Column: Could conservatives save our democracy?

Hello and happy Thursday. Welcome to the “Is reality dead?” edition of this column, in which Vladimir Putin is our friend, egg prices don’t matter and Steve Bannon speaks sense.

Yes, folks, we’ve reached the point in this disturbing timeline where some of the strongest voices speaking against the Muskian overthrow of government are coming from the far right.

In a recent interview, Bannon, a former advisor to President Trump and current uber-right podcaster, came out hard against Elon Musk.

“Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values or traditions,” Bannon said in an interiew with UnHerd.

Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon says Elon Musk wants to “play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values or traditions.”

(Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press)

Bannon’s call isn’t the only one coming from inside the house.

Trump came out with an astonishing, lie-filled position Wednesday that Ukraine started the war with Russia: “Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who barely escaped the gallows after Trump lost the 2020 election, responded: “Mr. President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The Road to Peace must be built on the Truth.”

But my favorite pushback against the broligarchy came from conservative Christian commentator Jon Root, responding to the messy messaging on former-Twitter between Musk and Ashley St. Clair, an influencer who claims she just popped out Musk’s 13th baby via IVF but is now being ghosted by the billionaire.

“Much of conservatism is filled with godless, hypocrites who couldn’t care less about conserving traditional family values. [It’s] way past time we come to grips with that fact & do our part to not platform, promote and celebrate those that just use conservative values for their own gain,” Root wrote about the situation.

A baker’s dozen of babies with four different mothers seems to be a Christian tipping point.

I tell you all this not to indulge in the schadenfreude of watching Trump supporters see their heroes’ true colors, but as a point of hope in a bleak landscape, and a caution against a told-ya mentality.

Democracy needs all the friends she can get, from any political perspective. If conservatives want to help protect our system of government in this fragile moment, they should be welcomed to the fight. We don’t need to agree, for now anyway, on anything other than the need to protect representative rule.

It has become increasingly clear that Democrats are too divided and uninspired (with a few exceptions) to effectively combat authoritarianism alone. Bernie Sanders, an independent, is on a “National Tour to Fight Oligarchy” and has gained thousands of online followers in recent weeks — another point of hope, but I’m guessing Bernie is preaching to the choir.

The courts, where much of the fight against this hostile takeover is happening, may hold. But they may not.

Congress? They’re busy begging for crumbs after ceding their power and realizing even sycophants won’t be spared.

But this is a fight that transcends politics. As much as Musk and Trump want us to believe that their actions are about cutting costs, fighting fraud or protecting American interests, a child can see the lies. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a real government department, isn’t revealing massive fraud.

It’s simply another way to attack checks and balances, by both dismantling sources of reliable information and removing the people who understand how our systems work. The “deep state” is just an ominous turn of phrase for infrastructure. Remove the infrastructure, and you’ve gutted democracy from within.

Here’s a real-time example of how Musk and Trump are deleting truth. Musk tweeted out a false claim this week that his efforts had unearthed fraud in the form of an $8-billion contract that DOGE then canceled. Only it turned out that the contract was worth only $8 million, according to the New York Times.

A mistake? Maybe. But as independent journalist Jamie Dupree and others pointed out, someone went into the government database and changed the documents with no comment on the error — simply erasing the paper trail.

Meanwhile, the real effect of Musk’s work is starting to be apparent: National parks becoming off-limits to campers; staff fired at VA hospitals; everyday Americans working jobs protecting our nuclear arsenal or helping special needs children let go because they’re deemed wasteful.

And unbelievably, Europe forced to plan for a world order in which America is not an ally.

To answer my own question, I don’t believe reality is dead.

But as Douglas Adams wrote in his “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series, “reality is frequently inaccurate.”

The reality that Trump and Musk are pushing on us is anything but accurate. I don’t care the political stripes of resisters, as long as they are resisting.

As Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker put it Wednesday, “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. When the fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: GOP hawks bristle at Trump’s anti-Ukraine tirade
The what happened: ‘Long Live the King’: Trump Likens Himself to Royalty on Truth Social
The L.A. Times special: More eggs are being confiscated at the U.S.-Mexico border amid the bird flu outbreak

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

P.S. With a heavy heart, I want to let you know that I won’t be doing this newsletter on a regular basis after February. I’ll be around to fill in, but will be returning to writing columns about California, including current events, politics, and yes, Trump. I hope that you’ll continue to read and even more, send me your thoughts.

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