It is difficult to judge a jury’s verdict from news reports. There is a vast difference between sitting the court room hearing all the testimony not hearing things that are reported and repeated to the public and coming to a conclusion based upon the fragments in reporting but with all that said to me it looks like they came to the right conclusion, guilty on all counts.

While some of my conservative friends try to dismiss race as any factor in police misconduct and some of my liberal friends seem to see it as the only factor, I try to have what I hope is a more holistic view.

To me there is no doubt that race and racism is a factor, an important one, but far from the only element that contributes to the terrible outcomes in the manner in which our nations police’s its population.

Another vital element is the legal precept of ‘Qualified Immunity’ which shields so many police officers from the consequences of their actions. If actions are free from consequences that there is no incentive to correct future behavior.

The culture of policing in this nation is also a factor in its abuse. Police do not behave as public servants but as an occupying force. The very concept that citizens are referred to as ‘civilians’ reenforces the mindset of an invasive military force. Coupled with the self-segregation and the ‘blue code’ of silence and you have a powerful cocktail for high-handed abuse.

But police culture is a sub-culture of the broader American culture and that is a major contributing factor as well.

American culture is violent. We engaged in violence more often than other western cultures, we celebrate violence in a media, we idolize its practitioners, it is no surprise that American Football is far more popular here than international version, so is it really that surprising that our police forces are also exceptionally violent? The police, for all their self-segregation and isolation remain products of our culture a culture whose dominate myth is the lone man taming a vast wilderness with violence.

There are no easy, fast solutions to our troubles and the road ahead remains difficult.

In Disney +’s first Marvel Cinematic Universe television series WandaVision Wanda Maximoff after a life of trauma and her world shattered by grief explodes with a power she never conceived of having transforming the dying town of Westview New Jersey in her escapist fantasy of reality where life became an endless procession of sitcom episodes. Actual reality intrudes forcing Wanda out of her delusional and her artificial reality.

The series sits as a perfect metaphor for the Republican party’s current madness and sadly we are the imprisoned citizens of Westview forced into another’s delusion of reality, trapped by their fears and inability to face facts that are too painful to admit.

The litany of GOP lies, and delusions is extensive; the January 6th attack and insurrection was the product of Antifa masquerading as Trump supporters, systemic voter fraud stole the election, mask mandates are tyranny, COVID-19 is an inconsequential flu, racism only exits against white people, thoughts and prayers prevent mass shootings, Christianity is oppressed and in danger of vanishing, and many many others. For some these are calculated lies used to seize and maintain power for far too many these are their reality, and it is a reality as valid as Wanda’s sitcom life.

Unlike the residents of the fictional Westview there is no outside force or agency coming to our rescue. We have the reclaim actual reality for ourselves. The GOP must be driven from the lever of power until they have expelled the delusions from their system. This did not begin with Trump and it did not end with his defeat. The long road to sanity’s recovery still is ahead of us.

Between H.R. 1, the fact that the current president had about 7 million votes more than his opponent and still only barely won the contest, and the deeply imbedded partisan in the system there has been a lot of talk about reforms needed to the USA’s election systems but there is another reason to enact reforms fast, to save the Republican Party.

Out system is a two-party system and the sort of ground up redesign to change that is simply not in the cards. Given that we locked into a two-party system it is essential that both parties be sane, viable, organizations fairly representing broad cross-sections of the American electorate. This is not the path we are on.

Our congressional districts having been gerrymandered into local one-party dominance enforces a drive for either party to the extremes. An incompetent, insane person like Marjorie Taylor Greene only has to win their primary to win a seat in government. As more gerrymandering draws more districts into this pattern the real election become the primary where fewer voters and more extreme voters decide the outcome. This was bad enough before 2016 but after Trump’s takeover of the Republican party and its commitment to a dwindling base of support and its adherence to lies and conspiracy theories, this is a design for disaster. As long as the primary process controls the outcome the situation will only get worse.

This is not an argument to kill off ‘conservatism’ however you might define that. This is the way to keep both parties, though the rot is far deeper on the right than on the left, responsive to the general electorate and not their fanatical bases. If we do not reform our election right now, we are headed for one of two futures, either the GOP, more insane and less connected to reality becomes the dominate political force by way of its current anti-democratic attacks on voting and the franchise or the Democratic Party becomes immune to challenge because the GOP has shrunk itself to a base unable to contest national elections completing its transformation into a regional rump party.

Both outcomes are bad for the Union. Our system requires two healthy sane parties and only by election reform can we return to that ideal.

Yesterday, February 17th, 2021, Rush Limbaugh radio/political personality died.

In the mid to late 90s I did listen to his radio program though I could never be called a fan and certainly not a ditto-head, a term for his most devoted followers. During my failed collegiate pursuits, I, for a while, majored in political science and as this blog indicates still have a deep and abiding interest in the political arts, governance, and public policy making at least occasional listening to his program something of interest. It never became a regular experience because even though at the time I was a registered and voting member of the Republican Party Limbaugh did not present reasoned argument from a foundation of logic and solid moral philosophy bur rather engaged in demeaning, cruel, petty, and personal attacks masquerading as humor in place of serious thought. He was not a satirist; he was a bully. Limbaugh’s crude and vicious attitude towards those he perceived as enemies established the moral direction of conservatism and cleared the path for the ascendency of Trump. Today’s ignorant, petty, lying, Republican party devoid of morality or honor is the crop that grew from Limbaugh’s popularity and unchallenged position as the party’s loudest voice. Before he himself went into the grave he first put serious conservatism there leaving behind its idiot and bigoted brother.

There are voices on the right demanding that Limbaugh’s critics restrain their voices and their tone out of respect for the dead. I will not mock or demean him or engaged in petty, puerile, personal attacks not because Limbaugh is deserving of respect but because he is not worth the violation of my manners or principals. Nor will I criticize those who are unleashing their own brands of cruel humor because to demand that this man be treated with a respect he never found for others is hypocrisy that is unmatched. Let him bask in the same respect he showed for his enemies.

He is dead but the wreckage on our political norms from his career lives on.

Among my political readings and podcasts there are two distinctly conservative voices, The Bulwark and The Dispatch. Both are staunchly ‘Never Trumpers’ who did not support and have consistently argued against and fought the Trump takeover of the Republican Party.

The Dispatch includes a number of writers exiled from National Review for their anti-Trump views including David French, Steve Hayes, and Jonah Goldberg. The Bulwark rose from the ashes of The Weekly Standard and includes the likes of Charlie Sykes, Jonathan V. Last, and Bill Kristol.

Among the ‘Never Trumpers’ one common divisor is the ‘Burn it All Down’ camp vs the “Reformers” camp, the former believing that the current GOP and its leaders must be driven from public life before conservatism can be reclaimed and the latter supporting a more limited expulsion of Trump supporters but not of the core GOP elected officers.  The Bulwark, while not uniformly, is pretty much a ‘Burn it All Down’ establishment and The Dispatch are ‘Reformers.’

Perhaps the most significant difference between these two conservative voices is the level of self-reflection they are willing to tolerate. Both camps hate Trump and his enthusiastic cult-like followers and call out the authoritarian bent that led to the Jan 6 2021 attempt to overthrow the election and the incoming legitimate government but there is a difference when it comes to the reason Trump took their party.

The Bulwark team has been much more willing to look much earlier than 2015 and search for what made it possible for a vile, corrupt, bigoted conman to leapfrog to the head of the GOP primary while The Dispatch’s team seem much more willing to label Trump a bolt from the blue, a strange and unique occurrence abetted by media influence, that is unlikely to repeat.

Frankly, I am with The Bulwark on this. Trump did not spring from the GOP fully formed like Athena from Zeus. The voting base of the GOP had been primed, cultivated, and molded for years into the sort of force that would respond to Trump’s brand of cruelty and without recognizing that fact and destroying that foundation there is no salvaging of any movement on the right.