Opinion

In Thursday's post, I imagined a world in which conservatives placed equality at the center of their sensibilities. It was fun, though hardly realistic. As one reader said, conservatives never do that. If they did, they'd be liberals. But the goal of the exercise was less practical than imaginative. At the root of the many problems we face are thorny questions difficult to answer. But there's also a failure of imagination.

I don't mean to say we need "attitude adjustments." I mean to say we tend to accept conditions as if they were natural rather than what they are, which is constructed. So today, I want to stretch our imaginations by asking a deceptively simple question. Why does our democratic republic, founded in opposition to monarchy, tolerate billionaires?

Ron Watkins, the guy most QAnon experts believe is one-half of the duo — with his father Jim Watkins — to be the infamous Q of QAnon (He denies it) is now running for Congress. Watkins has relocated to Arizona from Japan, where he was believed by most QAnon researchers to have written the "Q drops" — along with his father — by pretending to be a high-placed D.C. official in the Donald Trump administration. He's planning to run as a Republican against Democratic incumbent Rep. Tom O'Halleran.

Watkins didn't pick Arizona's 1st district out of any real connection to the area, or even the state. The district has become a hot commodity because, after a robust bout of gerrymandering by the GOP-controlled state legislature, it's believed that the congressional seat will likely turn over to a Republican. Subsequently, the race is a magnet for a lot of Republicans with congressional dreams and a better base of donors than the denies-he-is-Q guy.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted 229 to 202, with nine Republicans joining all the Democrats to hold podcaster and former White House adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to testify before the committee investigating the insurrection of January 6th and events leading up to it. The order was sent to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who will evaluate it and will likely put it before a Grand Jury to determine if Bannon should be prosecuted for criminal contempt, a crime which carries a possible fine of $100,000 and a year in jail.

It's not uncommon for congressional committees to threaten contempt of congress when they don't get the cooperation they believe they deserve and the committees even vote to take the case to the floor of the House from time to time. It's usually a sort of game to get the parties to the table to work out an agreement — which they usually do. Or, they will instead file a civil action, where the case slowly wends its way through the courts. And sometimes, the Department of Justice just says no and that's the end of that.

The National Archives is the United States' memory, a repository of artifacts that includes everything from half-forgotten correspondence to the paper trails that document the days of the country's life. The National Archives contains such items as bureaucratic correspondence, patents and captured German records. It holds Eva Braun's diary and photographs of child labor conditions at the turn of the 19th century.

Most of the time, the National Archives goes on with its work with little attention. But right now it is at the center of a political fight about the public's access to the papers of former President Donald Trump.

There is no point in having political power if you don't use it. This is one of the first lessons of realpolitik.

Donald Trump is a political gangster who has learned this lesson well.

Maps are being redrawn all over the country in response to last year's census. Unfortunately, the process currently leaves a lot of room for partisan gerrymandering. It is the first time since the passage of the Voting Rights Act that district maps will be drawn without the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act for many states.

A 2019 Supreme Court case also makes it impossible to bring gerrymander cases to federal courts on the basis of partisanship. Luckily some states have passed redistricting reforms since the last census. Others have divided legislatures where partisan abuse is less likely. But there are states that will attempt to draw maps in blatantly partisan ways, particularly to protect Republican political power.

My mother is a firm believer in Jesus Christ as her personal Lord and Savior. When she receives an unexpected windfall, or a report of good health from her doctor, she says she's been blessed. When things are not going well, it is God testing her faith in Him. Never, absolutely never, does she question decisions by her personal Lord and Savior.

This is the relationship many Americans have with business.

Yesterday, I said the Republican Party isn't conservative in the way it defined the term for 50 years. With exceptions, it meant opposition to "state intervention" in the economy, business, or civil affairs. These days, however, Republican voters want elected officials to use the power of the state to ensure the superiority of white people. You can call that conservative, too. But that's not how the GOP defined it. Until very recently, the party at least paid lip-service to political equality.

What about the Democrats? Well, they are more liberal than they have ever been in my lifetime. But the fact remains the party is very big — on account of Donald Trump chasing away people who really did believe in conservatism as defined for half a century, with privilege for private property, private enterprise and individual liberty. Those voters have to go somewhere, even if they call themselves independents. This is one reason the Democrats are now fighting among themselves.

Congressman Steve Scalise, the #2 Republican in the House of Representatives and the guy who ran for office from Louisiana as "David Duke without the baggage," has announced he's whipping Republican votes to block a criminal contempt referral to the DOJ from the Jan 6 Select Committee against Steve Bannon.

My father's Republican Party is now the modern-day Confederacy, and Republicans' defense of Steve Bannon defying subpoenas this week pretty much proves it. If it keeps moving in the same direction, our American republic may soon be fully transformed into a racist, strongman oligarchy.

The plaster statue of Thomas Jefferson that looms over the New York City Council Chamber will be removed by year's end, following a vote by a city commission Monday. The council did the right thing after a 20-year campaign by its Black, Latino and Asian Caucus. This decision is an opportunity to commission a sculpture that celebrates the Jeffersonian ideals of liberty and democracy without idolizing the slaveholder himself.

Throughout the meeting to decide the statue's fate, its defenders kept returning to a theme: The statue doesn't honor Jefferson the man, it honors his great ideas, like universal human equality, religious freedom and a democracy free of autocrats, aristocrats and theocrats. As historian Sean Wilentz pointed out in a written statement opposing removal, these ideas are still radical today and continue to inspire liberation movements, including civil rights and feminism.

We need to talk about how and why the Republican Party isn't conservative anymore in the way the Republican Party has long-defined the term. The race for governor in Virginia is illustrative.

Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin gets nary a peep out of crowds when talking about traditional Republican things like tax cuts and deregulation. But audiences roar when he talks about the scourge of "Critical Race Theory" in public schools. This scourge does not exist.