How Bad Is the GOP for America? Even Worse Than You Think

This Is the Kind of Political Party Failed States Have, Not Modern Democracies

Image Credit: CBS

It’s been a slow burn. Over the last decade or so, America and the world have witnessed the GOP, the Republican Party…transform. Change. Into a malign force, inimical to democracy and modernity. But because it’s been a slow burn, I wonder if there’s really a solid understanding of just how severe this transformation’s been.

We say that the GOP’s “fanatical,” “extreme,” “crazy,” now — but what do those things really mean?

How bad is the GOP? Really, really bad. We might speak about it casually, even — but struggle, still, to articulate it well, just how off-the-charts the GOP’s behavior and attitudes and agenda all now really are. So in this little essay, I want to give you a way to way to do that. When we look at indices of democracy, a few criterion regularly emerge — and we’re going to use them to examine the GOP’s slide into fanaticism, lunacy, violence, rage, and hate.

Probably the first, almost most superficial criterion of polities or political parties is to think about integrity. That’s almost funny in this perspective, because…well, give me a second. Integrity’s usually just about corruption — the absence of it — alongside basics like impartiality and a lack of nepotism. You don’t have to think very hard to see the GOP’s level of corruption — from Ivanka and Jared as “special advisors” reportedly raking in millions, to the dark money that flows into the machine, to the obviously anti-democratic gerrymandering, to blocking campaign finance reform, and on, and on, an on.

But integrity’s laughable in the same sentence as GOP for an almost surreal reason. Big Lies. Integrity itself has become a Big Lie the GOP spouts at the speed of sound. “Election integrity,” meaning “the election was stolen!” There’s no evidence whatsoever on this score, and plenty to indicate the opposite, of course. That’s the point within the point. Usually “integrity” as a way to index democracy just means basics like corruption — but when you come across a party which goes to the next level of a lack of integrity, which makes Big Lies a part of its agenda, strategy, you’re veering off the charts into genuinely authoritarian territory. This is what fanaticism is, where it begins — with integrity being so perverted that Big Lies are the norm.

That’s how off the charts the GOP is — and we’ve barely begun. And by now I should hardly to recite the Big Lies, but that brings me to the next set of criteria. Rights. Does a political party…respect them? Does it even want…to expand them? These, after all, are fundamental to democracy. Not just as a static thing, but as a project. On one level, a democracy must defend and safeguard inalienable rights, and on another, to advance, it must expand rights. You can think of universal suffrage or America’s battle for civil rights as simple enough examples.

How does the GOP do on the criterion of rights — defending and expanding them? LOL, again, it’s laughable to even put those words together in a sentence. The GOP’s entire agenda — all of it — centers on taking rights away. And it’s done that in blitzkrieg fashion over the last year. Women’s rights were eviscerated, and their basic freedoms are under severe threat in state after state. Ma’am, why are you crossing state lines? Sir, did you “aid and abet” a woman? Gilead’s not so far off in a lot of these places — forced births are now having very real consequences, and the lunatics in the GOP are shouting about contraception next.

Then there are all the other ways rights have…simply…been set alight. Book bans. Teachers criminalized. In Texas, they’ll tell you what to wear. In Kansas, they’ve opened the door to…genital inspections for kids. I could go on almost endlessly, but the theme is the point. Fundamental rights. Which…rights…does the GOP….actually support…as inalienable and universal…anymore? The answer to that is something we all know, but it’s profoundly chilling to say it loud. Just guns. That’s it.

This part I don’t think Americans consider enough. The GOP doesn’t support a single basic freedom as an an inalienable right anymore…apart from being able to carry a machine gun to Starbucks. None of them. Not privacy — that went up in flames with Roe. Not movement, which did too. Not expression — hence, the book bans. Not association — which is what the “aiding and abetting” laws are all about.

This is off-the-charts territory yet again. It’s deep, deep in the Red Zone of authoritarianism. It’s one thing for a party to debate a limited right here or there, or to negotiate over a set of rights, or to bargain over how certain rights should be expanded, as a democracy grows and matures. But when you encounter a party that’s openly hostile to basic freedom as inalienable rights, all of them, except carrying a gun to Starbucks — you are dealing with genuine fanaticism, serious extremism of the most severe kind. A democracy can hardly flourish if one side is only interested in the other side’s rights not existing at all.

How is the GOP waging — even winning — that battle? That brings me to the next set of criteria. They’re usually about how participatory democracies are. That means things like equal representation, whether or not people are engaged, how civil society performs. Again, in this regard, the GOP’s completely off the scale of fanaticism.

The GOP doesn’t want democracy to work. It wants it not to. It does that by attacking it from every angle imaginable. From the top down, the Supreme Court — we’ll come back to them — eviscerate rights. Demagogues like MJT smear innocent social groups as pedophiles, groomers, serial killers. Figures like DeSantis turn all that into legislation. And all that licenses bottom up attacks on democracy. Soccer moms shouting death threats at school officials. “Turning in” teachers — thanks to new anti-LGBTQ laws — for kids watching Disney movies.

But all that’s not even the best — worst — way to assess this criterion. Think about the recent wave of massacres and killings. Right wing violence. Clearly “inspired” by the GOP’s not just increasingly extreme rhetoric — but its legislation. Hey, they say I should hate all these people — why don’t I just finish the job, like they keep telling me to, with a wink wink and a nudge nudge!

Participation. Who’s “participating” in the kind of politics the GOP wants? The most violent and fanatical in society, by now.