Karl Marx famously said, “the masses are asses,” to justify what he called a “dictatorship of the proletariat” that turned out to be just another plain old dictatorship.
The idea of representative democracy is to entrust ultimate authority for decision-making to the collective common sense of the people, who speak through those they elect to represent them. In our country, and the Western democracies, there’s a general consensus that works better than monarchy, oligarchy, or other forms of concentrating power at the top. At least, we like it better. Anyway, some of us do.
We’re coming up on the 2022 midterm elections, and “Republican governors seeking reelection this year are embracing the bunker mentality of Trump-era culture wars as they seek their place in the new Grand Old Party, both at home and across the nation,” The Hill says (here). “The tones many have adopted are a stark reminder that even if former President Trump is no longer in the White House, and his once-iron grip over the Republican Party is slipping, the divisiveness he embodied has become a guide for others chasing the path to [electoral] success.”
The headline of that article is, “Republican governors spring right, eyeing reelection and 2024.” How is this playing itself out?
“In Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) … signed a new law making it illegal for a doctor to perform an abortion, with exceptions only in the case of a medical emergency.
“Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed laws banning transgender girls from high school sports, controlling the way schools teach about race and gender and eliminating permit requirements for carrying concealed weapons.
“Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) … has launched campaign advertisements that echo Trump’s evidence-free false statements about the 2020 election results. ‘The fake news, Big Tech and blue state liberals stole the election from President Trump. But here in Alabama, we’re making sure that never happens,’ Ivey says.”
The key point is, “All three governors face potentially competitive primaries.” Which they don’t want to lose. This is a case of the blind (the “asses”) leading those who should know better.
You expect a governor to be a leader. At least, that’s what I want, when I vote. Kay Ivey, a college graduate and former teacher, almost certainly knows the 2020 election wasn’t “stolen,” rather Trump lost. But out of purely pragmatic political considerations, she’s pandering to the Red Mob dominating the GOP today. That’s not leading, it’s following. Worse, she’s making herself a participant in a mob.
Last week I noted in a posting (here) that in 3 states where “GOP legislators made banning transgender kids from sports a pressing legislative matter” there is “exactly one trans kid playing on a girls’ team. One.” Surely Georgia’s governor has more important things to do than ban trans kids from school sports. What you have here is another GOP governor following the mob, instead of leading them away from their discriminatory attitudes and trying to build a more inclusive society in his state.
I guess you could call Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s also up for reelection this year (and has bigger ambitious), a leader. He’s leading the racist and homophobic Red Mob of his state even deeper into racism and homophobia, after doing everything he could to thwart any scientifically and medically sound response to the deadly Covid-19 pandemic. But at least that’s leading and not following.
The Hill says “the governors embracing Trump’s culture wars show the salience those issues have among the primary voters who will renominate most, if not all of them.” This shows the representative side of democracy at work; they’re giving GOP voters what they want. That’s representation.
But mobs do not a government make. George Washington led American colonists to victory in the Revolutionary War, presided over the Constitutional Convention, served as the United States’ first president, and helped get the fledgling nation off the launching pad. Abraham Lincoln kept the the young nation, still in its formative years, from breaking apart by leading it through a brutal civil war. Franklin Roosevelt led Americans through the Great Depression and World War 2. The point is, all of the great figures in America’s history were leaders, not followers; they showed us where to go, and then took us there.
That’s what America needs today. It’s what our country has always needed. Our true leaders have threaded a way through foreign crises and found answers to domestic problems. Sometimes they did so imperfectly, or made mistakes, but none followed the mob. We should choose leaders for their leadership qualities, and to be honest, also to do some of our thinking for us on public policy issues. The world is complex, and none of us have the time or resources to figure everything out for ourselves.
All democratically elected politicians walk a tightrope between representing the public and pulling them in a new (or different) direction. Our system, when it’s successful, is a mix of both. I would argue that currently on the GOP side there’s too much following and not enough leading. I want to see Republican politicians pull their constituents away from racism, homophobia, and other forms of intolerance, and show them how to live well in a changing society increasingly dominated by technology and face the challenges outside our borders of a world now facing a new Cold War that could turn hot at any time.
There’s more serious work to be done in our politics than worrying about 1 trans kid in 3 entire states playing sports on a girls’ team.