Shouldn’t we all just try and get along?
Hell, no.
In the wake of the fractious, scrappy first US presidential debate, critics both foreign and domestic have poured scorn on the greatest democracy on earth. They have seen in the chaos of Trump’s boorish interruptions, Biden’s dyspeptic asides and the moderator’s despair, the stress fractures of a system about to collapse.
I submit that they are wrong. Socks with sandals, fat men in budgie smugglers, level wrong.
Passionate, even ferocious disagreement is the lifeblood of any free political system. If this debate was more divisive and aggressive than usual it only reflects how aggressively divided America is at present.
Just look at the streets.
The real danger to democracy lies in the elite’s insistence on ‘consensus’ at all costs; forcing a lid on to political frustrations that will only boil over in the future in violent and truly establishment-rocking ways.
The Don, currently hunkering down in quarantine with his good lady wife (first the COVID test, now the marriage test), was certainly not showing any signs of COVID-lethargy as he heckled Biden about everything from his love of lockdowns to his corrupt son. It was hardly an edifying sight to see the overbearing, egomaniac Trump in full strut but neither was it exactly helpful to see the leader of the western world get called a “clown” and told to “shut up, man” by Biden. Even so, their most combative moments did come over differences that were substantive. When Trump was asked the ‘when did you stop beating your wife’ question about whether he would denounce white supremacists, the two got into a slanging match about extremist ideologies of both left and right. Biden’s insistence that ANTIFA (from ‘anti-fascist’) was an “idea not an organization” but that “the Proud Boys” were a group that the President should bother denouncing, was telling. What was missing from the exchange was any mention of Black Lives Matter.
ANTIFA may be a shadowy, loose collection of sad 35-year-old PhD students play-acting at anarchism, but BLM which shares many of their aims is a well-funded group with an explicitly racialist ideology having many sympathisers in the Democratic Party and the media. The ‘Proud Boys’ which began as a joke men’s club (its initiation ceremony involves a prospective member being punched by the group until able to name five breakfast cereals) is, by contrast to both groups, tiny and non-racist (its current chairman is Enrique Tarrio, a Latino). They are “Western chauvinists” and pro-Trump, which has seen them involved in political violence with left-wing groups although whether as instigators or victims is a matter of dispute (their founder, Gavin McInnes, is currently suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for designating them a ‘Hate Group’).
Whatever can be said about the ‘Proud Boys’ (they do seem to be spoiling for a fight) they are not radicals – they are defending an elected president, and the Western cultural heritage.
Acrimonious public debate and vigorous protest in the streets need not be feared if the institutions of law and government are solid and universally accepted. It’s not Trump (despite his bluster about voter fraud) nor the Proud Boys’ shenanigans but BLM and the loonier moments of the Democrat policy program (abolish the Electoral College, stack the S.C.O.T.U.S) that endanger this most.
Locally, the value of forceful debate was made clear in the second encounter between Ardern and Collins. The first had been a nice soporific – It had me snoring on the sofa loud enough to wake the cat at 7.30 pm. Issue after issue failed to provide combustible material for a political fire-fight. In the second we got several conflagrations – about paying back the wage subsidy, RMA reforms and taxing the crap out of farmers. How I punched the air when Ardern asked Collins for her ‘plan for climate change’ and got the patronizing reply “What for, dear?” After months of St Jacinda addressing us all in similar tones, telling mature adults to “be kind”, it was just deserts and a joy to behold.
So too was her line about Phil Twyford being “my asset but her (Ardern’s) liability”. Sharp, brutal and just what is needed when choosing who of these two women has the (metaphorical) cojones to lead us. Speaking after the debate, Collins seemed to understand the value of a rigorous non-consensual exchange of opinions more than her opponent, declaring it “robust and a win for politics”.
This shouldn’t surprise. It seems to be the Left who are obsessed with consensus and appalled by messy disagreement. Just look at their approach to freedom of speech.
And the further left you go, the worse it gets. Post the US debate, Chinese State media rep Hu Xijin gloated about the “chaos at the top of US politics” and the “loss of the advantages of the U.S political system.” Au contraire my corona virus-dealing friend. The advantage of the U.S political system is precisely that it allows for ‘chaos’ – the ‘chaos’ of free human beings contesting ideas. Baked into the American constitution, and our own Westminster system of government, is the adversarial approach that questions, draws and quarters, all matters of public policy. It’s messy and slow and often rewards some petty, nasty characters (many successful politicians) but it prevents (usually) the kind of giant cock-up that launched COVID on the world. So go back to eating your bat-and-ant-eater-soup Mr Xijin, before Trump parachutes a bunch of Proud Boys into Beijing to sort you out. We’ll see you in fifty years or so when you finally work out which system really has the ‘advantage’.
But we mustn’t be too complacent, considering New Zealand’s own recent side-lining of the contrary and celebration of conformity due to COVID fear-mongering. Our acceptance of big government measures and the absence of any real debate about the wisdom of lockdowns had this liberty lover worried. Let’s hope (fingers and toes crossed) a National/Act government after October will be more respectful of freedom and more tolerant of ‘messy’ democracy than the present.
As one of their supporters, this would make me a ‘proud boy’ indeed.
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