Democrats Cannot Win The Republican Game
As various parties grapple with Representative Nancy Mace’s bigoted and transphobic campaign against Representative Sarah McBride, as well as McBride’s decision to “accept” Speaker Mike Johnson’s rule banning transgender people from bathrooms matching their gender despite disagreeing with it, I want to focus on something from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
After Jan 6th I privately confronted Mace for lying about my story bc she too was terrified in her office.
I said as another assault survivor you know how harmful what you did is. Why? She said “whatever you know it’s a game, just points on the board”
Uhh no???
A lot of people are shocked by the “points on the board” phrase - as was I - but it was also shocking how common I heard this and other game-type metaphors.
Many who are deeply disconnected from the harm do view and talk about it privately as a kind of sport. It is gross.
I wanted to highlight this because it confirms something I’d been thinking about just yesterday: I’m not suited to judge McBride’s decision, but anyone whose personhood is marginalized and diminished easily is forced into agonizing decisions by hateful people playing a game.
You have to blame the hateful people, because their game is designed not just to score themselves points but to split us apart in the process. Just witness people essentially calling McBride a traitor to the cause.
It’s not just the marginalized, however. It’s important to understand that this is what the fascists of the modern Republican Party do as a matter of course to bait Democrats in general. They manufacture catch-22s to force Democrats to choose between two options, either one of which will allow the GOP to claim a point in their game. In the context, say, of social media, if we allow their hateful behavior into our spaces, they will claim a point for Owning the Libs but if we keep their hateful behavior out of our spaces, they will claim a point for Being Canceled.
In the case of Mace’s war against, immediately, McBride and, writ large, transgender people altogether, the latter faced a choice that likewise led only to Mace being able to claim a point in her game. Had McBride pushed back, Mace would have claimed a point for Resisting Identity Politics. With McBride having “accepted” Johnson’s rule, Mace gets to claim a point for Being Right.
What the Democrats need to understand is that there’s no countervailing “gaming it out” they can do in response to this fascist gamesmanship, because nothing Democrats can do will result either in them scoring a point in the Republican game or prevent the Republicans from scoring a point in the Republican game.
It’s definitionally rigged only to score points for Republicans.
The single and only thing Democrats can do in the face of that game—and in the face of everything else that comes with the fascist party taking full control of the Federal government in just 54 days from now—is to know their values, stick to their values, and stick up for their values.