Becoming an all-encompassing cult

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Sen. Lamar Alexander’s decision to oppose witnesses in President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial seems like the nail in the coffin. Without Alexander’s vote, Democrats have virtually no shot at winning enough support to call vitally important figures like former White House national security adviser John Bolton to the Senate floor to testify about Trump’s threats to withhold military aid from Ukraine.

Alexander’s justification for his vote is remarkable. He argues that there is “no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens” because ‘the House managers have proved this with what they call a “mountain of overwhelming evidence.’” Not only did Alexander admit that Trump was guilty, but he admitted that what Trump did was wrong — he just didn’t think it warranted Trump’s removal from office.

“It was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation,” he says. “But the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.” He thinks, in effect, that a president who attempted to interfere with the integrity of the 2020 election should be allowed to compete in that election without any real punishment for his behavior.

This is an absurd position. It’s an especially absurd position given that Alexander is retiring from the Senate, and thus has nothing to fear from Trump politically. So what is going on? The best explanation I’ve seen comes from Tim Alberta, Politico’s chief political correspondent and a deeply sourced reporter among congressional Republicans. He suggests that Alexander was afraid — not of losing his job, but of threats to his future income and social status:

To put it another way, many Republicans exist in a social world where criticizing Donald Trump is an act of cultural treason. Bucking Trump doesn’t merely risk their congressional seat, but also their ability to find future employment and live comfortably in their communities even after retiring. Alberta describes profound fears of Trump’s “cult,” of “harassment of their families, loss of standing in local communities, [and] estranged relationships.”

I agree with Alberta that, when the stakes are as high as impeachment, this is a form of “weak-ass excuse-making.” And not all Republican officials live in social worlds as Trumpy as the ones described in his thread. But those qualms aside, I think it’s also worth making two additional points about the significance of the phenomenon he’s describing. First, it’s an example of the dangers of what political scientist Lilliana Mason calls “mega-identity” in politics: Partisanship has come to be so closely linked to other parts of people’s identities, like their religion and racial self-identification, that it has become a kind of master stand-in for cultural belonging.

Lamar Alexander’s impeachment vote on witnesses shows how our politics is broken - Vox

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A Republican lawmaker has sparked outrage after she compared the quarantine measures imposed across the US because of coronavirus, to Nazi concentration camps. Heather Scott from Idaho appeared on the 'Jess Fields Show' podcast last week, where the host bemoaned the restrictions that have been put on people who are deemed to not be essential workers by the state governor Brad Little, who is also a Republican. In a very ill-advised statement, Scott dared to compare the regulations, which have been put in place to protect people and prevent the spread of the virus, to the persecution that people suffered in Nazi Germany and in concentration camps. I mean, that’s no different than Nazi Germany, where you had government telling people, ‘You are an essential worker or a nonessential worker,’ and the nonessential workers got put on a train. I mean, they’re already calling him ‘Little Hitler, Governor Little Hitler'

Republican Heather Scott compares coronavirus lockdown to the Holocaust | indy100