Anti-Party

June 5, 2021

Republicans have been very effective at smearing Democrats with claims that Democrats want to defund the police and put us on the road to Socialism. As Karl Marx famously said, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” but I fail to see how the road the Republicans are taking is anything but destructive. They know their claims are based on anecdotal evidence at best and are patently false at worse. The question becomes how do the Democrats fight back.

Fortunately, Democrats don’t have to make up fake arguments. All they have to do is attack Republicans with the truth. Republicans may not want to defund the police, but they certainly don’t want to defend the police either. They rejected the January 6th commission, which would have looked into how an insurrectionist mob attacked police, which lead to the death of at least one police officer. Capitol police are devastated that Republican politicians won’t defend them. A Democratic slogan could be “Don’t defund the police, defend the police.”

Most people have no idea what socialism really is, but I do think most people know what authoritarianism is. Merriam-Webster defines it as “relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people.” Synonyms like despotism and dictatorship come to mind. Trump attempted an authoritarian takeover of the Presidency. Trump and his Republicans are running roughshod over the Constitution in almost every state in the country as they try to rollback access to the ballot box. Rather than expanding voter participation, they seek to limit it under the guise of the “big lie.” They have no intention of being responsible to the people, who did not vote for them. The Democratic slogan could be “All votes matter.”

Sadly, the Republican Party has become the anti-party, the party of antipathy.