The Mika Inherits the Dearth

The sudden and bizarre change of tune by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, in running off to Mar-a-Lago immediately after the election, has caused oceans of ink and pixels to be spilt in curiosity and outrage in its wake.  The reaction is far stronger than a story of this kind, on its face, would seem to merit. It was treated as a significant event! Why? The fuss would seem to be nothing more than a group of disgruntled fans of a cable news talk show feeling frustrated that their hosts made an unexpected move to reach out to a candidate they had opposed. Was there anything very unusual about that?

Well, yes.

What was unusual was that the opposition was never characterized as a political disagreement but rather media being brutally honest about a corrupt and dangerous movement. Of course Donald Trump, as understood by those who could view facts objectively, was an aspiring autocrat. For the last nine years, those of us who have been ringing the warning bells about him have needed media to take the Magafascist threat as seriously as we did. And nobody rang that warning bell louder than Scarborough and Brzezinski. They practically shouted themselves hoarse, proclaiming the authoritarian, even fascist, tendencies of the MAGA movement. The moment the election changed the power dynamics in America, the Scarboroughs were able to change the dynamics of their point of view, as well, on the dime. Suddenly, he was just an incoming president, who deserved nothing less than the considerations that any other incoming president-elect would be expected to receive. As if he suddenly were no longer a “fascist” holding the fate of the country and the world in his diseased hands; as if this authoritarian figure in-waiting, wreathed by insurrectionists, neo-Nazis, proud boys, aspiring military despots, Christian Reconstuctionists, etc. were not now inside the gates, and about to knock down, a good part, if not all, of the United States government. What makes this especially significant is that it lays bare that the class of people the Scarboroughs and their friends represent are a class who think can escape the sword when it falls. Many millions of Americans do not have the option of going to Mar-a-Lago and shaking the hand of their impending executioner. They will be put into concentration camps and having their children kidnapped.  They will be killed by freebooting neo-Nazis. They will be thrown out of government jobs for simply being Democrats. They will be prosecuted for daring to notice widespread criminality in Trump’s every enterprise and attempting to do something about it. There’s already a chilling affect on media, where mainstream outlets are holding back on criticism of Trump. This, in fact has been going on for many months. And, I suspect, in the example set by the Scarboroughs, it will proceed apace. In today’s New York Times, there is an opinion piece by, Lynda Polgeen

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/opinion/trump-deportation-immigration.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

in which an affluent journalist’s mother, who is a, now, vulnerable immigrant has lost track of her passport, and now, under the wrong circumstances, might have trouble identifying herself in an immigration purge, or escaping the country as it grows more hostile. It makes the case, starkly and urgently, that people who feel they can disengage from politics, are telling themselves a lie.

The use of the word “politics” here is important. It is spoken about, quite often, as a topic of discussion, as when we discuss sports, fashions or movies. You can just take it or change the subject. Politics is just another one of those topics. As in the very famous words of the 20th century by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller :

“First they came for the Communists.
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists.
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists.
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews.
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.”

The comfortable class has felt they could float above these harsh realities and be untouched, knowing that those who struggle to survive in this newly repressive society cannot escape “politics”. “Politics” is a misleading word for reality. The knock on the door, the subpoena, the concentration camp, the deportation, the separation of families, the shooting of innocents by thugs, none of those are just more “politics”. They will be the lived reality by the powerless. A dictatorship is defined by everyone becoming powerless, except for the leader and his mob. As we understand how to negotiate all manner of new realities, we, a people addicted now from birth, to fantasy, might have a bracing new introduction to reality, realizing that we cannot look away from that which will force us to cope with our radically changed lives, beginning very soon.

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In solidarity,

Steve