Lawmakers of Intelligence and Kindness Are a Dying Breed

Yesterday I wrote a post in which I praised Connecticut senator Chris Murphy for his terrifically informative and inspiring speech on violence in America.

Given our country’s demand for political demagogues, it’s really remarkable that people like Murphy continue to exist at all on the Senate floor.   For the most part, lawmakers of intelligence and compassion have been replaced with those who get where they are by inflaming our lowest, yet most powerful emotions: fear and hate.

In record numbers, Americans are motivated by ideas like immigrants are replacing white people, Democrats are coming for your guns, big government is taking away our freedoms, our kids are being taught that white people are evil, and so forth.

A few decades ago, the acceptance of crap like this was reserved for states like Alabama; now it’s everywhere.  The Republican nominee in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial election, Doug Mastriano, is an overt racist and Big Lie champion who proudly claims he “makes (Florida governor) Ron DeSantis look like a centrist.”  This is Pennsylvania, Penn’s Woods, birthplace of the United States of America.

Increasingly, American voters are looking to authoritarians to save them from ruin, and, since demand creates its own supply, we are seeing a torrent of Mastrianos rushing onto the political scene.

Once the results of elections are overturned by whoever is strong enough to seize power and democracy is gone, it’s extremely difficult to restore.  If you doubt these words, I invite you to ask the people of Hungary.  These people live in a country surrounded by thriving democracies, but they are led by a far-right-wing authoritarian (pictured) who can no more be removed from power than straw can be spun into gold.

We simply have to hope that what we’re seeing here in the U.S. is a short-term anomaly, and that sanity and rule of law can be restored before it’s too late.