a shared set of beliefs. Actors on right and left have been destroying those shared beliefs for decades. As in the 1930s, they're playing for absolute domination, in pursuit of their utopian schemes. Liberal democracy is slow, and protects the rights of the minority. Such niceties won't get you to paradise; better a cleansing rain which resets everything to Year Zero.
Western history is replete with such movements. The Parliamentarians in 1640s England. The Jacobins in 1794 France. The Bolsheviks in Russia 1917. And the Nazis in Germany. All wanted to create their versions of utopia, and instead created hellscapes.
Here's something controversial: It wasn't Adolf Hitler's attack on Soviet Russia which sealed his defeat. It was the entry into the war of that racist, imperfect liberal democracy, the United States, which doomed him. Because while it's difficult to get a nation as diverse as the US to agree on anything, once it does it is unstoppable. Hitler could have kept Britain bottled up and dealt with Russia were it not for his terminal mistake of declaring war on the US. It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt who pushed for nothing less than unconditional surrender from all the Axis powers. No side deals. No armistices. Absolute victory, and nothing less. That is the power of a liberal democracy.
It is liberal democracy which turned the United States into the most powerful nation in the world's history. It is America's liberal democracy which has allowed it to forge coalitions and alliances for the benefit of the many, not just for narrow national interest. When the US withdrew after the First World War, a second was inevitable. America taking up the mantle of global leadership has, up to this moment, avoided a global conflict.
But now we are closer to global conflict than at any time since the end of the Second World War. Citizens of the Western democracies are apathetic and atomized. They see an economic system which is stacked against them. They see the imperfections of liberal democracy as reasons to dismiss this century-long experiment in toto. There is, to quote the smarmy, a "vibecession". And the enemies of democracy and freedom see this. No Trump, no Ukraine War. If Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, President Xi Jinping wouldn't be making noises about reclaiming Taiwan. A President Clinton wouldn't have handed over the keys to the kingdom to Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
What is the alternative to liberal democracy? None, or none good. Authoritarianism of various political hues. Anarchy. Chaos. I don't exaggerate. Imagine a world where China and Russia are the leading powers. Imagine a world where Iran is free to dominate the Middle East. As I've written before, this is a war between civilization and barbarism. In this war we must adhere to our values; but we must be steadfast in confronting those who would turn a rules-based world into one where only the powerful have a say.
There is no "upside" to "uncommitted". It is the excretion of people who think they will be the commissars after the reign of the gauleiters. It has never happened, and never will. Liberal democracy, with all its frustrations, is the only political system which has shown itself able to adapt and evolve. It is why, in the middle of a war, Israeli civilians are in the streets demanding the fall of the government which has betrayed them. I will fight and die to protect it.
Addendum
While I was online for a moment last night, I found this response to the "praying grandma" who is in "utter disbelief" that she's going to prison for her actions on January 6th. This is a person who had lost faith in our liberal democracy, and then rediscovered it when he realized what he was being fed was a pack of lies. We need more like him. I think we will find them.
***
Like what you're reading? Never miss another post! Get notified via email here.
Donate at the link below to keep us going.