A Broken Congress Is What MAGA Always Wanted

There have been MAGA true believers shitting on the floor of the Congress ever since Jan. 6, 2021. But the right wing’s active desecration of the U.S. government extends far beyond ugly recent events on Capitol Hill, and dates back long before the Trumpist insurrection of two and a half years ago.

In fact, the origins of the attacks on the government date back at least four decades to the Reagan administration, when the former president popularized the idea within his party that government was actually the enemy. His joke that the scariest words one could hear were, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” has metastasized from being a pitch for smaller government into a movement to blow the whole damn thing up.

What happened in the House of Representatives this past week, as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) led the anarcho-moronic wing of the GOP in a successful effort to unseat Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, was a continuation of the MAGA riot Donald Trump incited in an effort to stop the certification of Joe Biden as president.

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The goal was the same: to stop the government from functioning. The rationale was the same: if we can’t have our way, then fuck everyone and everything.

The only difference was that the stench left in the well of the House of Representatives this week was from the overheated, lie-laden rhetoric of a parade of smarmy politicians rather than from the steaming remnants of what the Trump rioters had for breakfast on Jan. 6. (Which, come to think of it, might be a distinction without a difference.)

It might have seemed like chaos to the unschooled observer. But the historic and yet somehow tedious dramedy that played out during the past few days wasn’t just the logical consequence of the GOP’s descent into being a nihilistic mob that stands in opposition to everything and in favor of nothing. It was also the culmination of the destructive tendencies of a long line of GOP leaders—from Newt Gingrich to Tom Delay, from the Tea Partiers to the Freedom Caucus, from Sarah Palin to Lauren Boebert.

In fact, given their true goal of literally bringing down the House, what ended up happening was even better than the government shutdown they had hoped would begin last weekend. That would have likely been a brief interruption of government operations. Now, not only is Congress paralyzed, but it is virtually certain that the next Speaker of the House will be even weaker than McCarthy, the slim GOP majority will be even more fractious, and even less will get done from now until a new Congress is installed in January 2025.

Furthermore, not only did the anti-McCarthy mutiny resonate with the actions of the mouth-breather army of camo-clad crazies that assaulted the Capitol, but it also was not dissimilar to the efforts of the better-dressed right-wing faction that Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society bought to decorate the Supreme Court over the past few years. Just as MAGA legislators have sought to bring Congress to a grinding halt, the law firm of Alito, Thomas, Crow, and Koch have sought to gut “the administrative state” (their euphemism for actions by the executive branch to protect the environment, ensure public health, and otherwise do its job).

The MAGA party even elected a president (and seems intent to do so again) who had no government experience, zero competence, no policies, no values, no interest in governance, and who therefore was predictably going to be a spectacular failure. Why? Because in the twisted minds of the American right, the only good government is a dead government.

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That seems like a crazy formula, especially for a bunch of people so intent on getting government jobs. But there is a certain perverse logic to it. For alienated voters who feel like life hasn’t gone their way and who don’t like the trends they see, lashing out at our system and at those in power is cathartic. More importantly, for the donor class who have done quite well with the system we’ve got and whose main goals are to a.) keep the money they’ve made and b.) make more money—tearing down the government serves their purposes.

The less government, the lower the taxes. And the smaller the government, the fewer the regulatory and enforcement mechanisms there will be to cut into their corporate bottom lines or force them to play by legal rules.

For today’s right, the only thing better than a functioning government is a dysfunctional government, and the best option is no government at all. Which, as it happens, is roughly what you have gotten from the House of Representatives since Republicans took “control” of it following the 2022 elections. (I use the term “control” so loosely that it actually means its own opposite.) It is also roughly what you got from Trump whose only major legislative achievement was, predictably, a tax cut for the rich and who spent the rest of his time trying to tear down the institutions he was entrusted with protecting—including the U.S. Constitution.

As if kneecapping our own government was not sufficient, we should note again that the only thing the MAGA herd actually “won” during the shutdown battle (they love shutdowns so much they have made government shutdowns their signature move since the 1990s) was to block further U.S. aid to Ukraine.

This takes their nihilistic impulses even a step further. Not only do they want to paralyze the U.S. government, but they are actually now taking steps, as Trump did, to strengthen our enemies.

For American citizens, of course, this makes the choice that much clearer. Republicans are anti-government and anti-governance. Democrats believe government can be a force for good, a mechanism to protect and lift up the people. Trump and the MAGA army will stop at nothing to turn the government into nothing.

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Joe Biden has actually focused on governance and produced more legislative accomplishments (prior to the arrival of the current band of nitwits who hold a slim majority in the House) than any other president in six decades.

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but my thinking is if you are anti-government you shouldn’t work in the government. MAGA world has a different idea. And while they have really gone far beyond anything their deity Ronald Reagan may have intended, they seem dedicated to the idea they can go further still. After all, they may make the ethically, morally, intellectually, and sartorially challenged Jim Jordan (a.k.a. The Human Temper Tantrum) the next Speaker of the House and then push to make Trump president again.

Between that and several more decades of a corrupt, strict-deconstructionist-dominated Supreme Court, we could then be sure that not only would the U.S. government get nothing done, but it would do nothing in the worst possible way.