While making small talk with my dentist this week as she prepared to clean my teeth and examine the progress from my Invisalign braces, she mentioned that she hadn’t watched any news for two years to preserve her mental health. Coincidentally, my husband confessed on one of our walks this week that he can no longer watch the news in the morning because it ruins his entire day. I, too, have limited my consumption of news for the same reason as the two of them. Watching the news, particularly the political news is like watching a slow-moving train wreck happening before my eyes and feeling helpless to stop it.
However, I am not entirely helpless. People say that to address a problem one must first acknowledge that a problem actually exists. As a human, it’s tempting to ignore, avoid, or to pretend like a problem doesn’t exist, especially when you feel like you don’t have the means to address it. Today, our nation faces a collective problem presented by the MAGA Republican agenda. They are white “Christian” nationalists, not very different from the Nazi Party and they want to take over the nation.
In my lifetime, I have never encountered a group of people so determined to lean into conspiracy theories, debunk ideologies, and wishful thinking as opposed to actual science, history, and social and psychological research. Their willingness to promote dangerous misinformation, lies, and to distort facts is difficult to swallow. The level of blatant racism, xenophobia, and hypocrisy is disheartening and uncomfortable to watch. The fact that MAGA Republicans are willing to allow a fraud like George Santos to continue to be seated in the House of Representatives shows just how depraved and unhinged this party has become. Truth and integrity are not a priority; power is. It’s clear to anyone watching a Congressional hearing that they are opposed to allowing science, academic research, and medical professions guide decision making regarding climate change, abortion, public health, and transgender issues. The evidence shows that they want to hide or manipulate history so they can characterize any attempts to rectify the damage done to minorities as attempts to discriminate against whites. They are against immigration from non-white countries. Like moderate Republicans, they too want to end Social Security and Medicare as well as income taxes. So then, what are they for?
First and foremost, they are for re-establishing white male “Christian” dominance in the United States and the world. They embrace a false narrative that this is a “Christian” nation. They embrace the strong man approach over the constitution that now grants freedoms to minorities and women. To reestablish white Christian male dominance, they are willing to hand over the reins of government to a leader who is willing to kill, imprison, or silence anyone who threatens what they believe is their God-given right to rule and dominate. In their distorted view of things, the founders created freedoms solely for them. They alone truly have the right to vote, so voter suppression of minorities is good until they can again eliminate that right altogether. This is why they think there are stolen elections. If you don’t believe people of color legitimately have the right to vote, then you view their votes as fraudulent. They believe that freedom of speech applies only to them, even if their words cause chaos or puts others in harm’s way. They believe the right to their religious practice justifies denying the civil liberties of other citizens. They believe they have the right to protest, but others are unpatriotic if they do so and should be punished. They believe they have the right to bear arms, but view others as a threat to be killed on the spot by police if they bear arms.
Behind this anti-democratic stance is the underlying reasoning that white people discovered and fairly conquered the indigenous people to establish this country as a white protestant nation. In their minds, only white people are true Americans. The surviving indigenous people belong on reservations. All others are merely guests and inferior humans who were brought in (in chains) or allowed to enter to help build the infrastructure, industry, and agricultural foundations that made this country to function and prosper for them to enjoy.
However, those few white protestants realized that they were quickly outnumbered by indigenous, blacks, and immigrants from around the globe who were pouring their blood, sweat and tears into this nation without rights. Their answer was to expand what it meant to be white and therefore an “American” with full access to education, voting, and positions of authority. Immigrant groups literally petitioned the Supreme Court to be classified as “White”. Some were granted whiteness while others such as Southeast Asians and Japanese were denied. My Armenian son-in-law was shocked to learn that he is white because the Supreme Court said so. Some Mexicans cling to their whiteness because of a similar Supreme Court ruling. The expansion of whiteness was a way to maintain dominance over people of color and to restrict competition for land, education, employment, and power. Legalized discrimination made the escape from poverty nearly impossible for all but the extremely talented or lucky.
As second-class citizens who fought in every war and helped build the country, it was inevitable that people would form an alliance to demand full citizenship rights. Jews, who are white, are most hated for joining with Blacks, feminists, and other people of color in fighting for Civil Rights. This ongoing the alliance of feminist women, ethnic, religious, and LGBTQ minorities makes up the democratic party today. They are continuing to fight for access to opportunities and the expansion of higher education and a safety net. While Conservatives are individualists, Democrats see us as being in this together and affecting each other’s lives.
It’s undeniable that strides have been made to educate and give more access to land, capital, education, employment and power to people who were previously excluded from all these opportunities. What we’ve achieved with the limited access we earned is remarkable, but it is also scary to some white conservatives, particularly those like Trump.
The election of Barack Obama awakened fears within the hearts of some white people that “their nation” is being overrun by outsiders and overly ambitious people of color. MAGA Republicans are fearful of losing what power they think they have and so they have unleashed an all-out war on feminists, ethnic minorities, Jews, LGBTQ folks, and immigrants. “Make America Great Again” really meant, “Make America ‘White’ Again” where white males hold all the wealth and power.
The MAGA Republican agenda is simple: Restore power and privilege to white Christian Americans. First, they will close the borders to non-whites. They will force pregnancy upon women to stifle their ambitions and curtail their progress. Then they will cripple poor communities by eliminating all social safety nets while re-establishing discrimination (disguised as freedom) so that poor people and LGBTQ people will no longer have the energy nor desire to seek political power. They will replace income tax with a national sales tax that unfairly taxes the poorest among us. If they can create a permanent underclass of cheap labor who must work until the day they die (and they will die sooner with more poverty-driven crime and without decent food and healthcare), then they will have achieved their goal.
The time is right now to acknowledge that we have a problem in this country that will not be ignored, avoided, nor wished away. It matters that we stay informed and that we use our individual and collective voice to advocate for what is true and just. We must defend those among us who are under attack. It matters more than ever that we vote for officials who are inclusive and who value equal justice under the law and who tap into the current wisdom of science, history, and medicine. This is our collective fight to win against a very vocal and relentless MAGA Republican Party. So, watching or reading a little bit of news every day is a task that must not be entirely avoided even though it makes me uncomfortable.