CRABBY

 

It was a small gathering at Joe’s Stone Crab, Miami’s famed eatery. Some of my male friends and I were there to prematurely celebrate my birthday. It was more than a week before the actual event… but I was West Coast bound for the holidays and so we settled on this arbitrary date by a vote via communal text.

Near the meal’s end, and well into one of the multiple bottles of vino that had been served, a mischievous pal of mine said something to the effect of “since it is Barney’s birthday, we should talk a little politics.”

I was heavily outnumbered. Save for one other of this group, I was the only Democrat at the table. It quickly got ugly, and I take most of the blame for that. It was the old different universes thing. They pretty much watch Fox; I mostly depend on MSNBC.

“At least my source hasn’t lost three quarters of a billion dollars in a lawsuit for lying to its viewers.” That was my opener. It just may be the mildest thing I said. Voices were raised. It all got overly heated, very quickly.

We made amends, after a time. I think we all knew how nasty it was… even if for only a relatively brief period. I owe some apologies, but I am not so sure that they really will be more than just explanations, and/or clarifications, rather than atonement.

At this moment of reflection, my mind circles back to a time where there was a place that led the world in the arts and sciences, a land of the best educated, the most sophisticated of citizens on planet Earth. In addition to all else, that country’s premier city was even universally acknowledged as the film capital of the world.

Until recently, I have always wondered how 44% of that population decided to have Adolph Hitler lead their nation into the future. Yet, in 1933, that is what the German people did. Flash forward 90 years to 2023, and it seems to me to be so clear, so possible, that my friends at that table… along with other MAGA men and women … will make a similar choice in the very near future.

Other MAGA men? The most outspoken of my friends says he is not enamored of Trump… but as a Biden-denier… that is who he will vote for if Trump is the Republican nominee. If? How can Trump not be the nominee? I believe my friend fails to see this is not old-line Republican versus Democrat. Not simply liberal versus conservative. No. Not any longer.

Even as a life-long Democrat, I supported Earl Warren, Jacob Javits, John Rockefeller… even once voted for Pete Wilson in a self-serving California moment… and seriously considered the candidacy of John McCain. That Republican party of solid conservative thought hardly exists any longer.

I get that Trump is good television. And I understand how important that is to Americans on both the left and the right. But January 6 was also interesting TV. Did FOX play a different version of that insurrection… or not play it at all?

Two of the staunchest of my luncheon adversaries have new Rolls Royces and live in one of the richest zip codes in North America. Their stock portfolios have never been higher. They could not be doing better than they are doing right now under President Joe Biden. But to hear them tell it, our economy is failing, “Biden is a crook,” can do nothing right, and he is leading us all down some socialist path.

Somehow they think Trump… who is about to lose his right to do business in the State of New York for proven fraud, is not a crook. That the man who downplayed the CORONA virus pandemic to the point of costing additional deaths in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and who so weakened NATO so as to have Putin believe he could annex Ukraine with impunity, …  somehow, he is a better choice.

I ask them about Trump’s increasing the deficit more than any President in history, his anti-NATO stance that, as the first US President to ever seek to withdraw from NATO, has all of Europe concerned, his (at the very least) mishandling of classified documents along with his open defiance of FBI subpoenas. And what about Trump’s push for deregulation which accounted for a lack of adherence to safety standards by the train industry and others, accounting for death and destruction in Missouri, and Ohio and how many other industries and places? I asked about all of that, plus their party’s positions on the proliferation of automatic weapons, the rigidity regarding a woman’s right to choose, the banning of books, and all the anti-gay/anti-trans rhetoric.

I deliberately did not mention the QAnon fringe, or the flat-earthers who proliferate the right. I did not even talk about the insurrection of January 6, but only because I think they would deny the latter and counter QAnon with Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and Squad, as if that were not a false equivalency.

They confronted my ill-temper by reminding me that they are fair-minded, decent people who have worked hard for their incredible success and who treat their employees with dignity and good pay and, y’know, they are right. They are all those things… and more.

But, when November 2024 comes around, make no mistake, they will be right there in the same voting booth with QAnon, The Oath Keepers, The Proud Boys, the white supremacists (of which there are more than 150 distinct organizations), and, of course, the Biden-deniers.

And I know, even if they will not admit it, that their 44% just might well be enough so that what happened in Germany all those years ago could well happen here. Adolph, I forgot to mention while savoring Stone Crabs, was also good in front of a crowd. Sometimes that is all it takes.

 

Barney Rosenzweig