July was the hottest month on record, and extreme weather has become a global threat. COVID-19 remains untamed, still endangering millions and imperiling the nation’s health care system. The US withdrawal in Afghanistan is a reminder of the unresolved rot at the core of US foreign policy. And the January 6 riot remains a dire warning signal for American democracy. Yet with all these crises afoot, the Republican Party has essentially nothing substantive to say. It either ignores, denies, or exploits the challenge—or exacerbates it. There is no effort on the Grand Old Party’s part to contend with the climate emergency—hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, and loss of life and property be damned. It offers no proposals for smothering the pandemic, with many of its leaders instead advocating virus-enabling steps. The party’s denizens decry Joe Biden for deficit spending, after years of bear-hugging Donald Trump’s historic, feed-the-rich deficits. One small example of GOP inanity: In a recent interview on Fox, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) fired off a series of false (and rather idiotic) remarks about Afghanistan, inflation, oil prices, and voting rights. The Republican Party has jettisoned ideology and policy for power grabs, grievance promotion, and trolling.

And this is nothing new. This week for a new project I’m working on—more on that later!—I was reading Richard Hofstadter’s seminal work, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and I was astounded by a passage he wrote in 1954 that could have been written—or tweeted—yesterday. This volume, a collection of essays published in 1965, was named after a groundbreaking article he contributed to Harper’s the previous year. Gazing upon the Goldwater takeover of the GOP, Hofstadter, an iconic public intellectual and historian, observed in that magazine piece, “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority.”

Sound familiar? But there’s more. For a decade, Hofstadter had been mulling how anger-driven conservatives could jeopardize the republic. In a 1954 essay included in this collection and titled “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt,” he concluded with a dark premonition:

In a populistic culture like ours, which seems to lack a responsible elite with political and moral autonomy, and in which it is possible to exploit the wildest currents of public sentiment for private purposes, it is at least conceivable that a highly organized, vocal, active, and well-financed minority could create a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.

Hofstadter was a poli-sci Nostradamus. It is not a stretch to say the United States has reached that point. (See Fox News—or OAN or Newsmax.) Republican governors oppose public health initiatives. GOP politicians block action on climate change. They do the same regarding gun violence. The danger is not only in what Republicans do when in power but how they have been able to relentlessly poison the public debate to thwart reasonable conversation about creating collective measures to address a wide variety of problems.

Reflecting on this point in 1964, Hofstadter noted:

Writing in 1954, at the peak of the McCarthyist period, I suggested that the American right wing could best be understood not as a neo-fascist movement girding itself for the conquest of power but as a persistent and effective minority whose main threat was in its power to create ‘a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.’ This still seems to be the true potential of the pseudo-conservative right; it is a potential that can be realized without winning the White House.

Hofstadter, who died of leukemia in 1970 at the age of 54, never saw the triumph of Reagan or Trump. With conservatives—or pseudo-conservatives—in control, much was done to advance their war on government and undermine social welfare. But perhaps Hofstadter was correct in contending that the ultimate harm wrought by the angry right of then and now is the warping of the political environment to such an extent that responsible and fact-driven discourse on how best to pursue the national interest is severely inhibited. These days that can easily be achieved by Republicans and conservatives via disinformation, tweets, Fox News hits, and grievance-boosting demagoguery—all while being in a political minority. (Trump won the White House while losing the popular vote by 3 million.) Rather than focus on how best to combat climate change, for years the country was forced by the right into phony debates over whether this was even a problem. Valuable time was lost. During this pandemic, conservatives and Republicans, following Trump’s lead, have recklessly and repeatedly distorted the national conversation about the necessary countermeasures. And hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths have occurred because of this.

In another Goldwater-related essay written in 1964, Hofstadter opined, “I have never been persuaded by those who see the wave of a coming apocalypse in every wrinkle on the social surface; but it is now much easier than before to believe that America is visibly sick with a malady that may do all of us in.” That is a depressing notion. But if Hofstadter were around these days, he sure as hell could boast about his prescience.

What to Read, Watch, and Listen To

James McMurtry, The Horses and the Hounds. One thing in this world that pisses me off: Warren Zevon is dead. That means no more Warren Zevon songs. Ever since I first encountered a Zevon tune (“Frank and Jesse James”) while listening to a faint Long Island radio station when I was playing hooky from high school and lazing on a Connecticut beach, I’ve been a devotee of his acerbic, biting, literary-minded songs. And though Zevon, a musical genius and difficult person who struggled with addiction and who was plagued by assorted demons, died of lung cancer 18 years ago—after giving us 13 albums—a hole remains. We need more Zevon. I know, it ain’t coming. But as I played James McMurtry’s new album, The Horses and the Hounds, I did think, man, this is close. And it turns out McMurtry thinks so, too. Explaining the album, he notes, “The ghost of Warren Zevon seems to be stomping around.”

McMurtry is an Americana rocker who hails from the Texas singer-songwriter tradition that emphasizes songs about made-up real-life folks. Not surprisingly, his dad was novelist Larry McMurtry, and he’s been releasing critically acclaimed disks for almost 25 years. This latest one hits the bull’s-eye. His protagonists revisit a 30-year-old crush (“Canola Fields”), ruminate about the ravages of growing old (“If It Don’t Bleed”), murder out of desperation (“Decent Man”), and drive a rig in dangerous weather to earn money to feed the horses (“Jackie”). In a tragically timely number, “Operation Never Mind,” McMurtry sings about America’s obliviousness toward the wars it’s fighting overseas. (“We got an operation going on / It don't have to trouble you and me...We just go on about our business / Drop the kids off at the mall / Play the Black Ops on the laptop / Don't make too big a fuss about it all.”) And on “Ft. Walton Wake-up Call,” McMurtry presents a fellow stuck in a hotel room (how Zevonish!) with everything going wrong: upset girlfriend, no internet, flight canceled, stocks tanking, only Fox News on the television—and worst of all, he can’t find his reading glasses.

There’s nothing derivative here. McMurtry’s telling heart-aching tales and switching between hard-driving guitars and folkier accompaniments. This is a brilliant collection of short stories, with each one bearing a melancholy melody or a tough riff—or both. There’s no quarreling with McMurtry’s invocation of Zevon. I suspect Warren would, if he could, give him half a smile and respond, “Sure, if you say so.”

Got any recommendations? Send them my way at thisland@motherjones.com.

Read Previous Issues of This Land

August 20, 2021: Yes, there are laws Trump may have broken while trying to overturn the election; Dumbass Comment of the Week (special Afghanistan edition); the Mailbag (should we report on Trump’s inane remarks?); MoxieCam™; and more.

August 16, 2021: The Afghanistan debacle: How Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden bamboozled the American public; the “Banana King” of Wellfleet, Massachusetts; and more.

August 13, 2021: Hey lefties, stop telling me not to report on Trump’s dangerous comments; Dumbass Comment of the Week; rock ’n’ roll flashback: Sting abuse at a Police show; MoxieCam™; and more.

August 10, 2021: Look who’s organizing a pro-January 6 rally at the Capitol; an inspiring tale from the Myanmar jungle; the best album of the year so far; and more.

August 7, 2021: Are non-vaxxers and anti-maskers just too damn selfish?; Dumbass Comment of the Week; Mailbag (can you still watch your favorite old movies if they now make you cringe?); MoxieCam™; and more.

August 3, 2021: When “worse than Watergate” is really worse than Watergate; Apple TV+’s “comedy” Physical is no comedy, but it’s worth watching; This Land in Photos (West Virginia); and more.

July 31, 2021: Can you still watch your favorite movies?; Dumbass Comment of the Week; Mailbag (more on Lennon versus McCartney); MoxieCam™; and more.

July 29, 2021: Is a country music star encouraging more January 6-like violence?; a civil rights hero more people should know; and more.

July 27, 2021: Are Republicans going to sabotage police reform that doesn’t even go far enough?; how to put a senseless murder to good use; how sober is Liz Phair?; and more.

July 24, 2021: Has Paul McCartney finally won me over?; Dumbass Comment of the Week; Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

July 22, 2021: My bizarre encounter with Rep. Jim Jordan—and why Speaker Pelosi was right to bounce him from the 1/6 committee; celebrating and grieving with musician Steve Earle; and more.

July 20, 2021: The time a Republican president did the right thing to stop an epidemic; Trump’s big narcissism fail; Nelson Algren and Norman Podhoretz; a new psychedelic Beatles-esque tune; and more.

July 17, 2021: Why the Guardian’s Trump-Russia bombshell—dud or not—doesn’t fully matter; Dumbass Comment of the Week; why Bosch works in spite of Bosch; MoxieCam™; and more.

July 15, 2021: Does President Joe Biden really stand with the Cuban people?; the time I really pissed off the Cuban regime; J. Edgar Hoover vs. MLK; one of the best movie reviews of all time; and more.

July 13, 2021: A coming referendum on Donald Trump; a suggestion for Hunter Biden; a new book on how the super-rich screw us all; and more.

July 10, 2021: Why the Republicans are right to be terrified of the new House committee investigating the 1/6 attack; Dumbass Comment of the Week; Joni Mitchell’s Blue 50; and more.

July 7, 2021: How The Summer of Soul counters the GOP’s season of hate; a debate on the recent UFO report; Garry Trudeau, American Dostoyevsky; MoxieCam™; and more.

July 3, 2021: Donald Rumsfeld, Christopher Hitchens, the Iraq War, and me; the perils of taking a home DNA test; Dumbass Comment of the Week; a Springsteen story; and more.

July 1, 2021: Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and perjury; Adam Serwer’s new book; Cézanne’s crime scene; and more.

June 29, 2021: How the new UFO report is bad news for UFO believers; my own UFO tale; HBO Max’s Hacks; an anti-racist anthem; and more.

June 26, 2021: Is Josh Hawley dumb or evil? (The answer is not both); Dumbassery that encourages mass “executions” in the United States; renowned guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson’s new tour and new book (and his claim regarding the best strings arrangement ever on a popular song); MoxieCam™ (before and after photos!); and more.

June 24, 2021: How an alleged 1/6 conspirator who called for executing Trump’s foes hooked up with a prominent Republican Party official; new Los Lobos; and more.

June 22, 2021: Why the GOP is pushing “political apartheid”; Ted Cruz wins Dumbass Comment of the Week; recommendations for an Apple TV+ series and a book on the curious origins of the universe; the first Clash tour of the United States (and being trapped in a van driven by a punk on acid); MoxieCam™; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com