This is like part three of our response to Ross Douthat’s article sympathizing with the notion that neither side deserves our votes. Or maybe it’s something of a tangent, and we need to try for Part 3 again later. In Part 2 of “To Ross Douthat” we had gotten to:

5. Most critically, Douthat’s article ignores the distinction between policy disagreements and political evil, while also failing to account for the reality that the most important job of the electorate is not to decide the partisan direction of the nation but to serve as a final check on corruption madness and evil in their shared democratic republic.

I don’t know. I’m tired and disappointed. Even if I could somehow get Ross Douthat to see that what Donald Trump and his GOP are currently chasing is political evil and that the only acceptable response here and now is for We the People to speak with a clear voice and tell Trump he’s no longer welcome in politics and to tell the GOP they need to rethink how they want to pursue power if they expect us to ever give them power — even if I could get him to feel this moment with the gut-wrenching clarity that I think I perceive it; still I’ve not reached enough people, still I wander in the margins, still I live and die in largely academic exercises.

It is not a hatred of Trump that I feel. Donald Trump is a broken soul who does not understand either the beauty or even the practical usefulness of representative democracy. He is an unstable fool who worked against democratic norms, rules, and institutions in his first administration and capped off that administration with an attempt to undermine a presidential election. [maybe link here to the overview of Trump’s attacks on democracy in his first term and also I don’t know, maybe the Jan 6 report]

{From here until the next bracket, we go over stuff that I think we’ve covered already in this series

In these attempts his worst, most anti-democratic, instincts were effectively counterbalanced by the courts and by members of the bureaucracy, members of his own administration, and Republican officials in state governments. But rather than repudiate this bad actor, the Republican Party has spent the last four years sidelining and silencing those within their ranks who spoke out against him and elevating those who support Donald Trump’s lies — or who at least sanitize the lies by echoing specious arguments for why we should all doubt the results of the 2020 election, and acting as if these kind of procedural concerns underlie Donald Trump’s baldfaced lying (as if Donald Trump’s ravings about stolen elections were actually a complicated constitutional argument!!).

And as Donald Trump has learned what kind of politicians to keep out of his future administration (the kind who, like that crazy liberal William Barr, believe that using conspiracy theories as an excuse to overturn a fairly lost election is a step or two too far); the Republican Party has obliged Trump by preferring loyalty to Trump over loyalty to democratic norms (old fashioned norms, like, for example, not using lies about a stolen election as a fundamental argument for your reelection); and Republican think tanks have obliged Trump by drawing up plans to replace the federal bureaucracy with political appointees, as well as rosters to fill political positions with people whose most fundamental “competency” is loyalty to the president (and, thanks to their planned removal of the anti-corruption rules currently separating the professional bureaucracy from political considerations, there will be many less bureaucratic positions and many more political positions in the executive branch organizations like the Heritage Foundation envision).

Donald Trump has distance himself from these think tanks, but what is going to keep him from following their basic program? Trump already enacted the rule changes required to replace the professional bureaucracy with Yes-people (at the end of his last term — too late for the changes to go into effect; they would’ve, but he lost the election); and Trump already tried to elevate Jeffrey Clark to acting attorney general of the DOJ because Clark was the only person in the DOJ Trump could find willing to send a letter to the Georgia legislature falsely claiming that the DOJ found evidence of widespread fraud in the Georgia 2020 presidential election votes (he backed down when the DOJ leadership said they would resign en masse if he went forward with the plan); and then there’s the way Kash Patel rose through the ranks with little to qualify him besides a willingness to follow Trump off any moral cliff (please find a link for this one — maybe the Atlantic article).

Furthermore, Donald Trump and likely members of his administration (like, for example, Kash Patel) have promised to use the power of the state to punish political foes and those in the media who have spoken out against him.

Maybe we should stop cutting here}

{Maybe we should also cut out the next two paragraphs, but I like the counterpoint between Ross’s master BSer line (attributed to Trump’s less coup-oriented supporters), and my pointing out that what Trump is a master at is abuse.}

Donald Trump is not a master BSer so much as he is a master abuser. When he threatens to stay in power for term after term, or to use the DOJ to punish his political rivals, or to silence those media voices who have spoken out against him; Donald Trump he is sending out feelers and preparing both his supporters and the rest of the country for more abuse. People can get used to anything; this is the fundamental insight of the successful abuser. And people can over time get used to the idea of jubilantly trading democracy for the fearless leader — or at least used to the idea that resistance is futile and will only hurt you and your loved ones.

Anyway, believe my psychological read of the situation or not: It remains in any case clear that Donald Trump has behaved and continues to behave in ways that no democratic republic should tolerate, and that rather than remove him from power, the GOP establishment is submitting to the will of this anti-democratic and mentally unstable old fool.

It is not hatred I feel for Donald Trump. I do fear him because I think our functioning democratic republic is a beautiful human achievement and a shame to lose; and of course, I mean, I guess, strictly speaking: I’ve spoken out and so must become — if circumstances allow Trump to go full Putin — an enemy of the state. Not because I have done things to harm the state, but because in an autocracy the leader is the state, rather than — as in a functioning democratic republic — an employee and servant of the people. But I do not hate this broken soul who’s won more power than he merits or can handle.

Maybe Donald Trump can be reached in this life. Surely Mike Johnson can be reached. But probably not without giving them and their fellow post-democracy GOPers a cool-out time here and now, where Trump is desperate to win at all costs, and has more than hinted that he will go full dictator if he can; while his GOP has watched and has basically shrugged and said, “Okay, sure, we could give that a try. Let’s go team!”

The Founders’ religion is a type of shared Something Deeperism. It is a philosophy more than a religion. But it is a philosophy that accepts the basic spiritual premise that all people have a spiritual core and with it indelible rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that governments should therefore be constructed in ways that prioritize the preservation of those fundamental, inborn, spirit-endowed human rights.

Something Deeperism is the basic worldview that human beings can and should relate meaningfully to the Truth, but that the Truth is wider and deeper than human ideas and feelings, which implies that — since human ideas and feelings are core aspects of human understanding, speech and action — humans can only relate in a poetic, pointing-towards manner to the Truth (rather than in a literal, definitive, 1:1 kind of a way). Indeed, a great deal of human evil springs from equating one’s inner sense of “Truth” and “Goodness” and “Love” (whatever one calls this inner orientation towards the Absolute [some say “Absolutely Infinite Substance”; some say “No Substance!”; but all have the same inner sense because all humans are, from the spiritual point of view, essentially the same]) with one’s own ideas and feelings.

Something Deeperism recognizes both that (1) we need to relate our ideas and feelings meaningfully to the Love that chooses everyone (to the degree we don’t, our ideas and feelings mean nothing to us or anyone) and (2) our ideas and feelings can never perfectly capture that Love, and so we must constantly work to better and better organize our thinking, feeling, and acting around the Love that chooses everyone — a practice that requires constant self-observation, -critique, and -adjustment; but that is aided by the universal values (aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, and joyfully-sharing: we also cannot make sense to ourselves to the degree we abandon these inner guidelines) and by the universal spiritual practices (prayer, meditation, reflection, fellowship, and most of all practicing awareness, humility, compassion, and the joyous spiritual Love that knows everyone in everyone).

Shared Something Deeperism (i.e. political Something Deeperism) is concerned with preserving everyone’s ability to grow in individual wisdom, and the group’s ability to share meaning, and with that meaning, to meaningfully share the rights, responsibilities, and privileges of a free people who together act as a final check on madness, corruption, and evil in government; while also together growing their shared national conversation and their shared government. Shared Something Deeperism was designed by a citizen in a functioning democratic republic to highlight and make use of the fact that we already all share enough meaning to be able to meaningfully share our government. No one’s worldview makes sense to anyone except to the degree that it helps them abide by the universal values and grow in the eternal infinite Love that knows everyone in everyone, that chooses everyone, that animates Jesus’s response to the question of what’s the most important commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and your neighbor has yourself.

Shared Something Deeperism is the Founder’s religion of a spiritual foundation that people of different faiths attest to and that proves that our shared spiritual moorings are deeper than our differences in religious dogma and politics.

But how to forward in this moment? It isn’t good to have people trying to assassinate our politicians. But remains true that only an upside down reality can pretend that it is an acceptable and viable option for a free people to freely choose Donald Trump in 2024. If we have a role in this government, then it is most fundamentally to serve as the referees in the political game, and to step in and disqualify those who are trying to cheat us all out of a fair game. And Donald Trump and his GOP have left We the People with no choice but to bench them. If we can find a shared voice here, perhaps we can rediscover some of our shared philosophy and shared spirituality. If not, maybe Trump succeeds in going full Putin, and soon enough it is actually dangerous to speak out against the government and to demand change.

It isn’t good that now two people in a relatively short span have attempted to assassinate Donald Trump. But it isn’t good to vote for him either. How can we see clearly here and now? What is the confusion of the conspiracy theory and the partisan fog?

I remember once at a lunch table, everyone pitying me for not knowing that the Illuminati actually run everything in the world. And I thought: Here we are, with a real political crisis and a real credible threat to our shared democracy; and this insane conspiracy theorizing that no one can do anything about because no one can find any shred of its real existence (any tangible piece to get a hold of and through which a change could be effected) — this is the truer, deeper, greater “reality” that my lunch mates are worrying their heads over. WTF??? WTF?????????

But maybe conspiracy theories are preferable to real world problems precisely because there is nothing you can do about them except grouse. Oh, also: I is impossible to rationally demonstrate the reality of a conspiracy theory; so your thought can slide all over the place with no rhyme nor reason: conspiracy theories reward sloppy feeling and thinking because that’s the type of thinking and feeling that sees past all the “hocus hocus” of people trying to feel and think clearly about the matter.

Notes and errata:
To inculcate this shared philosophy and demonstrate that it is compatible with one’s own personal religion.
And to inculcate this shared philosophy and tie it to learning critical thinking, the nuts and bolts of our political system, and other critical details of responsible citizenry.
To divorce this shared spirituality from making gods out of the founders.
To remember that separation of church and state keeps both church and state safe from corruption.
To remember that when Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was, he gave a mystical formulation of God within oneself and God shining through one’s neighbor; and when asked who one’s “neighbor” was, he gave a very concrete example of self-sacrifice for others — regardless of doctrinal, cultural, or et cetera differences.

Author: Pudd N Tane
Editors: AW/BW
Copyright: AMW