Chaos with Dysfunction and Inequality: What Could Go Wrong?

By JOHN P. GEYMAN M.D.

The start of the 118th Congress, with a small majority of Republican control in the House of Representatives, has been correctly labeled as a clown show on that side of the aisle. It shines a bright light on the lack of policies and inability to govern under a House Speaker beholden through concessions to the extreme elements of the Party in order to be elected and to remain in his position.

As the news media pick up on one distraction after another put forward under the new House rules, it is easy to lose sight of the larger implications of this failure to take governing seriously and its growing threat to our democracy.

Just consider these changes in recent times that indicate how far our country is off its bearings and in need of wider public understanding and action as the 2024 election campaigns start up:

• The Republican party has become fractured, with extreme MAGA types asserting control, leaving bipartisanship in the House of Representatives beyond reach for most issues.

• The Freedom caucus in the House is trying to hold the country hostage over the debt ceiling as they call for a 30% sales tax and elimination of federal income taxes.

• While the GOP pushes for limited government, more than 30 state laws have been enacted to restrict voting, together with laws banning abortion in a number of states.

• Republican opposition to the teaching of critical race theory, which exposes White nationalism and racism in our past that continues today.

• GOP opposition to gun control as the numbers of hate groups and mass shootings increase across the country.

• Decline of the middle class with disproportionate decrease in wages and income.

• The GOP has spread lies and disinformation in social and political discourse, such as Fox News’s shows airing far-right conspiracy theories rather than covering the Jan. 6th congressional public hearings.

These changes should not come as a big surprise when we consider that multiple polls in 2021 found that 50% of Republican voters preferred secession to compromise with a Democratic administration. As the Republican party increasingly divides our country and electorate, it comes at a time when the country is already more divided than it has been for many decades. These examples illustrate the extent of inequality of income that divides our population today:

• CEOs of the largest US corporations made 254 times more than their median employees in 2021.

• Bonuses on Wall Street soared by 1,743% since 1985, which would have corresponded to growth in the federal minimum wage to $61.75 an hour instead of $7.25.

• The median household net worth of White households is about 10 times higher than that of Black households ($171,000 vs. $17,150).

The “trickle down” theory, as advanced by conservatives, is refuted by the above examples, which call into question whether upward mobility that defined the American Dream after the World War II years can still be achieved. They reflect the predictable outcome of the “hands off business” philosophy advanced by President Reagan in the 1980s, which included tax cuts and anti-government ideology. The Republican Party picked up on the defense of corporatism and anti-government philosophy. That has led to deepening division between the two major political parties and growing distrust of government.

These circumstances have led Robert Kuttner, well-known economist and author of the 2022 book, “Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy,” to this conclusion:

“The Republican Party has literally become the party of fear—of domestic terrorism, of hatred, of deceit, of division, and of ending the American experiment in democracy … Our republic cannot function if one of its major parties is an antisystem party bent on destroying democracy.”

Looking at the increasing human costs of increasing income and wealth inequality in the US over the last 40-plus years, Professor Henry Giroux, Professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada, has observed:

“Beneath the massive failure of leadership from the Trump administration lies the long history of concentrated power in the hands of the one percent, shameless corporate welfare, political corruption, the legacy of racial violence, and the merging of money and politics to deny the most vulnerable access to health care, a living wage, worker protection, and strong labor movements capable of challenging corporate power and the cruelty of austerity and right-wing politics that maim, cripple and kill hundreds of thousands, as is evident in the current pandemic.”

In his recent State of the Union address, President Joe Biden spoke of past bipartisan cooperation and his hopes that it can continue. However, the appalling unstatesmanlike, heckling display shown by the extreme right House members during that address shows how unqualified the Republican Party has become as a potential governing majority. The voters in 2024 will remember that.

John Geyman, M.D., is Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, Wash. His latest book is “Are We the United States of America? Can We Hold Together as One Country?” See www.johngeymanmd.org. Email jgeyman@uw.edu.

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2023

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