Recently I wrote a piece complaining about the GOP’s overuse of the term “Orwellian.” Like any good article, it started with a tweet:
Republicans are fixated on a lazy, vapid literary reference. . . . Of course they are. The party of ideas this is not.
The GOP is being led by an actual maniac. In the contest for the party’s presidential nomination, this actual maniac leads his closest competitor by some forty points. Rather than attack the actual maniac for being an actual maniac, the other candidates tend to defend the actual maniac and attack each other. They do this because (a) they are craven opportunists and (b) they see no path to victory, the GOP electorate being what it is—the GOP electorate being overwhelmingly pro-actual maniac—that doesn’t involve the actual maniac miraculously disappearing.
Did I mention that the actual maniac has been indicted four times? Or that two of the indictments involve an attempted coup? Or that one of them, in alleging that the actual maniac destroyed evidence and obstructed justice, has the actual maniac dead to rights? Did I mention the jury verdict holding that the actual maniac is also an actual sexual predator?
Robert Bork once described Bill Clinton as “an emotionally deformed and dangerous president, a sociopath who is unable to resist immediate gratification, able to charm people for whom he cares not at all, a man who puts himself above all other causes and displays unmistakable totalitarian tendencies.” That, as they say, was then! The leaders of today’s GOP bow to an actual maniac, a man who fits Bork’s words to a tee (indeed, much better than Clinton did). And this sour truth—that they’re afraid of a bully—is the last thing on earth they want to talk about. They’d prefer to change the subject. To spew non sequiturs. To attack the criminal justice system. To unleash the weapons-grade whataboutism.
One of the many listless vessels vying for the Republican nomination is Nikki Haley. She emitted a particularly sad bit of evasive pablum, shortly after launching her pointless campaign, that sums up the state of the party as a whole:
Sean Hannity: What specific policy areas would you say part [you from] Donald Trump?
Nikki Haley: What I am saying is I don’t kick sideways. I’m kicking forward. Joe Biden is the President. He’s the one I’m running against. And what I’m saying is you don’t have to be 80 years old to be President. … We need something new. We need a new generation of fighters. … I’m not gonna kick sideways. I don’t have time for that. That’s not my focus. I’m kicking forward. It’s all about Joe Biden. And it’s all about the people in America winning again.
The first rule of the modern GOP is: you do not talk about the actual maniac. You do not stand up to the bully.
Let’s not mince words. The Republican Party is a disgrace. Its rhetoric is whiny, petulant, and hollow. Its character is corrupted and nihilistic. It is spiraling into collective madness. It is racing helplessly toward oblivion.
The anti-anti-Trump types I know consider this sort of talk hysterical. They call it Trump derangement syndrome. To which I say: projection is the sincerest form of Trumpism. Over the last few years, I’ve spent a good deal of time watching, describing, and examining the disintegration of American conservatism. What I’ve been doing, I’d submit, is chronicling Trump derangement syndrome. I’ve been cataloging the attributes of a party that has disfigured itself, discarding one (supposed) principle after another, in the name of placating an actual maniac.1
Forget about Nineteen Eighty-Four. What novel captures the vibe of the contemporary Republican Party?
How about something Southern Gothic. Something cursed. Something dark and absurd. Something that makes you feel crazy, as you read it. How about William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.
Addie Bundren expires—in rural Mississippi, in July. The rain blows on her body. She’s laid in a coffin head to foot. Two holes get drilled in her face. She has asked to be buried in the county seat, but three days pass before her husband and five children depart on the trip. When they come to a neighboring farm, their hosts marvel at the lunacy of their endeavor. (“A woman that’s been dead in a box four days, the best way to respect her is to get her into the ground as quick as you can. But they wouldn’t do it.”)
On they go. The coffin falls in a river. The mules drown. The eldest son (re-)breaks a leg, and the husband, who is very dim, covers it in concrete. (“Why didn’t [your father] carry you to the nearest saw mill and stick your leg in the saw?” a doctor sarcastically remarks.) The husband, who is also very selfish, sells his illegitimate third son’s horse. Yearning to do the right thing, the second son tries to cremate his mother’s rotting corpse by burning down a barn. For this attempt at mercy, the others have him committed.
At length the family reaches town. The fourth child seeks out an abortion; instead she is tricked into having sex in a cellar. The husband’s true goal, it becomes clear, is to obtain a new set of false teeth. It is revealed, in the novel’s last line, that he has already remarried. (“‘Meet Mrs Bundren,’ he says.”)
The story is chaotic and circuitous—the narrative disjointed, the prose jarring, baggy, and confused. The characters are weighed down by cowardice and sin. The journey is futile: everyone is doomed, and no one can do anything about it. The only person with some grip on reality—the second child, Darl—is the one declared insane.
It was “as though,” Darl says at one point, “we had reached the place where the motion of the wasted world accelerates just before the final precipice.”
Yes, exactly.
A sampling:
‘Orwellian’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means, The Bulwark (July 2023). Attributes covered: puerility and victimhood.
If You Believe in Free Speech, the GOP’s “Weaponization” Subcommittee Is Not Your Friend, Techdirt (Jan. 2023) (with Ari Cohn). Puerility and hypocrisy.
The Republican Project to Break Your Email Account, The Bulwark (Dec. 2022). Puerility and ineptitude.
The Right’s Ironic Fixation on Roman Virtues, The Bulwark (Aug. 2022). Moral depravity.
Trump’s Judge-Shopping Flop, The Bulwark (April 2022). Professional malpractice.
Don’t Hang Mike Pence!, American Purpose (Feb. 2022). Violent rhetoric.
Why Is the Republican Party Obsessed with Social Media?, Techdirt (Aug. 2021). Intellectual collapse.