Do Politics Like Civilized People or Not at All

This post wanted to be a full-sized, hard-hitting post about the subject so dear to so many Republicans, election fraud. I believe it happens, all right. And maybe, if Republicans want to put their backs where their mouths are, something can be done about it. Experience has not shown me that Republicans generally want to put their backs where their mouths are, but maybe in crisis mode they do, who knows?

Having said that about Republicans I might as well add that Democrats aren't too good at putting their backs where their mouths are, either. They taught the Republicans how to wail about election fraud in 2000 and in 2016, but funnily enough I've seen no reports of Ds trooping down to election offices, demanding the right to use the first two weeks of November physically counting ballots. They, too, prefer to let somebody "guesstimate" from a partial count, or worse yet try to use computerized scanning devices to read handwritten write-ins and "chads" punched out with dull stampers, and then spend the next four years wailing and whining and moaning and carrying on about how much they hate the current p'resident (presumptuous resident) whom they never sent to the White House, wooooe! 

The position of this web site is that this wailing is childish and poor-spirited. The spirit of T.E.A. steams out of this web site's little spout. Grow up already, it exhorts the partisans. Stop the stupid sulking about having failed to elect Your Man, or woman, and try to work with the people in office in a responsible, effectual way as Loyal Opposition. Heaven knows the Presidents we've had since the rise of the Internet, and likewise the Congressmen and the various elected and appointed bureaucrats around them, have needed Loyal Opposition: a million bloggers all expressing no malice toward the office holders, in fact showing due respect for them since they obviously got someone to put them where they are, but an honest concern about an issue, or issues, and desire to help the office holders understand the will of the voters and taxpayers. 

But, but, but, the partisans sputter, being loyal opposition may be a nicer way to do it, but those nice ways often fail... (Music link here.) 

Right, this web site puffs. How far did public displays of bad sportsmanship get HRC's partisans in the Trump Administration? What have similar displays done for Republicans lately? Reason may not win as easily or as often as it should, but it has to be better than that.

This web site once responded to an e-mail inviting people to wish one of our U.S. Senators a happy birthday with a little verse in the tradition of birthday roasts and spankings:

"Happy birthday, Tim Kaine,

In the Senate you're a pain;

You should live long and prosper,

Only maybe in Spain."

In a certain way this web site does respect Tim Kaine, and not merely his office. Senator Kaine once ran against a relative of mine in an election, and did so partly with a campaign storyline subtly suggesting that my relative was a lightweight because he was and still is a better-looking man. That does take talent. Many are the less-attractive politicians who could only dream of making it work for them.

But, without claiming to be partisans of his, this web site has followed the example of the Kilgore twins themselves and behaved with due respect for the Senator's office, and as a result we at least raised the Glyphosate Awareness of his staff. Not that Senator Kaine has been a strong enough leader to get an actual bill passed, or imagined that he was; but his office has demonstrated awareness. When someone else has the following and the fortitude to sponsor a glyphosate ban, if it reaches a vote as a simple bill without anything stuck onto it that is particularly abhorrent to the Senator, there's a good chance of his remembering to vote for it. That's about as good as it gets with the average Congressman.

On the other hand, consider where hating on people leads. I do not believe actual Republicans' hating on Nancy Pelosi has been enough to upset even a mental balance as precarious as DiPape's apparently was. I think D infiltrators of far-right groups found this aging "gay" male prostitute hanging about on the fringes of the fringiest sort of groups, desperately seeking human companionship after having cut it off in his immediate family, and exploited his loneliness. Why would DePape go to the door of the person he was stalking when he could easily have learned that the person wouldn't be there? Possibly because he was acting on the instructions of his friend the saboteur? Likely the saboteur thought DePape would flee at the sight of Paul Pelosi. Likely the saboteur was horribly surprised to see that DePape was in fact aggressive enough to hit a man--a man twice his age, anyway. 

But where does it lead? I left Twitter last night after seeing a photograph of the anguish on the Speaker's face. People have died from less. Many people hate Nancy Pelosi's politics, and rightly so--though I was struck, when researching an article about her, by the fact that nobody seems ever to have found anything about her to hate except her politics. For anyone as rich, as famous, and as easy to blame for as much as the Speaker has been, to have avoided scandals and lawsuits for as long as she has done, is indeed a class act. She may be too old to learn much, but she is a fine lady we should all hope to have the honor of educating, not hating.

However hard to educate she would have been before this act of emotional torture, she'll be much harder to educate now. How could she possibly listen respectfully to any representative of any group with which she associated DePape? How can any Californian hope to reason with the Speaker, on any non-partisan issue of concern to people in San Francisco, after this?

Of course that's one more reason why she should retire. And it's one more reason why her constituents will try to find somone whose politics are even worse--and they'll be very lucky to find anyone whose character is anything near as unassailable. DePape's act of terrorism probably did not involve any contact with any actual Republican, but for all the Republicans in California who feel hated, cheated, and lied to by their elected officials, DePape's dastardly deed will be another very large brick in the wall.

It doesn't end with Nancy Pelosi, who would have served the nation better if she'd retired twenty years ago, before uttering that unforgettable line, "We have to pass the bill to find out what's in it." As an indication of an individual's having reached her or his personal retirement age, that one does rate a place close to Hillary Rodham Clinton's repeated pleas of brain damage under oath. But when you want someone to retire, you don't attack or persecute the person; you talk about the good only that person can do in a less demanding position, you talk about the quiet joys of grandparenthood or the pleasures of travel.

I'll be surprised if DePape turns out to have any connection with any real members of the Republican Party. Real Republicans are game players. They understand that although a two-party system may have some room for divisive rhetoric, especially when candidates are debating, a civilized nation cannot allow partisan violence. 

There are two approaches to preventing partisan violence. The one the rest of the world understands is to have a single-party, totalitarian government. "Common people" are taught not to think but to obey. Feudal Europe has been resentfully eying the more successful English-speaking countries since before even colonial days. The latest angle for the "yes, but in the English-speaking countries the common people have too much freedom" camp has been the allegedly scientific studies that show that people report more happiness in countries where they're punished for expressing dissatisfaction. The flaw in the "science of happiness" studies is that people who are bullied and threatened into claiming that they're happier not having to make choices may feel less happiness than people who wail contentedly about "decisions, decisions," especially while shopping. Having higher standards for what they describe as positive happiness does not necessarily, or even probably, mean that people are less contented.

The one that has historically worked for the English-speaking countries is to raise the tone of political discourse. Discourage the tabloid-style obsession with branding individuals as saviors or demons. Keep in mind that humans are annoyingly human, likely to do both good things and bad things. Focus on rational discussions of what the people want and what they can do to get that, rather than nursery-school fantasies that "Candidate A can make us a richer nation" or "Candidate B can make us a nicer nation." Remind people to think more in terms of, "If I want the nation, or myself, to be richer or nicer or cleaner or whatever, I want our government to do ---, and my part of this movement is ---." If politicians oppose what you are doing toward the changes you want, vote them out, without hostility. 

I don't really want the United States to be a more censorious nation but I think partisan rhetoric needs to be toned down. (Impartially--none of this "But it's all right for this D to call all Rs homicidal maniacs, because this R called the D in question a left-winger.") 

We could just remind people: "Do politics like civilized people, or not at all." We could just stop following people who post partisan verbal violence, and follow only moderates.

We could just stop voting for Ds until they purge their ranks of people who favor censorship. I realize that this is easier for me, this year, than it is for many Independents. I have to vote for or against keeping an incumbent who is generally well liked, such that he's being opposed only by a very young and naive Nobody from Nowhere with No Background and No Friends. The Rs haven't even wasted any money on campaigning. For people who have several partisan choices to make next week and who know at least one of their R choices to be in great need of retirement, an alternative would be to tag the current D party leaders as "The Party of Censorship" and require any Ds for whom you vote to denounce censorship in public.