Today's GOP: A Study in Hysteria

Some would argue that today's Republican Party resembles the sourthern states on the eve of the Civil War where hysteria and lack of calm reasoning lead to seccession and a disasterous war that left the South in ruins physically and economically.   Then the root of hysteria was defending slavery - don't be duped by the state's rights myth - while today the hysteria stems from (i) evangelicals and Christofascist who see their archane and fear/hate based religous beliefs increasingly rejected by the majority of Americans, especially younger Americans, and (ii) working class whites who fear lost white privilege and view the world as a zero sum game (if someone else improves their lot, someone else has to lose).  This insanity is epitomize by Margorie Taylor Greene - the cretin in chief of Congress - proposing a "national divorce" with America dividing into red states and blue states - never mind that the blue states/federal government fund the red states which are the equivalent of the mythical welfare queens those on the right love to attack and disparage.  Try as they might to dress up the motivations behind their policies as something else, in they devolve down to religous and racial bigotry and extremism.  A column the New York Times looks at the dangerous point American finds itself intoday.  Here are excerpts:

About two weeks ago, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia kicked off a conversation about a “national divorce,” and it hasn’t really stopped. Greene says she doesn’t mean a true national division, but rather an extreme form of federalism, in which red and blue states essentially lived under completely different economic and constitutional structures while maintaining a nominal national union.

The very idea is absurd. It’s incompatible with the Constitution. It’s dangerous. It’s unworkable. It would destroy the economy, dislocate millions of Americans and destabilize the globe. . . . There is only one way to describe an actual American divorce: an unmitigated disaster, for America and the world.

It could also happen. It’s not likely, but it’s possible, and we should take that possibility seriously.

To be clear, it’s not because secession makes sense. As my colleague Jamelle Bouie noted in an eloquent column last month, the very idea that red states or blue states represent ideologically coherent communities is completely wrong. Every red state has bright blue counties or cities, and every blue state has red precincts as well. How do you split up a nation when red and blue are so thoroughly intertwined?

Take my home state, Tennessee, for example. In 2020, Donald Trump won the state by 23 percentage points. Yet Davidson County, home of Nashville, voted for Joe Biden by a 32-point margin, and Shelby County, home of Memphis, voted for Biden by 30 points. Every other county in the state (with the exception of tiny Haywood County) was red.

Does the concept of national divorce allow for a divided Tennessee? Or is the answer simply that the red parts of Tennessee would rule the blue?

But why should we think that reason will win the day? I’m haunted by James McPherson’s account of the prewar period in his seminal work, “Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era.” Describing the South in the run-up to secession and war, he says it was possessed by an “unreasoning fury.” . . . . Southern paranoia was so profound that Texas’ secession declaration even included claims that Northern “emissaries” were distributing “poison” to slaves for the purpose of killing white citizens.

The South separated from the North and started a ruinous and futile war not because of calm deliberation, but rather because of hysteria and fear — including hysteria and fear whipped up by the partisan press.

America’s recent history makes me worry, and if we doubt that concern one need only point back to Jan. 6, 2021, and indulge in a single, simple thought experiment: What if Mike Pence had said yes?

And where are we now? Has the fever passed? Not by a long shot. America is in the grips of a simply staggering amount of partisan animosity. As I wrote in my newsletter last week, overwhelming majorities of Republicans and Democrats believe that their opponents are “hateful,” “racist,” “brainwashed” and “arrogant.” . . . A recent Rasmussen Reports poll found that 34 percent of likely voters (including a plurality of Republicans) think red and blue states need a national divorce.

Animosity is the enemy of American liberty. It is hard to muster the will to defend the rights of people you despise. But it’s also the ultimate enemy of American unity. Hatred and fear are the foundation of “unreasoning fury,” and the fury that divided us once before may well do so again.