Republicans Are Trying to Distract You And It Makes You Wonder Why

Anyone who has watched a major sporting event (go Liberty!), a national broadcast, or live television in a state with a competitive Senate race has seen an ad attacking trans Americans for…existing. Or maybe the message has been directionless fearmongering about immigration. Or, for the extremely targeted, there’s been some bizarre and exhausting combination of anti-trans immigrant rhetoric that Trump paints to be one of the biggest issues facing America. It’s a closing argument built on fear, anger, and hate — because Republicans can’t talk about the issues.

As inflation cools, prices stabilize, and wages rise, the economy is going too well to make as much noise about it. The House GOP has little to recommend itself after two years of unmitigated nonsense and perpetual embarrassment that started with taking forever to select a Speaker and ended after a month of chaos to choose his ineffective replacement. And abortion? Despite being a major animating issue this election and on the ballot in 10 states, the less Republicans talk about reproductive rights, the better their chances get. So with very little substance to talk about, the GOP has delivered spectacle instead.

Bombast, distortion, noise, distraction: Republican officials have relied on flooding the zone with absurdity so that we don’t notice how thin their offerings are. To do this, candidates have summoned up the specter of threats that don’t exist to incite fears that are irrational in hopes that overloading our capacity for reason will result in easy votes.

In the GOP universe, teachers aren’t trained professionals trying to help children reach their full potential; they’re part of a radical cabal providing gender-affirming surgeries in classrooms. Immigrants aren’t hardworking, dedicated people seeking a better life or fleeing dangerous circumstances; they’re a predatory purge of the worst institutions — prisons, psychiatric asylums — foisted on a vulnerable and unprepared United States. Democrats aren’t the reasonable political opposition with different answers to shared problems; they’re intent upon the demolition of the American way of life as we know it.

Not only does this rhetoric and framing ratchet up the anger, the fear, the hatred, and the danger to everyone targeted by it, but it gives voters only myths to worry rather than problems to fix. There have always been and will always be trans people, and the answer is not to try to bully, suppress, or deny children who are finding themselves, but to offer them love, support, and safety.

Immigration has been the superpower of the American economy for the entire time our country has existed — fueling the Industrial Revolution, building the infrastructure we rely on, aiding in our scientific breakthroughs and technological innovation, supporting the basic agricultural and construction industries that keep everything else functioning — and we deserve a system that can balance the Americans who are already here with the Americans who are yet to be. And even as the GOP is led by someone who wants to criminalize dissent and punish political enemies, most of us know that the soul of democracy is the right to peacefully disagree.

Underneath all of the ranting and raving of the Republican Party is a scared, broken institution that can’t offer any serious answers to the real and tangible challenges of our time. We are beset by worsening climate disasters, water shortages, supply chain disruptions, and widespread pollution, but Republicans have nothing to say about climate change or the energy transition. Reading skills are on the decline and critical thinking is all but extinct, but Republicans only want to talk about schools insofar as controlling children and inspecting their genitalia. For decades, the costs of goods and services for everything from food to rent to education have massively outstripped wage growth until the Biden Administration, but Republicans are silent on how they’re going to keep the trends in the right direction.

These are the problems that are truly affecting regular voters this election, and only one of the two major parties is offering anything resembling a solution. Every ad that focuses on isolating and attacking trans people, or marginalizing immigrants, or demonizing Democrats is cover for a real issue that Republicans don’t want to address. The GOP has decided that the only answer they need to give the electorate is fear. But as one of our great leaders reminded us in a moment of true crisis: The only thing the American people ever have to fear is fear itself.