Stressed out, cynical, upset? Thank the GOP
If truth and reason and an abiding commitment to the common good are our guides, America will regain its balance and thrive once more.
A recent poll by the American Psychological Association found that most Americans are stressed out: 87 percent said their mental health has been greatly affected by what has felt like a “constant stream of crises without a break” over the last few years.
A 2019 global Gallup poll found that 55 percent of American adults experienced stress during “a lot of the day,” compared with just 35 percent globally.
Worry and anger are up, too. Why?
Here’s a short list of reasons: ready access to assault weapons resulting in more and more mass murders; a right-wing Republican-packed U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade; women in Republican states potentially forced to carry the child of their rapist; Nazis, white supremacists and other violent right-wing groups marching in our streets with open contempt for law and order; continued assaults on people of color, Jews and AsianAmericans; viral pandemics continuing in part due to vaccine hesitancy; the attempted overthrow of the United States government; lying about and denying the attempted overthrow of the United State government; promoting baseless voter fraud conspiracy theories and rewriting state voting laws to “solve” these conspiracy theories; the rise of the Republican so-called “Christian” nationalist movement; Republican calls for secession from America; an increase in wildfires, floods and drought, and lies about the science behind those wildfires, floods and droughts; the potential end of interracial marriage and marriage equality laws; and a possible right-wing Supreme Court rewriting of electoral college procedures and vote-counting statutes.
What do all these issues have in common? They are all stressinducing, anger-inducing, worryinducing, hope-killing anxieties that have been fostered by Republicans over the past several years.
In the Republican world of radical grievance politics, people with views opposed to theirs are not allowed to amass and benefit from political or economic power, and when they try to live the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights, Republicans turn the tables on them, denying valid election results, changing laws to limit voter participation, overturning decades-old Constitutional principles, physically threatening people who don’t look like or vote like them, and dragging their feet on public policy proposals that would make life better for everyone — instead of just them.
It is this caustic and corrosive style of Republican grievance politics and their unending, paranoid fight against the vitality and promise of our young, diverse America that is at the heart of our nation’s current stress, anger and worry.
Reproductive freedom, common-sense gun reform, global climate change, access to voting, respectful civil discourse, an agreement on basic scientific facts — all of this has been denied us over the past several years by a Republican Party bent on securing and maintaining political power at any cost. High blood pressure and daily despair are their political gifts.
So how do we combat this seemingly unrelenting stress?
To begin with, we must demand that Republicans tell the truth on a variety of issues — including confessing to their own political base that they have been deliberately misleading them. Governing is hard work, and answers to seemingly intractable problems aren’t always popular to discuss or easy to implement. It takes genuine commitment to democratic ideals and a generous desire to work together to set the course for achievement, happiness, and peace of mind.
Some of the recent, national voting results proved revealing. A move in deeply red state Kansas to amend the state constitution to outlaw abortion was defeated by a 3-to-2 margin. However, some right-wing election deniers, bent on overturning centuries of American democracy if they ever make it to Washington, D.C., were also chosen in Republican primaries in Arizona, Missouri and Michigan. Republican voters chose candidates who are lying about supposed 2020 election fraud and are sending them on to contests for U.S. senator, governor, and even a secretary of state position in charge of elections!
Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country, as the saying goes. If truth and reason and an abiding commitment to the common good are our guides, America will regain its balance and thrive once more. However, as the wise jurist Leonard Hand once warned, “A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few.”