An Answer to Steve Schmidt’s post “A Dire Moment”
By way of a hopefully constructive critique of a valuable ally!
Steve Schmidt is a former corporate and republican strategist, presidential campaign manager (John McCain and others), and high-level operative and spokesperson who, as a person of high moral character and integrity, left the Republican Party in 2018 after two years of criticism of and opposition to much of President Trump’s actions and agenda. He helped found The Lincoln Project. Schmidt is a vital voice of mainstream critical analysis and sanity. I follow his writings and speaking closely.1
Steve Schmidt has published a powerful and clearly heart-felt post about our nation’s current fraught political and moral crisis (see: “A Dire Moment”). I have already commented directly on his post, but wanted to expand on my thoughts here as I believe these are critical issues to discuss.In part, Schmidt says the following:
Fascism is rising in 2020s America because our democracy has grown weak, corrupted and rotten. A decaying society is vulnerable to a great danger: a strongman with a promise that they alone can fix everything. Sound familiar?
While I agree with this take overall, the entire piece fails to account for the origins of this moral and democratic decay. And I find a similar failure over and over again amongst our indispensable Never-Trump “normie” Republican allies. Until we understand where this came from we can’t define a path back to a more just society.
The Never-Trumper “homeless/party-less” cohort needs both to more robustly “check their privileged status” and to think more about the extent to which the brutal cowboy capitalism (Reaganomics) — that many still harken back to — is largely at the root of this “Dire Moment.”
Issue 1: Privileged Perspective
Schmidt and other Never-Trumpers are focused on what they see as some sort of viral case of moral decay in today’s society. But others, far less privileged, experience our current situation very differently. I won’t try to capture all of it here; but, depending on the community, demographics, etc., that experience includes:
Extreme economic deprivation;
The resulting extreme sense of insecurity;
The stripping away of personal and political agency;
Unending police brutality;
Homelessness and/or housing insecurity;
Ill-health and opioid addiction;
A reaming-out and privatizing of the “public goods/commons” including:
education at all levels,
our vastly unequal health care “system,” and
virtually all public-facing public services.
I could go on and on.
Issue 2: Cowboy Capitalism
What caused all of this? Our home-grown, brutal version of “unregulated” capitalism paired with an equally brutal, thread-bare safety net.
For a time, following FDR and WWII, constraints on capitalism and a bolstered safety net were forged for the improved welfare of the people and the country.
But then “Cowboy” capitalism (with its extraordinary capacity for wealth and power accumulation), was refueled and redirected by Ronald Reagan and the GOP. As far as I can tell, Reagan and this resurgence of rapacious capitalism is still revered and romanticized by even the most avid “Never-Trump” former Republicans.
Forty years of “Trickle-down” economics — driven by the “imperative” of capturing and controlling global markets — eviscerated the “Grand Bargain” between advanced capitalists and workers, their unions, and the underserved that had been fought for, for generations.
Over the last 40 years, capitalism has been unleashed to generate wealth for mega-corporations and the mega-wealthy without any obligation to society. As a result, the white working class experienced an indifference and stripping away of dignity that had not been seen since the Great Depression in much of the industrial and farming “Heartland” of America.
Another Issue: A Need for Moral and Political Stock-Taking
Resentment grew and a reached a boiling point by the time of the 2008 meltdown when millions lost the only economic safety-net left to them: the equity in their homes. The morality of cowboy capitalism had led to these ruinous consequences.
The desperation in the “heartland” turned to outrage as the bankers were bailed-out but not the people. All of this made for a Union torn apart at the seams by forty-plus years of bi-partisan public policy focused almost exclusively on enabling a wild-west of increasingly unregulated capitalism. The pervasive immorality of the elites was never called to account. In fact, it appeared to be forgiven.
Normie and Never-Trump Republicans tend to default to pinning society’s moral decay on liberalism and liberal ideas without acknowledging — taking stock of —their party’s role in leading the ravaging and pillaging of our people’s wellbeing. If they really thought about it, I think they’d realize that this has served mostly to forestall critical inquiry into what is still a cherished, core belief in Reaganomics — and perhaps to avoid having to take some significant measure of responsibility for this “Dire Moment.”
But, the development of morals and ideas is not a free-floating cultural phenomenon. It is tied to real circumstances. In history, where morals have severely decayed, most of those circumstances involve elites on avaricious rampages that trample the lives of ordinary people.
And, as Schmidt makes very clear in this case, an unsettling and increasingly dangerous cohort of American elites have become corrupt and appear to believe they will not and/or cannot be held accountable for manifest moral, ethical, and legal transgressions.
Our Nation was Founded and Designed to be Better than This!
After a Civil War and economic reform era, two world wars and a renewed focus on minority/civil/women’s’ rights movement, we were on a decent track as a nation towards being better. Then it was all shut down and redirected back onto the exploitative fast track. And here we are, now fighting the morally depraved Trump and his legions of resentful, revengeful followers — and power-hungry enablers.
Biden and the Dem Party gets much of this, in no small part because we have been here before. As Franklin D. Roosevelt once warned,
“If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.”
The working/middle class, along with a seemingly permanent “underclass,” has been exploited, abused, disrespected, left behind for decades and more. Fascism is growing in strength in our land.
It’s Going to Take More than a Village
The Democratic Party and our leaders also contributed much to the triumph of Reaganism and the cause of Neo-Liberal globalism. Many Democrats get this. This is one reason that Biden and the Party at the highest levels put an enormous effort into passing into law huge investments in “Heartland” projects, jobs, and a sustainable future.
These initiatives are a strong start for getting back on track and out of this “Dire Moment.” But there is so much more to be done; and only a broad, courageous, and sustainable coalition of Americans can do it. To that end, it will matter a great deal to what ends we are to be joined in this struggle.
“Normie” Republicans, Democrats, and (small-d) democrats must come together for serious and ongoing conversations around an agenda that can make us, as a nation, better than this. Up to this moment, we are all still very segregated into our vestigial partisan and identity villages. It’s time to think and act bigger and better. It’s time to think and act for country and nation.
The word “Democracy” does not appear in the Constitution. But, ours is the first nation established for and dedicated to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — to government “of, by, and for the people,”
The democratic idea took hold based on these extraordinary precepts. We must now do every extraordinary thing we can to hold onto this revolutionary idea.
On the other hand, Schmidt doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall . . . 😉
This is powerful stuff. Well done Jon!
Jon, I saw your comment on Schmidt’s substack and had to subscribe. I think you are so right. Very well said. I’m so tired of Republicans who say, “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative.” ...which means they think the R’s have the better grip on finances/financial responsibility in spite of the fact that Democrats clean up their mess time and time again. They do think Reagan was amazing! Never mind that the safety net ripped to shreds and patients with mental illness were left to their own ill devices. And that “trickle down” never trickled down. I appreciate you calling out the overlooked segments of society. Thank you. And I do feel more optimistic than Steve. He is often right but I think people are waking up now, at least I sincerely hope so. Do you follow Simon Rosenberg and/or Michael Moore? They help me stay positive, which I have needed several doses of since 2016.