A ratcheting down hypothesis on the end of American democracy

Unhappy parents at a school board meeting

fighting tyranny

"The highlight of the Koch summit in [January of] 2009 was an uninhibited debate about what conservatives should do next in the face of electoral defeat. As the donors and other guests dined [...] they watched a passionate argument unfold that encapsulated the stark choice ahead. . . . . Cornyn was rated the second most conservative republican in the Senate . . . . But he was also, as one former aide put it "very much a constitutionalist" who believed it was occasionally necessary to compromise in politics.

Poised on the other side of the moderator was the South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, a conservative provocateur who defined the outermost antiestablishment fringes of the republican party . . . . Before his election to congress, DeMint had run as advertising agency in South Carolina. He understood how to sell, and what he was pitching that night was an approach to politics that according to historian Sean Wilenz would have been recognizable to DeMint's forebears from the Palmetto state as akin to the radical nullification of federal power advocated in the 1820s by the slavery defender John C. Calhoun.

. . . . Cornyn spoke in favor of the Republican Party fighting its way back to victory by broadening its appeal to a broader swath of voters, including moderates. . . . . the former aide explained . . . . 'He believes in making the party a big tent. You can't win unless you get more votes.'

In contrast, DeMint portrayed compromise as surrender. He had little patience for the slow-moving process of constitutional government. He regarded many of his Senate colleagues as timid and self-serving. The federal government posed such a dire threat to the dynamism of the American economy, in his view, that anything less than all-out war on regulations and spending was a cop-out. . . . . Rather than compromising on their principles and working with the new administration, DeMint argued, Republicans needed to take a firm stand against Obama, waging a campaign of massive resistance and obstruction, regardless of the 2008 election outcome.

As the participants continued to cheer him on, in his folksy southern way, DeMint tore into Cornyn over one issue in particular. He accused Cornyn of turning his back on conservative free-market principles and capitulating to the worst kind of big government spending, with his vote earlier that fall in favor of the Treasury Department's massive bailout of failing banks. . . . . In hopes of staving off economic disaster, Bush's Treasury Department begged Congress to approve the massive $700 billion emergency bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.[1]

Advisers to Obama later acknowledged that he had no idea of what he was up against. He had campaigned as a post-partisan politician who had idealistically taken issue with those who he said "like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states." He insisted, "We are one people," the United States of America. His vision, like his own blended racial and geographic heredity, was one of reconciliation, not division." -- journalist Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, 2017

The New York Times writes about threats to school board members from enraged, often disinformed parents. The article,‘I Don’t Want to Die for It’: School Board Members Face Rising Threats, provides more evidence of how deep and mentally deranged a combination of toxic polarization and endless lies have pushed American society into. The NYT writes: 

Across the country, parents have threatened board members and vandalized their homes.

It was only days after Sami Al-Abdrabbuh was re-elected to the school board in Corvallis, Ore., that the text messages arrived.

The first, he said, was a photograph taken at a shooting range. It showed one of his campaign’s lawn signs — “Re-Elect Sami” — riddled with bullet holes.

The second was a warning from a friend. This one said that one of their neighbors was looking for Mr. Al-Abdrabbuh. The neighbor was threatening to kill him.

Like many school board races this year, the one in May in Corvallis, a left-leaning college town in the northwest corner of the state, was especially contentious, swirling around concerns not only about the coronavirus pandemic but also the teaching of what Mr. Al-Abdrabbuh called the “dark history” of America’s struggle with race.

“I love serving on the school board,” he said. “But I don’t want to die for it.”

Mr. Al-Abdrabbuh is not alone. Since the spring, a steady tide of school board members across the country have nervously come forward with accounts of threats they have received from enraged local parents. At first, the grievances mainly centered on concerns about the way their children were being taught about race and racism. Now, parents are more often infuriated by Covid-19 restrictions like mask mandates in classrooms.

It is an echo of what happened when those faithful to the Tea Party stormed Obamacare town halls across the country more than a decade ago. In recent months, there have been Nazi salutes at school board meetings and emails threatening rape. Obscenities have been hurled — or burned into people’s lawns with weed spray.

While there has not been serious violence yet, there have been a handful of arrests for charges such as assault and disorderly conduct. The National School Boards Association has likened some of these incidents to domestic terrorism, though the group eventually walked back that claim after it triggered a backlash from its state member organizations.

Some protesters who have caused a stir at school board meetings in recent months have defended themselves by saying that they were merely exercising their First Amendment rights and that schools are better when parents are involved, arguments echoed by Republicans in Congress and in statehouse races.

The NYT goes on to point out that last October Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo stating that the Justice Department would respond to “a disturbing spike of harassment, intimidation and threats of violence.” Not surprisingly, the radical right immediately denounced this attempt to defuse the situation and took retaliatory action. Republican attorneys general in 17 states published a memo that described federal monitoring threats against school officials as a threat itself. Local law enforcement should be used, not federal. Thus, one can argue that respect for the rule of law has been politicized and undermined. For tens of millions of Americans, the new norm is that law and order is only for the political opposition, not for their tribe or cult.

A ratchet down hypothesis of the end 

of American democracy, civility, the rule of law, etc. 

During Obama's first administration, the thought occurred that respect for democracy, political and social civility and norms, the rule of law, and other pro-democracy, pro-truth norms were all being attacked and weakened in a process that seemed to work in only one direction, the bad direction. The professional press was under constant attack and heavily discredited, while professional propaganda outlets were on the rise in influence, reach and funding. Now in 2021, it appears that the old restraining, pro-democracy and pro-truth norms have been mostly or completely obliterated for what seems to be about 40-60% of Americans. Some of them are highly motivated and vocal. Most of their trust in government and fellow citizens is gone along with most faith in democratic institutions and truth itself.

The ratchet, or democracy death spiral, works by one side in culture and political war using a well-funded, sophisticated propaganda Leviathan to foment unwarranted, irrational terror, rage, distrust and intolerance. Each successful poison dart, e.g., "the press is the enemy of the people," or smearing the monitoring of threats against school board members as a threat, moves the social-political ratchet mechanism another notch in the bad direction. Society inches closer to democracy-destroying distrust, intolerance, authoritarianism and kleptocracy. From what I can tell, counter measures are mostly ineffective, hence a reasonable perception that this works in mostly or completely only one direction, away from democracy, truth and the rule of law.[2]

The ratchet phenomenon first came to mind after observing what happened to Obama. It became clear over time that the machinery to effect the toxic ratchet had been under construction at least since the 1954 Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision that desegregated public schools. In recent months and after reading some more, it now appears that the anti-democratic ratchet arguably has been in operation in one way or another at least since the 1861-1865 US Civil War. Arguably, the Civil War has not ended, but is still being fought through poison ratchet technology and tactics. That belief is fully in accord with inherently anti-democratic, anti-truth Christian nationalist ideology and morals. Along with special interest money in support of capitalism and profits, aggressive Christian nationalist fundamentalism is one of the top two influencers of the modern Republican Party.

Questions: 

1. Is it a threat for federal officials to monitor threats at school board meetings? What is the difference between federal and local law enforcement in terms of threat perceptions and actual threat to people who want to make threats to school board members? Should threats, including death threats, be made legal?

2. Is the one-way toxic ratchet hypothesis plausible in view of how American politics has played out since the 1950s?

Footnotes: 

1. TARP was not a major cost to taxpayers. ProPublica wrote that in total, the federal government realized a $109B profit as of August 30, 2021. The government continues to collect additional profit over time.

2. It wasn't just Republican rage at the election of Obama, who congressional Republicans "hated—and I mean hated," as John Boehner observed in his book. New social weapons came online, e.g., social media. There was a recognition of the power of social media to effectively spread poison lies, crackpot conspiracy theories, and irrational fear, rage, moral disgust, intolerance and distrust. In addition, there was a recognition among hard core political right that old restraining norms, e.g., 'you are entitled to your opinions, but not your facts', were too much opposed to authoritarian radical right policy goals. The old pro-democracy norms had to go and so did all respect for inconvenient truth, both of which are now gone.