Is It Possible for a Believing Latter-day Saint to Be a Republican? Part 12

 

“Ultra”: Insurrection in America, Then and Now

During the holidays, I’ve been listening to Rachel Maddow’s podcast “Ultra.” If you have not heard of this podcast, you need to look into it. This nine-part series recounts a piece of American history that we have been all too eager to forget. But history does tend to be forgotten, and it also tends to be, if not repeated, at least able to produce echoes down the corridors of time. So it is with this episode of American history.

This story took place in the late 1930s and early 1940s, when Nazi Germany was trying to keep America out of World War II. Nazi agents such as George Viereck had infiltrated Congress through political figures including Senator Ernest Lundeen and Representative Hamilton Fish III, sending pro-Hitler and anti-Semitic propaganda to millions of Americans using Congress’s franking privileges (free postage). Nazi agents also worked through ultra-right organizations, including the America First Committee (notice the echo in the name to today), the largest political pressure organization in the country, and militant ultra-right groups that had concocted a rather impressive plot to violently overthrow the government and replace it with a Nazi-style government.

The story presented in “Ultra” is far too involved to even summarize in a blog post, but throughout the podcast series the parallels to today’s America are just too obvious to ignore. While today’s Republican Party is not colluding with a hostile foreign power like Nazi Germany, it is hard to ignore Trump’s obvious infatuation with Putin and other dictators. (It is hard also to not notice how, even after Putin’s illegal and miscalculated invasion of Ukraine, Trump still refuses to say anything negative about the heartless strongman.) Today’s Republicans are also not averse to supporting insurrection for other reasons—not in collusion with a foreign power but in fear of the wrath of a home-grown wannabe dictator who is willing to do anything, even toss the Constitution, in his self-centered craving for power and adoration.

What I found striking is that these far-right individuals and groups who were working to overthrow the government of the United States in the 1940s did not consider themselves traitors. No, they were patriots. The parallel here to today’s insurrectionists is staggering. Hundreds of Trump’s “patriots” are now facing jail time for their participation in the events of January 6, 2021. So it was in the 1940s also.

In the fifth episode of “Ultra,” Maddow recounts the work of Justice Department prosecutor William Power Maloney, who investigated this grand plot to overthrow the government. He indicted scores of individuals and investigated many members of Congress who were involved with the Nazis . . . until Senator Burton Wheeler, a leader of the America First Committee, whose congressional frank had been used by Nazi spy George Viereck to distribute German propaganda across America. Maloney’s team found evidence of Wheeler’s involvement in the plot, but Wheeler fought back. He went to Attorney General Francis Biddle and threatened to launch an investigation into not just Maloney but the entire Department of Justice.

The echo here shows up in wannabe Speaker of the House Kevin McConnell’s threat to investigate the January 6 Committee. The guilty threaten to turn the tables by investigating those who are trying to hold them responsible for their sedition. In the 1940s, Francis Biddle caved to the pressure and fired William Maloney. Today, I can’t imagine Liz Cheney or Bennie Thompson or Merrick Garland caving to any amount of pressure from Republican threats, so the parallels are limited, but there are definite echoes.

At any rate, “Ultra” is a sobering lesson in what happens when we forget the uglier episodes of our own history. It is a fascinating story, and not just because of what we have experienced in the past few years. It is, however, yet another reason for Latter-day Saints to reconsider their overwhelming support of today’s Republican Party while it is still unrepentant over its involvement in (or merely its silent acceptance of) the devastation wrought by Donald Trump on our republic. Until the GOP returns to a principled conservative party, it does not deserve your vote, at any level of government.

Is It Possible for a Believing Latter-day Saint to Be a Republican? Part 11

 

Distrust of Science and Expertise in General

 

The COVID-19 pandemic not only revealed a growing chasm between the parties on questions of trusting science, but it also accelerated the widening of that chasm. This happened primarily because the Republican Party politicized a public health crisis. When wearing masks to protect others (and self) and getting vaccinated became political signifiers instead of commonsense behaviors, the gap between the two parties in terms of serious illness and unnecessary death became quite stark. In recent months, as immunity has increased generally through mediocre vaccination levels and the prevalence of those who have been infected, COVID deaths and hospitalizations have transitioned from affecting primarily the unvaccinated to the elderly. But for a time, the chances of dying from COVID were far larger if you were Republican.

I’m not sure what lies at the root of the Republican distrust of science. Perhaps it is merely the expected result of less educated Americans gravitating toward the GOP. But why do they lean Republican, especially when other GOP policies penalize them? The answer probably has a lot to do with the conservative echo chamber and the message that is being broadcast through conservative media outlets. Regardless of the cause, though, the results are not in question. They can be and have been measured.

A recent Pew Research Center survey, for instance, showed that 36 percent of respondents who are or lean Republican had no (or not much) trust in scientists as of December 2021. This is up from 27 percent in June 2016 and up from 14 percent in April 2020 (I’m not sure why the percentage dropped almost by half in those four years). By contrast, only 10 percent of respondents who are or lean Democrat have no (or not much) trust in scientists. This number has decreased from 18 percent in June 2016 and increased just slightly from 9 percent in April 2020. The numbers are similar for trust in medical science. So, why the drastic change during the pandemic’s worst months among Republicans? I’m sure it is largely due to the politicizing of a public health crisis. But it probably goes beyond this, as evidenced, for instance, in the difference between the two parties on questions such as climate change.

But again, this growing gap between the parties on questions of science is likely inseparable from the education gap that is also growing. On average, the more education a person has, the more that person tends to move toward liberal stances and causes. I suspect also that the prevalence of conspiracy theories on the right has an effect on Republican distrust of science. Conspiracy theories, by and large, are a refuge for the ignorant who want to appear intelligent. They are the lazy person’s path to pseudo-expertise.

This would be less concerning if Republican leaders were encouraging their constituents to seek out good information and get as much education as possible. But in the Trump years (which the GOP seems still stuck in), ignorance became a point of pride. Republican thought leaders disparaged “experts,” as if knowing something was actually a character flaw. I’m not sure what can be done to change this, but I am concerned about the percentage of Latter-day Saints who have embraced the Republican values, including the embrace of disinformation, regardless of what their religion says about intelligence and in spite of their leaders’ warnings against getting information from questionable sources.

I’m not saying that science is always right. Of course it isn’t. But science is self-correcting. It is always changing its conclusions when better evidence or better analysis comes along. In fact, the heart of the scientific enterprise is to question methods and conclusions. So a trust in science includes, by default, an awareness that science will constantly seek better information and demand rigorous examination of that information. The results of the scientific method cannot be questioned. They are all around us, including, or course, the computer I am writing this blog post on and the device you are reading it on.