“People are angry they can’t be terrible anymore.”
That’s the theory posited by Michael Sokolove (profile here), a journalist and book writer who covers American society and politics, in an article he wrote for the Atlantic (read it here).
His article focuses on Doug Mastriano, the GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governor. Mastriono is an odd — and worrying — politician; he refuses to speak to reporters, is accompanied by armed guards, and his political rallies resemble evangelical tent revivals. Sokolove calls him a “lunatic.”
I don’t disagree, except I’d add he’s a dangerous lunatic. A few weeks after the 2020 election, I profiled him here as someone who “couldn’t pass a 9th grade civics test,” before he erupted onto the political stage as a real threat to American democracy. Even though his campaign is poorly funded, and he’s trailing in polls, Sokolove says “the sheer fact that someone like Mastriano is a major-party nominee to lead the nation’s fifth-largest state is alarming.”
Returning to Sokolove’s theme, yes, conservatives have become terrible people. They’re liars, bullies, violent, unscrupulous, lawless, racist and bigoted, and they’re trying to take over our country and take away our personal freedoms.
And they’re angry because we have a problem with their behavior.
The phrase, “people are angry because they can’t be terrible anymore” isn’t Sokolove’s; it originated from a Pennsylvania friend of his, when he asked the friend to explain why the state flipped from reliably blue to politicians like Trump and Mastriano, who currently is a state senator.
Sokolove says he grew up observing Pennsylvania politics, and they were “passionate but not insane.” Everywhere in America, that’s changed. His Atlantic piece doesn’t really explain how that happened, maybe because he doesn’t know. It’s complex.
But it’s clear, or should be, to anyone paying attention that America’s political right is angry, and is populated by terrible people. Good people don’t lie, smear, hate, or try to keep others from reading books or voting. Good people may suggest, but don’t tell, others how they should live.
We can’t do anything about terrible people. They’re here, and we can’t make them go away. But we don’t have to kowtow to them. Democracy survives by good people outvoting terrible people, and refusing to let them call the tune we dance to. If that makes them angry, I guess that’s their problem.