THENEWYORKER,M AY9, 2022 13
her by name: “These are the people we
are up against. Progressive social media
trolls like Senator Mallory McMorrow
(D-Snowflake) who are outraged they
can’t teach can’t groom and sexualize
kindergarteners or that 8-year-olds are
responsible for slavery.”
It was hard to know if Theis was
speaking out of genuine conviction,
careerist desperation, or both. She is fac-
ing a primary challenge from a Trump-
endorsed candidate named Mike Det-
mer, who has said that voters should “be
prepared to lock and load” at the polls.
McMorrow, responding to Theis, gave
a fierce and eloquent speech in the Sen-
ate chamber that made the case for de-
cency and integrity in politics better
than anything heard of late from a lec-
tern in the District of Columbia. She
denounced Theis’s “hollow” rhetoric as
an attack on “marginalized kids in the
name of ‘parental rights,’” and the phonyCOMMENT
HEROES
“
U
nhappy is the land that needs a
hero.” The famous line is from
Brecht’s “Life of Galileo,” and it’s often
trotted out in reference to repressive
regimes and their dissident truthtellers:
Václav Havel, in Czechoslovakia; Nel-
son Mandela, in South Africa; and now
Alexei Navalny, in Russia. Just how
unhappy political life has been in the
United States was demonstrated re-
cently in Lansing, Michigan, when Lana
Theis, a Republican state senator, de-
livered an invocation in the legislature
that melded the cadences of prayer with
the lexicon of QAnon paranoia: “Dear
Lord, across the country we’re seeing
in the news that our children are under
attack. That there are forces that de-
sire things for them other than what
their parents would have them see and
hear and know.”
State Senator Mallory McMorrow,
a Democrat who represents Mitt Rom-
ney’s home town, understood that Theis
was exploiting the occasion to call for
a crackdown on teachers making any
mention in the classroom of slavery, rac-
ism, or homosexuality. Michigan Re-
publicans, like so many Republican law-
makers across the country, have been
trying to foment moral panic in their
constituents; in Lansing, they are eager
to draft their own version of Florida’s
so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law. Mc-
Morrow and two other Democrats
walked out of the chamber in protest
and expressed their dismay on social
media. Not long afterward, Theis sent
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDAout a fund-raising e-mail that attacked
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
culture-war tactics in Michigan––and,
by inference, on the national scene––as
a diversion:
People who are different are not the reason
that our roads are in bad shape after decades
of disinvestment or that health-care costs are
too high or that teachers are leaving the pro-
fession. I want every child in this state to feel
seen, heard, and supported, not marginalized
and targeted because they are not straight,
white, and Christian. We cannot let hateful
people tell you otherwise, to scapegoat and
deflect from the fact that they are not doing
anything to fix the real issues that impact peo-
ple’s lives. And I know that hate will only win
if people like me stand by and let it happen.McMorrow’s speech comes at a time
when many are convinced that the Dem-
ocrats are doomed in this year’s mid-
term elections and beyond. The fore-
boding is general, the prognostication
stark: A Republican, Trumpian major-
ity in Congress will stymie all substan-
tive legislation coming from the White
House and, out of a sense of vengeance,
establish sham committees to harass Joe
Biden. The House may even contrive a
reason to impeach the President, if only
for the fun of it. Biden has been polling
badly since the chaotic withdrawal from
Afghanistan and the spike in inflation.
In 2024, Trump, or one of his epigones
(Governor Ron DeSantis, of Florida, is
the comer of the moment), will crush
the incumbent––legitimately or other-
wise, whatever is required. At that point,
the hideous scenario concludes, we shall
be entirely in the hands of a more ex-
perienced, more vindictive version of
Trump 1.0. American democracy will
not be imperilled. It will be erased.
The anxiety is not to be dismissed.
As McMorrow put it in an interview, “If