As MAGA pursues an agenda of gaslighting and cruelty, timid responses won’t cut it in 2024

Thousands of Donald Trump supporters storm the United States Capitol building following a “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Timidity won’t cut it in 2024. Neither will playing it safe. When the inmates have taken over the asylum the response cannot be measured and meek. The MAGA Republicans who have made a dysfunctional mess out of state government in Ohio, with petty power grabs and industry-written policies, steamroller through opposition that is measured and meek.

Their federal counterparts, who have surrendered all agency to a twice-impeached felon, fraudster, adjudicated rapist and criminally-indicted defendant in three jurisdictions, pulverize dissent that is tame. The few times somebody — anybody — calls BS on the crazy that passes as governance in Columbus or Washington, people remember why truth, in no uncertain terms, matters.

Recall the Michigan lawmaker whose robust floor speech reverberated throughout the political world a couple years ago. Democratic state Sen. Mallory McMorrow had been targeted by a colleague with an outrageous, baseless accusation in a fundraising email. She fired back against the disgusting Republican smear and called out the GOP’s efforts to “deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues.” 

America paid attention. 

The blistering rebuke of a “straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom” against those who would cruelly scapegoat “people who are different” was a national shot in the arm to many who felt the same way but couldn’t articulate what McMorrow did. Her speech went viral, racking up millions of views across then-Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 

Impassioned reason had broken through the madness. Finally. 

The first-term legislator was unafraid to confront slanderous hurt and hateful attacks head on. “I know that hate will only win if people like me stand by and let it happen,” she said. Truer words were never spoken. If only more Democrats, independents and Republicans untethered to the cult of Trump took heed. But they hesitate. Too often. 

They cede ground to a militant vocal minority bulldozing through norms and shared values instead of fighting fire with fire. In Republican statehouses across the country, including Ohio, the pushback against exponentially escalating attacks against LGBTQ+ people has been mainly limp to nonexistent. The one-off objections from some seems almost obligatory, less a forceful call to action in defense of human autonomy and dignity and more a resigned surrender to inevitability.   

Last week Ohio House Republicans proposed two bills that do nothing to help Ohioans crushed by a lack of affordable housing and rent hikes going through the roof. Nothing to fix the economic distress of millions with mounting bills unable to break even on multiple minimum wage jobs or afford quality day care, reduce food insecurity or feel safe from rampant gun violence. 

The right wing legislative specials serve no expansive constituency but do get a rise out of the MAGA base. Which is the point. Not productivity. The art of legislating — enacting smart policy solutions to produce tangible public outcomes — is all but dead in Ohio. Under gerrymandered Republican supermajorities, fixing real problems has been replaced with fanning MAGA grievances and fueling controversies invented on Fox News. 

Culture war idiocy and special interest giveaways top the GOP agenda. Evidence of the former is House legislation to defund financially-strapped public libraries over subjective content restrictions (i.e., material “harmful to young people”??) and another equally broad (and probably unconstitutional) measure to criminalize public drag performances “to protect our vulnerable youth.” 

Weak or unsustained resistance to the flood of preposterous in state and national politics emboldens corrosive extremism to go even further, to normalize cruelty, to ban more freedoms in the pursuit of happiness that don’t comport with a dystopic theocracy, to purge and disenfranchise voters whenever and for whatever, to work with Big Energy, Big Pharma, Big Oil and Gas and around the will of the people on abortion, legalized weed and gerrymandering. 

Passive opposition allows corrupt operators to ignore laws or court orders they dislike, delegitimize jury verdicts they don’t accept, gaslight for jailed insurrectionists — who beat the hell out of police at the U.S. Capital to storm and defile it — as “political prisoners” and denounce the American criminal justice system for rendering due process to a prominent felon MAGA Republicans will nominate for president after downplaying his coup-plotting schemes and pilfering of classified documents (while obstructing their return) as old news.  

Ohio Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno predictably came out swinging for his felonious führer. He released a digital ad that savaged his Democratic opponent, Sen. Sherrod Brown, for “standing by [President] Biden even as he turns the judicial system into a weapon to interfere in the presidential election.” Moreno blasted the incumbent senator for “refusing to condemn Biden’s politically motivated witch hunt.”  

The Brown campaign had no comment on the ad. The flagrant lies about a New York state case brought against Trump after the U.S. Justice Department declined to pursue it went unrefuted. Reality demanded a forceful rebuttal. The candidate hesitated. 

“I’m not a lawyer or a judge,” Brown remarked later about Trump’s felony conviction, “but I’ve said from the beginning that no one is above the law. Ultimately, this is up to the legal system to sort out and for the American people to decide in November.” That’s not fighting fire with fire. Tyranny must be met head-on with the truth in no uncertain terms. The stakes in 2024 are simply too high for timid.

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