Jobs & wages are up, the Chinese spy balloon is down. What a week.

This week a Chinese high altitude espionage balloon floated over Montana. Never mind that the President and our defense and intelligence communities knew about it and took steps both diplomatic and otherwise to deal with the incursion before ultimately shooting it down over the Atlantic Ocean.

Oh no! Stop everything. There’s a balloon over Montana? Get your guns and ammo and prepare to shoot into the sky. And we are at it, impeach the president and shut down the government. Because, oh my, the Chinese are spying! 

So it goes in the GOP.  What will they do when they learn about satellites? Or cyber? Or Russian meddling with… oops never mind. Change the subject. How about CRT? Anybody?

Creator: Brian Branch | Credit: AP Copyright: Brian Branch

The autocrats are always on offense. They never acknowledge a loss because it violates their credal worship of power. And it is all about power. You see it in Ron DeSantis’ determination to strip any privacy from young women who dare to play high school sports. You see it Tennessee where power itself is the reason to strip Nashville of its ability to elect any representatives to the state legislature. You see it in Ohio where the MAGA power simply ignored the state supreme court to impose unconstitutional maps on voters. 

The right celebrates its power in scripted rallies, and in scripted talking points and in scripted FOX TV shows. Orthodoxy, as Ruth Ben Ghiat has taught us, is a requirement of dictators. From Mao’s little Red Book to the endless and thoughtless repetition of the wisdom of Sean Hannity. 

But reality is hard to ignore. The accomplishments of President Biden and the last Congress are making our lives better. More jobs created than at any time in our history. Wages up. Inflation down. Manufacturing resurgent. Infrastructure under construction. No wonder they are going crazy over a balloon. Anything to change the subject. 

Anything to return to the narrative of inescapable power. 

But let’s take heart… there is nothing inescapable about an entitled minority power in America.

Thomas Jefferson, in many ways my least favorite of the founding generation, led movement that destroyed the Federalist Party when it became clear to many that the Federalists sought to consolidate too much power in the hands of too few leaders. A couple of generation later, Abraham Lincoln led us through a civil war to break the power of big cotton, a minority power that enslaved some Americans and sought by other means to subjugate the rest. Jefferson’s fight required limiting the power of government. It was tied to the bill of rights, a set of amendments that restricted what government could do. But the power of big cotton, was not a government power, though it sought to control all governing.  To reign it in, a new way of thinking about our government was required, and for the first time an amendment was passed that gave the government more, not fewer powers. This, of course, was the 13^th amendment which allowed the government to enforce an end to slavery. 

Now once again, a minority power seeks to dictate to the rest of us. They wear lapel pins on the floor of the US House that are designed to look like assault weapons. They oppose any sensible restrictions of these and other weapons that push our society from civil to uncivil. They seek to restrict reproductive choice at all costs. They push to remove from our libraries books that fail their latest orthodoxy tests. They have succeeded in corrupting our politics through a factional control of our highest court, rendering Congress helpless to limit big money in politics, and states helpless to fight radical gerrymandering. Their fertile ground is American discontent, and American division. So they sow both. 

And yet, despite their efforts the last Congress delivered legislative victories that are improving American lives everywhere. The week’s fabulous economic news is not accidental. It is the result of a sound policy and effective government leadership. But those victories came at a cost- because governing is hard work and not always the same as politics. The minority, not concerned about governing, inimical to it in its democratic form, now has control of the people’s house. Never forget, never allow it to be normal that the people’s House is led by members who voted to overturn our election, who said our votes need not be counted. 

Their faction is well funded and rabidly determined. They appeal to base and powerful human emotions: to fear, to tribe, to resentment, and they invoke ancient ideas of power to gather supporters and demoralize opponents. They are the red wave, rolling out from the American heartland to impose order on the rest of us. 

And yet. The Federalists were the party of Washington and Hamilton and Adams. They held power securely before Jefferson out organized them and sent them to the filing cabinet known as history. The power of big cotton was even greater. When they could not get their way, they offered to leave. No harm, you go your way we go ours. What could be more reasonable? 

Except Mr. Lincoln recalled that they were heirs to a declaration that all were created equal. That all were endowed by the maker with rights inalienable. 

It took years to complete Jefferson’s victory. It took years and terrible war to complete Lincoln’s.

Now in our own time we face a power hostile to the majority, determined to rule, and forgetful of the promises made in that declaration and again when we the people promised ourselves to the task of a bringing into the world more perfect union.

Their twisted worldview has captured many good Americans. But many more are fighting back. Their great red wave landed as gentle ripple in the last election. But they continue to organize, to fund, and to divide. 

As I said more than a year ago, it will take several election cycles to defeat this dangerous sect. Hug your family. Take a long walk with your dog. Read a good book. Like Arjuna, leave the field before the battle and clear your head. Then you will see the threat for what it is. But you will also see the strength of our larger cause. 

The great mass of America in its diversity and its determination has no match in the world, let alone among our homegrown detractors. We, too, know how to organize. We, too, can raise funds. We will not be striped of our humanity or lose it watching others be stripped of theirs. That is not who we are. 

We are a people who will strive, as FDR told us, day and night, by peaceful means to improve the lives every American. And to those who hope through coercive means to slow us down, to make us fail, to prove that we are incapable of self-government and so need of a strong man, I promise this: the good people of America will not stand down in the face of your threats but instead will firmly add your sect to history’s filing cabinet.