Nihilism Enters, Stage Right
An essential part of our governing structure is in the hands of a minority that doesn't believe in governing
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From Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary:
nihilism (noun)
a : A viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless. Nihilism is a condition in which all ultimate values lose their value.
b : A doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths
A doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility.
The spectacle of the newly-elected majority in the House of Representatives needing 15 roll-call votes to give Congressman Kevin McCarthy what he long sought, the Speakership of the House, is an example of a systemic flaw in our constitutional order, namely that a determined minority can accrue power by frustrating the majority, even if it’s of their own party. McCarthy’s ambition and political cowardice made him easy pickings for the anti-government cadre on the Resentful Right. He was a willing hostage, apparently eager to pay any ransom. In a column in The Atlantic, David Frum described the 20-member minority that denied McCarthy the Speaker’s gavel 14 times as “hostage-takers whose chief demand is to keep holding their hostage forever”. McCarthy’s solution, Frum pointed out was “handing himself over as a hostage forever”, with the result that…
…A speaker of the House who does not speak for a majority of the House is a waste of time and space. He speaks for nobody, he acts for nobody, and there’s no point in negotiating with him.
The ransom McCarthy agreed to was mostly changes to the House rules. Every two years, each new Congress “organizes” itself for its term by enacting the rules under which it will function. The extremists in the minority pushed for changes that weakened the power of the Speaker, opening the way for them to enact legislation to limit spending and reduce the size of the Federal government. They also were able to wrangle guaranteed committee assignments and chairmanships for some of their Freedom Caucus colleagues. The New York Times summarized the rule changes this way:
The set of new rules Republicans pushed through the House on Monday make it easier to remove their own speaker, establish new investigatory committees, and make it harder to raise taxes or spend federal money, and could potentially slow ethics investigations.
With their new rules in place, the House Republicans have embarked on an anti-government governing program. Political reality indicates that most of their proposed bills are being introduced for solely for messaging purposes, and likely will die in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Examples are the two anti-abortion bills passed last week on a party-line vote (one condemning violence against facilities, groups, and churches opposed to abortions, and the other requiring health practitioners to care for a fetus carried to term after a failed abortion). Ignoring the fact that a majority of the public favors legal abortion in most cases, these bills are performative antics intended to gin up the Republican base, not serious policy initiatives.
The greater threat posed to pragmatic governance lies in the area of fiscal policy. Given their party’s recent history, it is clear that a cadre of House Republicans are hell-bent on hobbling the Federal government, sowing chaos wherever they can. In simple terms, what they failed to achieve with the January 6th insurrection they are now attempting to accomplish using the limited power they have in Congress to disrupt our constitution order. As many scholars of totalitarian movements have noted, authoritarians historically come to power not through violence, but by winning elections and, once in power, working to eviscerate public trust in democratic institutions. (In this century, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Turkey’s Recep Erdogan fit this description.)
Starve the Beast
While shrinking the size of the government has long been the holy grail of American conservatism, conservative politicians traditionally maintained a commitment to governance as essential to both political and social order. The current group of nihilists, conspiracy loons, and ambitious grifters of the extreme Right share none of these committments with their predecessors. In the first few weeks, with a bare majority in the House, they have made it clear they seek to weaken- and perhaps destroy- the fiscal well-being of the United States. The crucial issue just over the horizon is the need to raise the debt ceiling, the artificial limit on how much the Treasury can borrow to pay the bills for expenditures already authorized by Congress. The Republicans are demanding spending cuts in programs such as Social Security and Medicare as the price of approving the increase. Absent an increase, the government would default on its payments, forfeiting its full faith and credit, and potentially setting off a global economic calamity. This possibility is not deterring the nihilists who are already planning to instruct the Treasury on what payments can be made if the limit of borrowing (i.e. issuing bonds) is reached.
To signal the concessions they intend to demand in negotiations with the White House and the Senate, the radicals passed several non-starter bills in their first few weeks. Though President Biden has made it clear he will not negotiate with the House Republicans as a condition of an increase in the debt limit, this political reality has not dampened their lust for chaos. To wit:
As a first order of business, the House passed a bill on a party-line vote to remove from the IRS budget funding that had been included in 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act. These funds were to be used to reform and modernize the government’s tax collector by allowing the IRS to update its outmoded technology and hire 87,000 additional employees to improve service. The agency has been targeted by Republicans for years and its budget and staff have been consistently cut. The irony of this latest move is that it will increase the budget deficit by $114 billion through 2032 according to the Congressional Budget Office. (So much for fiscal propriety: As a matter of historical fact, nearly a quarter of the current Federal debt, a debt that dates back to the ratification of the Constitution, was incurred during the Trump Administration.)
Also on the first day, Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) introduced legislation calling…
…for the elimination of "current income taxes, payroll taxes, and estate and gift taxes," which would be replaced by a national sales tax. It also calls for the elimination of the Internal Revenue Service.
Given the regressive nature of sales taxes, the result would be tax increases for low- and middle-income taxpayers and tax cuts for the wealthy.
As a corollary to these proposals, the Republicans are moving to neuter the Office of Congressional Ethics, the non-partisan, independent federal body charged with conducting ethics investigations of the members of Congress. Given the reports that some members were mentioned as potential targets of investigations into the January 6th insurrection, this has all the hallmarks of some people covering their butts.
In the vernacular, this approach to governance would be described as “the inmates running the asylum”. Their ultimate purpose is to undermine public faith in the federal government, creating the perception of the government’s dysfunction by actively ensuring it is ineffective. They are, to paraphrase the late Heath Ledger’s character The Joker (The Dark Knight, 2008), “agents of chaos”. The circus is rolling into town and we’re about to be subjected to an endless series of committee hearings dedicated to Hunter Biden’s laptop and other nonsense. And while media of all types pretends these antics are somehow important, it is best to keep in mind it is all just gaslighting.
So depressing