No good possible outcomes

Occupying the odd space of being a deeply engaged citizen but having no horse in the political races of the day

We’re now halfway through January. The primary season is nearly here. Then come the conventions, and then the final stretch to November. The key point to remember as the process unfolds is that, among the ways the process concludes, none of them are good. Not one.

And the really grim fact about our nation’s prospects on the political level is that they are merely emblematic of the cultural and spiritual sickness that has been with us for decades, during political seasons and in between them.

I’m not keen on preoccupation with the developments of fleeting significance in a given news cycle, but let us consider what we’ve come to know about Lev Parnas in recent days. He’s proof of the proposition that two things seemingly at odds can both be true. He’s a small-time hustler with ambitions to be a big shot, a former stockbroker with a string of debts, which have made him the subject of several lawsuits, and shady associations on his resume. This must be taken into account when contemplating what he had to say in his interview with Rachel Maddow. Yet the probability that his core accusations have some veracity seems to have been what was driving Kellyanne Conway’s attempt to obfuscate her way out of saying whether or not she thought Parnas was lying when pressed on the matter by Fox News’s Bill Hemmer.

The point is not to get in the impeachment weeds here. The theater that is transpiring between now and Trump’s Senate acquittal is a parade of ephemeral occurrences. This is so even if the Senate calls high-profile witnesses such as John Bolton.

Speaking of two things being true at once, it applies to the impeachment process. Donald Trump most certainly leaned on Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Bidens in exchange for the release of military aid, but it’s also true that Democrats have not accepted the finality of the 2016 election, which was nearly three years before Trump so leaned. Their determination to damage his presidency is only partly about his personality, demeanor and incoherence. The fact that he ran and won as a Republican, even though he was of recent vintage, was the core of their rage. It’s a safe bet that a President Cruz, or Walker, or Fiorina would have come in for a similar refusal to accept their legitimacy.

I chose those three out of the 2016 field of sixteen Republican contenders because they best fit the mold of consistent, principled conservatives who were available then. That Trump so completely overwhelmed their candidacies and assumed control of the Republican Party says a great deal about how far principles have receded into the Republican background.

This was demonstrated again in another development of the past few days. Arizona Senator Martha McSally has enjoyed a reputation as a fairly consistently conservative Republican. She’s pro-life, feels that education is a local affair, and was not a fan of the JCPOA. She even kept her distance from Trump in 2016. And there’s no denying that Manu Raju, the CNN correspondent who approached her in a Senate hallway to ask a question, has a track record as a biased reporter. Still, his question in this instance was an act of straight journalism. He merely wanted to know where she stood on the subject of the Senate calling new witnesses at the impeachment trial. She rebuffed him with her now-famous “you’re a liberal hack” remark. She seems to have calculated that a brusque, Trump-like way of dismissing Raju would yield the most political advantage.

The Republican Party is now completely beholden to a narcissistic, bombastic, petty, vindictive, incoherent buffoon who views the governance of the United States as a matter of cutting deals and of winners and losers.

Those (ostensibly on the right side of the spectrum; those on the left will be dealt with shortly) who publicly say as much are derisively characterized as “Never Trumpers,” a rather absurd term given that he’s been president for three years.

And the complications proliferate even within this category. There are those who keep principles front and center, but who understand that much about the tide of events this year is going to be outside their ability to influence. Then there are those who take an activist stance, and fill their social-media accounts with urgent calls for impeachment. There is yet another subset that seems to have abandoned the conservative label altogether, some even expressing a willingness to support a Democrat.

Then there is the Left and its political repository, the Democratic Party. While much is made over the introduction of new tactics and willingness to wage outright revolution that resulted from 1960s radicals re-entering the fold and pushing the party ever further away from the ideological spectrum’s center line, it’s undeniable that the New Deal, whose architects included Rex Tugwell and Frances Perkins, established a leftist pedigree that made the party the natural home for those later Gramscian firebrands. There is a discernible lineage from New Dealism through Great Societyism through the Obama project of fundamentally transforming America and through the Green New Deal and universal everything.

Democrats believe a number of things that are outrageously untrue, such as that health care is a right, that people of the same gender can be married, that systemic racial bigotry is still pervasive, and that the global climate is in crisis. Their policy proposals are a palpable threat to human freedom and our civilization’s underpinnings. It will be a disaster if any of the Democratic presidential candidates win this fall, or if both Congressional chambers come under their control.

And one thing both Trumpism and Leftism have in common in this election year is the basic message that one must join their ranks, as the alternative is unthinkable. One is obligated, each side argues, to lend not just support but full-throated enthusiasm to the cause. There is something seditious about opting not become a foot soldier for the brand.

I can’t do it. It’s not that I’m apathetic. It matters a great deal which side prevails this November, but not because we will have been saved from a grim fate in either case. It matters because we will know what kind of grim fate we’re facing.

So I continue to pay close attention. There is much at stake, but to say that this is so requires me to make clear that that will be so no matter how the political winds blow.

We got to this juncture because we lost sight of the eternal and transcendent and all that was left was for us to cast our lot with one or the other of the brands.

When I say we’ve lost sight, I mean we’ve really lost sight. Even the institution that is supposed to be the guardian of our relationship to the transcendent and eternal, organized Judea-Christian religion, is as polarized as our politics, and is in no position to counter the rottenness of our culture.

Even if Donald Trump is reelected and both Congressional chambers are controlled by Republicans, our nation’s artistic and educational output will continue to reflect a nihilism and fascination with trivial novelty. We’ll continue to hustle each new stock-market record or sunny employment report as evidence that civilization has been pulled back from the brink, when they are nothing of the sort.

No, the reason that the passing parade still bears watching is that it gives us indication as to which route out of the ruins is going to be the one to take.