“Operational reality” is a term I use to emphasize that what is important is not what exists, but what happens. For example, just before the 2016 election, the Pew Research group found that 48% of registered voters leaned Democratic and 44% leaned Republican. This would lead one to expect a big Democratic victory in the 2016 elections. Yet in fact the Republicans won the Presidency, the House, and the Senate. Why?
We should not, of course, overlook the fact that Ms. Clinton got 51% of the vote and Mr. Trump got 49%. Even so, the Republicans swept the House, which does reflect popular voting patterns. We should also not overlook the many dirty tricks the Republicans used to win power, from gerrymandering to energetic efforts to deny the vote to minorities to placement of fewer voting machines in Democratic precincts. The Republicans have truly mastered the skills of legally skewing elections in their favor.
But in this essay, I wish to point out another factor at work, a more dangerous factor: anger. The right has been stoking anger since the right-wing talk radio shows began in the 1990s. Inciting anger has become of the right wing’s favorite ploys. Their radio, television, and Internet sources tremble with fury at an endless array of preposterous liberal plots, schemes, and outrages. Perhaps the best indication of how far off into the wild blue yonder the right has gone is the fact that the crazy accusation on the Internet that Ms. Clinton was running a child prostitution ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor spread far and wide through the right wing media. These people not only believed such nonsense — they promulgated it!
But the two years of Republican control of the government have triggered uncharacteristic anger on the left. Mr. Trump deliberately promotes diviseness to whip his supporters into a frenzy — but at the same time he is also whipping the left into a frenzy. Democrats have suffered from lower voter turnout than Republicans for several decades now. The Republicans have boosted their turnout rates by inflaming their supporters. Now the Democrats are starting to feel the anger, and their turnout rate will surely be higher in the 2018 election than in any recent midterm election.
Conservatives often accuse progressives of naivete. They taunt progressives for supposedly singing “Kumbaya”. I’ve never heard that song, but I assume that it’s some sort of feel-good song. Conservatives will be in for a shock when progressives start singing “Kill, Burn, Annihilate!”
Anger begets anger. Relationships, whether personal, political, or international, spiral downward more easily than upward. It takes years to build up trust and mutual respect, but moments to inspire suspicion and hate. Republicans have been pursuing the politics of anger for decades now, and Mr. Trump is only the latest and most extreme manifestation of that strategy. The detestable schemes that the Republicans in the Senate used to deny Mr. Obama his Supreme Court nomination and place Mr. Kavanaugh on the court have triggered broad outrage on the left.
I have come to the conclusion that Republican iniquity cannot be defeated by civilized political behavior. The Republicans have rejected all the norms of civilized political behavior and are now engaged in a smash-and-grab fight for power. They view bipartisanship as a waste of time. They mouth sweet words about bipartisanship, but the fact is that the Republicans almost always vote as a bloc. Therefore, the only way to save the American republic is for the Democrats to adopt the strategies the Republicans use. When the going gets ugly, even decent people have to get ugly.
This will likely lead to the collapse of the American republic. No government can survive a division among the people as profound as the current one. The conflict will grow more intense until it erupts into violence. Just this week we have seen a spate of mail bombs sent to opponents of Mr. Trump. This is of little significance; we’ll all denounce the bomber and try to move on. But this is only one step on a long sequence that will ultimately result in serious bloodshed.
The ugliness will spiral downward until the shock of the violence exceeds the anger of the parties. My assessment is that Americans will not return to genuine democratic values — that is, respecting the opinions of those with whom we disagree — until plenty of blood has been spilled.
Nevertheless, I feel that fighting in the streets is, in the long run, preferable to the right-wing authoritarian state that Republicans are dragging us towards.
The 2018 midterm elections will be the most consequential midterm elections in a long time. If the Democrats can win a convincingly large victory, and then use control of the House to carry out a proper investigation of Mr. Trump’s crimes, it is possible that the American ship of state may right itself. Even then, though, the cancer of anger will continue to eat at the substance of our republic. A Democratic victory will serve only to stave off a right-wing authoritarian regime. It will not save us from the violent showdown that is coming someday.