This week, the Republicans held a midterm convention, which is not a thing. But Trump said that the reason that the Republicans aren’t doing well in the polls is because he isn’t on the ballot, and, every time he’s on the ballot, Repubs win. (But, you ask, what about 2020? What a stupid question! who are you with? fake news!!!) So obviously the solution to help the rightwing nutjobs win is to pretend Trump is on the ballot.
That’s not a sarcastic remark from me: that’s something that Trump literally said in his first(!) speech at what many (including the Repubs themselves) are calling “Trumpapalooza”, which rambled on for an hour and 45 minutes, and included such gems as Trump promising to pay all Americans $5,000 and a loyalty pledge. Oh, and when I’m talking about 1:45, I’m not saying the convention went on that long—just Trump’s speech. That particular speech, I mean: he spoke for another 40 minutes the second night. The conference as a whole dragged on for hours and hours and featured speeches from multiple crazy people.
My favorite non-Trump crazy-person speech came from South Carolina senator Tim Scott. People have been making fun of Scott due to his over-the-top performance: to call it “chest-thumping” would not be hyperbole, since he was literally thumping his chest. And, sure it’s fun to watch a guy who thinks he’s a professional wrestler trying to deliver a political speech. But I would rather concentrate on the actual words Scott used. At one point, he says this:
This is a battle for the heart of our nation. The Democrats’ extreme candidates will rip that out of our chest. They hate our culture. They hate what it means to be American.
Hunh. Do I? I am, certainly, not one of the Democrats’ candidate, extreme or otherwise, but I tend to identify with them. “Extreme” in this case is code for “progressive,” code for “socialist.” I don’t live in New York, but I certainly would vote for Mamdani and AOC if I did. I don’t live in Minnesota, but I certainly would vote for Peggy Flanagan and Ilhan Omar if I did. I don’t live in Michigan, but I certainly would vote for Abdul El-Sayed if I did. So, I do hate Tim Scott’s culture? do I hate what it means to be American?
See, the problem here is that Scott and the other rightwing nutjobs are trying to redefine what it means to be American, and I kinda do hate that. Scott is a black man, but he supports an administration that is openly racist, and I hate that. Scott seems to think that what it means to be an American is blatant corruption and a regime that is actively pro-crime, and I hate that too. Scott supports a president who campaigned on bringing peace but insteead seems very fond of war, and I really hate that. Scott’s “culture” seems to be one that despises trans people, and I utterly despise that. If all those things are what it means to be an American, then ... well, yeah: I guess I do hate your culture, Tim Scott. But I think that the conceit that that is what it means to be an American is a cheat, a scam. It’s the con man whispering “look ... see? you’re just like us.” It’s trying to appeal to the worst parts of human nature, the parts of us that want to push away the unfamiliar, that want to huddle together with only those that look like us, act like us, think like us. Perhaps there was even a time, far back in our evolution, when that was a useful trait, when it might have kept us alive a little longer and therefore ensured the survival of our species. But many of us—I would love to believe most of us, even—have evolved beyond that instinct. We now understand that embracing the multitude of different human experiences is a good thing, that all people are the same even as all of us are different, and that our similarities give us the strength of union and our differences imbue us with the endless fascination that makes life worthwhile. So many of those people that try to tell us otherwise claim to be Christians, but they never seem to want to explain why God created such diversity of human life if He didn’t want us to love each other and learn from each other and enlighten each other and experience each other and find joy in each other. I’m not much of a Christian personally, but I have read the Bible, and what I remember that Jesus said about people who are different from us is this: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
I think Tim Scott and his ilk missed this passage in the Bible. And the saddest thing of all is that, as they sit there whispering to us “you’re just like us; come, join us” they literally can’t understand why we say no. Their reasoning is flawed; their rhetoric is empty; their religion is performative. They’re so convinced they’re right that it confuses them that we can’t see it. I think maybe they assume we’ll come around eventually, or else we’ll just get booted out along with all the other people they don’t like. It amuses me to imagine what it would be like if they actually got what they wanted: there wouldn’t be anyone to exploit any more, no one to do all the work for them that they’re too good to do for themselves, no one to make their food, no one to write them books or make them movies, no one to play sports for their enjoyment, no one to learn from, no one to debate with. They could all sit around looking like each other and agreeing with each other while they all starved to death or started killing each other out of sheer boredeom.
Jimmy Kimmel interviewed James Talarico this week. Early in the interview, James said this:
Scripture tells us that you can’t love God and hate other people. You can’t love God and abuse the immigrant. You can’t love God and oppress the poor. You can’t love God and bully the outcast. We spend so much time looking for God out there that we miss God in the person sitting right next to us, in that neighbor who bears the divine image. I was brought up to believe that in the face of a neighbor, we glimpse the face of God. Matthew 25 tells us Christians exactly how we’re going to be judged and how we’re going to be saved. By feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger. I often wonder what would Jesus do if he visited the US Senate. I think he would tell the senators on the floor, “Depart from me, for I was hungry and you cut my food assistance; I was sick and you kicked me off Medicaid; I was a stranger and you deported me and my family.” And then I think he would flip over those fancy desks on the floor of the US Senate and demand that we take care of all of our neighbors, especially the least of these.
Maybe that’s what it should mean to be an American. Just a thought.
Excellent coverage on Trumpapalooza from Kimmel, from Jamelle Bouie, from Brian Tyler Cohen’s “Another Day” segment (twice, even), from Alex Wagner and Jon Favreau on Runaway Country, and on The Coffee Klatch. You know I always recommend the Klatch when W. Kamau Bell sits in, and he’s back again this week, this time with Michael Lahanas-Calderón and Heather Lofthouse. A bit of a longer video, but well worth your time.
Other things you need to know this week:
- Although Robert Reich wasn’t in this week’s Coffee Klatch, you can catch his short video featuring Gabriel Zucman on how wealth taxes work. Zucman is a French economist that I discovered via Gary Stevenson, whom I’ve recommended many times; Zucman doesn’t actually say “tax wealth not work,” but that’s certainly the subtext.
- Good episode from Pod Save the UK this week; feel free to watch the whole thing if you like, or just skip to the interview with Cory Doctorow. You guys know I love me some Doctorow, and this interview with Nish and Coco is just as good as the others I’ve pointed you to. Best quotes from this time out:
- ”And in fact, you can invent a really successful computer program without knowing what it is. People are often very dumb about their own creations. Ray Bradbury insisted to his dying day that Fahrenheit 451 was a book about the evils of television and had nothing to do with censorship. People are wrong about their own stuff all the time.” (I explored this very concept in a blog post from 15 years ago.)
- ”And so, yeah, I’m really worried. But again, like in the same way that I’m worried that people will get fired not because the AI can do their job, but because their boss can be convinced to fire them or replace them with the AI that can’t do their job. I’m worried that AI is going to destroy the world: not because it’s going to turn us into paper clips, but because it’s going to vaporize the economy after 50 years of Thatcherism where the only thing we know how to do is austerity.” (If you’re not familiar with Margaret Thatcher, think of her as the UK’s Ronald Reagan and you won’t be far off.)
If you want some hope this week, I must refer you back to James Talarico, whose Texas senate race is now considered a toss-up. Sure, it’d be even more hopeful if he were considered ahead in the polls by more than the margin of error, but Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, and hasn’t elected a Democrat to any statewide office in over 30 years. So, overall, a toss-up is still fairly astonishing.
And I think Talarico has a decent shot. He’s a compassionate, caring, deeply religious guy. Here’s what he had to say about Trumpapalooza:
And you know, Jimmy, the the RNC convention is in in my home state right now. ... But while while corrupt politicians and their their billionaire mega donors were partying at a convention center in Dallas, our campaign brought people together across the state to collect groceries for families that are struggling. The tickets to that billionaire ball are $20,000. And so it’s fitting that our volunteers collected 20,000 lbs of groceries for working Texans. So the contrast couldn’t be couldn’t be starker.
Of course, the Republicans have tried to use that compassion to insinuate that he’s everything from gay to a vegan to a “freak” (James has embraced this by now selling “I’m a Talafreako” tee-shirts on his website). Meanwhile, his opponent Ken Paxton is so detestable that Trump starts off every endorsement of him by admitting that “You may not like the way he looks. The fact is that some may not like the way he dresses: I don’t. They may not like the way he talks.” After Kimmel played a clip of Trump saying that, Talarico responded with:
I’m James Talarico and I approve that message.
I mean, you know, Ken’s own staff reported him to the FBI. His own party—his fellow Republicans—impeached him for bribery. His, actually, his own defense attorney has endorsed me in this campaign. And now his biggest supporter is calling him ugly on national television. I’ll just say, I mean I know the president likes to win. He’s a big winner, and if he wants to be on the winning side in this race, he is welcome to join the movement that we’re building.
I can’t tell you that Talarico will win. But I can you that he’s a young, charismatic, man of faith, and his opponent is a black hole of unappealing and corrupt. Certainly there are people who will punch the button beside the (R) and not even much care whose name is written there, especially in Texas. But there are also people who are sick of being used and abused and taken for granted, and maybe enough of them will be looking for a change.
Many people are saying that if the Republicans lose Texas, they lose the Sentate. And that sounds pretty hopeful to me.