Sleazy and Serious Politics

The Jeffrey Epstein case shows the differences in the Democratic and Republican parties.

When I taught introductory sociology and courses on social problems, and when AIDS was introduced to the world and all we knew at the time were the demographics of the disease, I would discuss with my students the inferences to be drawn from it so as to show how such inferences were made and keep my students up on current events. Haitian men seemed prevalent and were only later revealed to be homosexual because homosexuality was so frowned upon by the Haitian community. It was known, however, that children did not catch AIDS from the others in the family who shared utensils and a common living space, and so the disease was not transmitted by air or touching surfaces. When AIDS were discovered to be a STD, I would discuss what kinds of unions, what form of copulation, might lead to an infection and I did not feel queasy about discussing these matters with my mixed sex undergraduates because this was, after all, a biological matter, no different from discussing Malthus, who said that population increased more quickly than agricultural productivity. 

On the other hand, I did feel embarrassed discussing, some years later,  the stained blue dress Monica Lewinsky kept without cleaning it as evidence of her liaison with Bill Clinton which she revealed to Linda Tripp who told Roger Starr and that got rolling the Clinton impeachment. But I did talk about it as well as Clinton’s insistence that he had not had sex with her because he used that term only when there was mutual satisfaction. It was all so sordid and not befitting people of high political stagture, just as it was unappealing to learn about Gary Hart’s dalliance with Donna Rice, which destroyed his presidential campaign, and the romantic entanglements of FDR, which were hidden, or the unfaithfulness of Martin Luther King, Jr., which J. Edgar Hoover tried to drive King to suicide but to no avail.

And now the nation is confronted with the Jeffrey Epstein case and whether Trump was entangled with that and I also find the whole matter sleezy, not a proper topic of discussion in high politics because it demeans everyone touched by it including the female journalists cloaked with their own respectability but hardened to deal with unpleasant things because of their duties, like policemen or female lawyers. ButI do not want to hear about sich things because however unfortunate are the victims, and that criminal penalties should be assigned, these are not matters of state, issues that turn the nation in one direction or another, such as international relations or tax and welfare policy, which impact vast numbers in the popu;ace. Both Republicans and Democrats violate their vows and people have done so through history, and we make progress for the nation by improving, in general, the condition of women so that none of them need to be exploited. Why care so much about sexual malfeasance in high places?

Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan is my current pin up girl because she wants to take the high road when Democrats confront Republicans. She thinks Democrats can win if they recapture the economic issues; I hope a generation from now she can run for President. She is a centrist Democrat who appeals to Republicans as well. ButI think she is mistaken about the electorate. The economy was doing pretty well. Wages were up and inflation was low even if it did not result in de-inflation to make up for the inflation of the Covid years. That was not the engine for Trump. It was immigration and the deep state and Republicans and what are called low information voters adopted that even though they told opinion polls that economics were the reason for supporting Trump because that was a more respectable reason to offer. They liked the disagreeable man because he was disagreeable: crude and angry, because they wanted a strong man, cynical that leaders could be noble and considered, like Henry Fonda when he played a President. It is hardly comforting that recent polls show that immigration and decimating the bureaucracy are no longer in favor once Trump started doing what he promised to do. They voted for him and there are no reruns for elections, just the next one, but I am not sure Republicans will change their hearts now thatTrump is no longer on the ballot.

Republicans win by doing Republican things and Democrats win when they do Democratic things. Republicans since the end of the Second World War have been plagued by conspiracy theories and more establishment Republicans have had to deal with that. Joseph McCarthy insisted on numerous Communists in government agencies but always changed the figures of how many and shuffled his papers to indicate information he never provided just as MAGA people insist there is a great conspiracy of pedofile bureaucrats without providing information, as if they had lost the ability to distinguish speculation about terrible things with evidence. But while McCarthy was talking about something that was real, the Communist movement in the United States. Which was in fact trivial and honeycombed with FBI agents, the MAGA people are so intellectually impoverished that they cannot think of any greater threat than a pedofilia ring to assign as what is rotting America. They might have focussed instead on the diabolical nature,. let us say, of Hollywood and Broadway. MAGA does vie with elite universities as having subverted America, insisting on more representation for Conservative professors and students, without considering that the brightest prefer to abjure Conservatism because MAGAs insist that politics is a faith that need not be explained , just extolled. Moreover, moderate Republicans also engage in an upward climb against what George W. H. Bush considered “voodoo economics”, the height of which are current MAGAs voting for the biggest deficit in relation to GDP since the Second World War.

The Democratic Party, for its part, has been ever since FDR on a long march to expanded entitlements. Obama was in line with that in thinking he had accomplished only one big thigh in that direction, the Affordable Care Act, and no more than such an increment could be expected in an administration. Sen. Slotkin is in line with other Democrats in saying itis always the economy, stupid. But that is not the truth. Civil liberties, immigration and the Constitution were on the ballot in 2020 and it was right for Harris to pit democracy versus authoritarianism. The fault was not in the message but in the voting public which failed the key issues to be what they were.

Moreover, to our surprise, Trump in his Big Beautiful Bill is out to overcome  incrementalism in the other direction by expelling millions and millions of immigrants, thrashing the bureaucracy, and violating civil and criminal law. Trump may be ignorant but he is still audacious. Why can't he make Canada the fifty-first state? Some Republicans these days who are outspoken Christians condemn the assaults on women by Epstein and his ilk, are willing to accept allowing foodstuffs to be destroyed rather than sent to malnourished  children. They are hypocrites’ they forget the coals in their own eyes. Jesus must weep.

The Jeffrey Epstein case will pass. Despite the Democrats thinking otherwise, the MAGAs will not eat their own. Today, July 22nd, Speaker Johnson closed Congress by going into summer recess so as to avoid a bill to open the Epstein files and the suits to open the files will be bogged down in technicalities, as has happened with past attempts to make Trump responsible for his actions. Just as well. I don’t want the public to make decisions on the basis of sleaze.. Let us get on with more serious politics.