American Political Redness is a State of Mind

If Mark Sell's recapitulation ("Don't Get Too Comfy With Biden" March, 2021) was sad, but true, it should not be forgotten that American political redness is a state of mind. It's not real. Real, and terrible, consequences? Oh, yeah. But it's all slogans and theories.

As Sell summarizes near the end of his column, it's about "Patriotism...belonging...status," and other heroic and romantic themes.

Republicans can complain all they want about government and taxes -- they "wanna be free" -- but when the real results of their solipsistic approach to whatever they think is the rest of the universe includes frozen gas pipes and frozen wind turbines, leading to frozen and starved people, in Texas, it's blue people, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who raise millions of dollars to bail them out of their absence of judgment or common sense. Do they take the money? Yeah, they take the money.

I have always said that it is not possible to adopt the Rep/con agenda without being dishonest, hypocritical, or both. (You also have to be really arrogant.) I was once talking to an older Cuban woman, and she complained about "illegal aliens." I pointed out to her that the only reason she herself wasn't an illegal alien, when she and her husband came here from Cuba in the 1960s, was that we simply said so. (And Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio need the same history lesson.) We told Cubans that if life in the old country didn't suit them, then all they had to do was get here, and we'd welcome them in. No questions about whether or not they spoke English, whether or not they'd been arrested or convicted, or whether or not they had family here or job prospects. And they have a hell of a nerve to look askance at Mexicans, Haitians, or anyone else who wants exactly what they wanted, for the same reasons, which is what "we" all wanted in coming here. (All of us except the Native Americans and Africans.)

As John Kenneth Galbraith put it, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

Sell did a great job of tracking the devolution of South Florida's politics. Let's hope and assume it's a temporary mindless stupor resulting in some maladaptive reflexes. Let's hope South Floridians grow up.

Fred Jonas

Biscayne Park