Azzi: Mid-term election delights and delusions

Two days after our recent mid-term elections a hangman's noose was discovered at the Obama Presidential Center construction site in Chicago, a reminder, as Illinois Gov. Pritzker tweeted, of "... of the violence and terror inflicted on Black Americans for centuries.” The noose was condemned by the Obama Foundation as a “shameless act of cowardice and hate designed to get attention and divide us.”

I wanted to write a column this week as a reflection on our midterms; thoughts, perhaps short and pithy - and affirmative - expressing delight and some solace that so many Americans not only stepped up and claimed their franchise at polling places around the nation but who also appeared to reject cultish adoration of destructive myths.

Yes, it's comforting to believe that collectively America looked into the abyss, saw the threats to our democracy thrashing about in dark waters, and took a step back from the edge.

We can take some delight in that.

Many can believe, too - if they wish - as the New York Times' David Brooks, in his column "The Fever Is Breaking" argues, that " ... both parties are fundamentally weak. The Democrats are weak because they have become the party of the educated elite. The Republicans are weak because of Trump. The Republican weakness is easier to expunge. If Republicans get rid of Trump, they could become the dominant party in America. If they don’t, they will decline."

Brooks, in a column that doesn't once mention race, abortion, and  Christian Nationalism, seems, like so many other Americans comfortable in their positions of privilege and power, not to recognize that the Republican Party no longer exists.

Today, as social media argues on competing fora: "Trump: Should he or shouldn't he?" few are talking about the donors, dark money, seditionists and insurrectionists, militias, lies, and the untreated wounds and infections that made Donald Trump possible.

Too few are talking about today's unreconstructed heirs of the Anglican white clergy in the 17th century who argued whether enslaved peoples should be baptized. Too few are challenging today's heirs of Know-Nothings, Lost Cause sympathizers, church-bombing KKK members, America-First-ers, and white born-again evangelical protestants who insist to this day upon a theocratic vision of America contrary to our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Yes, it's true that many voters rejected some candidates who believed that schools were being overrun by fuzzy children identifying as cats; rejected candidates who showcased Dinesh D'Souza's film 2,000 Mules as proof that the 2020 election was stolen; rejected candidates who believed that forcing pregnant girls who had been raped by relatives to carry the child to birth would be cathartic for the child.

It's also true that beyond the climate-change, election, and evolution deniers about 20% of Americans embrace some QAnon conspiracy theories, including a deeply-delusional belief that America is controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation.

I know that's true right here in NH because I see it on Facebook postings - and I actually know someone who believes it.

In the online world of blogs, groups, and Facebook I surf I've yet to witness post-election pleas for open hearts and minds, for America to come together, pray, and find common ground. Instead, I see "Trump is my president and Jesus is my Savior" ads and pictures of GOP supporters posing with assault-style weapons as expressions of white virility and fertility.

Today I delight in the electoral victories of a multiracial cohort of Americans including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Abigail Spanberger, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.

Today I celebrate the diversity of Maggie Hassan, Chris Pappas, Mark Kelley, Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro and all the others who stand today in repudiation of David Brooks' delusional assessment that  "... [Trump] ... set the [Republican] party on the path to being a multiracial working-class party."

Hah!

What Brooks seemingly doesn't understand is that a nation that doesn't recognize the truth of its history is condemned, Sisyphus-like, to never fully realize its potential, that the so-called "multiracial working-class party" described is a party of grievance and resentment that wants to disenfranchise people unlike themselves.

Today, alliances between white Christian Nationalists, supremacists, antisemites, Islamophobes and others, often in alignment or agreement with the goals of groups like the 1776 Project, Moms for Liberty, Hillsdale College, and others, appear to be working in concert to overturn America' s commitment to public education, direct public monies to religious schools, and challenge our social compact that all people are created equal.

Across America, school superintendents, school-boards, library trustees, teachers and librarians are being harassed and intimidated by book-burners and fear-mongers grasping their pearls and bewailing so-called “woke leftist” policies like "grooming" of children, support for LGBTQIA+ students and the (non-existent) promotion of Critical Race Theory in public schools; all because they fear that our children will learn an unexpurgated history that includes slavery, genocide, and colonialism.

These are not inconsequential events: In Florida, for example, Moms for Liberty endorsed 12 candidates: nine of them were victorious.

I don't know what this country will look like in a week, in a year, in 2024. I don't know what will be left of democracy, of the American Dream, for our grandchildren, whether there will even be paths for them to tread to safety, happiness, and fulfillment; paths we cannot yet see.

“Education is our only political safety," Horace Mann argued. "Outside of this ark, all is deluge."

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Azzi: Mid-term election delights and delusions