Thematics
Just because: Detail of cartoon by Kevin Sears, The Charlotte Observer, 9 September 2015.
The Republican Party is made up of three big groups that are aware of each other and support each other while not really caring that much for each other.
- The plutocrats that want to bend government to their wishes in order to enrich themselves. They are anti-union, anti-tax, anti-EPA, anti-any-social-programs.
- The theocrats that want to enshrine Christianity in government. Abortion abortion abortion is all they care about.
- The xenophobes (anti-immigrants, bigots, misogynists & racists) and want government to make "their America" safe from those groups. These guys love guns as you need them to protect yourself from the all the folks they dislike.
I was about to split a hair 'twixt general and specfic on point two, about theocrats because of the underyling authoritarian tendencies; in other subjects I have occasion to recall a
1982 article↱ by Yvonne Haddad, and the idea that, as she wrote nigh on thirty-five years ago, "A growing consensus among an increasing number of intellectuals as wewll as the common peple suggests that 'the time has come to try Islam'". And, you know: Wait, what? She refers, in her moment, to a rise of authoritarian identity populism asserting Islam as its justification. History is littered with justifications for tyranny: Industry, progress, kindness, nation, tribe, class, and, yes, religion. To the other, especially in cases like we find among Abramism, why
wouldn't tyranny attempt to justify itself with articles of faith staked on values greater than any other currency in existence? No, really: Tyranny in religious principle at the stake of one's eternal soul; this is hardly original.
But it's also true that reservation of authority attends the plutocrats and xenophobes as well. In the end, tyranny requires a certain measure of all three. A tyrant requires the cooperation of everyone else in the racket. Without industry and economy—plutocrats—the tyrany is powerless. Without identity cause—theocrats—the tyrant has no leverage. Without xenophobes, it is much harder to identify the identity upon which the banners of cause are staked and flown.
As history progresses, though, one important factor really will be awareness. Much like human frailty itself, there is an important functional difference between acknowledging the fact of a condition, to the one, and trying to exploit it, to the other. Once upon a time, these influences were so unimaginably complex that it seemed conspiratorial, even requiring divinity, to explain the interrelationships. Now that we can simulate the hell out of pretty much whatever mathematical assertions we might postulate, it seems possible enough to comprehend these influences that there exists a market beyond sorcery and tea leaves hoping to exploit these seemingly mysterious ways.
To the one, Haddad was not wrong in her moment; nor, though, was she describing anything particularly unique. Kind of like a pop song about how only the names have changed.
There will always be some analogue of plutocrats or oligarchs; there will always be some manner of identity intertwined with cause.
You're not wrong; I'm not hunting along those lines. Rather, it just seems to me that this all falls in with a certain theme of the conservative initiative reserving the utmost benefits to the fewest possible, though that is a political description of history; we could also call it a symptomatic lack of imagination, and get no closer to practical utility.
The present is a subcycle; it's hard to describe because that much American history, tradition, and identity is wrapped up in it. Something happened such that the authoritarian-Amrican paradigm itself broke, or, at least, feels broken. Which, in turn, sounds great to a lot of people, but if one happens to be identity-conscious and among the privileged classes, well, therein lies cause for alarm. The
white, male Christian has been a looming question in our American politics for a generation, at least. At one point we actually called it "Angry White Male Syndrome", in part because it was so bizarre to hear these bastions of privilege absolutely bawling at the prospect of equality. There was even a level at which the most hardened feminists would be tempted to look at these macho bully-men blithering about how oppressed they are and mutter, "Fucking pussies."
And it's still around. One of my favorite highlights, even
here at Sciforums↗, is the 2010 screed by Michael Reagan about how the way to save America is to put women back in the kitchen. Seriously, to a certain degree that's what this is about. Even the Gay Fray, as I noted
earlier this month↗, runs straight through the War of the Sexes. The last sixty years of social conservative losses have hit some iteration of white, Christian male: racepolitik and civil rights; feminism, health care access, rape, and domestic violence (
a.k.a., human rights of woman); racism in education, employment, and law enforcement; the Gay Fray. It's just a partial list, sure, but some of us would simply wonder if maybe these blocs of waning privilege would be better off today had they not dragged everything out by kicking and screaming.
These aren't mundane political losses. This is the upheaval and decay of a paradigm.
And they just bit back.
And look at the fucking mess.
There was a moment, seven years ago, when one of our conservative neighbors responded to the proposition that here are the reasons why liberals hold conservatism in contempt is a perfect example of liberal arrogance for [
straw man apparently equaling a lack of reasons]. Quite literally, we can enumerate our reasons only to be told this is a perfect example of how there's no reason for what we say. And these are the people who complain that nobody listens to them, who feel left behind, who go out of their way to make sure nobody can talk to them.
And despite the rising industries of data manipulaton and presentation pretending to calculate diverse pretenses of zeitgeist, these blocs are still largely a disorganized mess. Consider all the people who feel a stake in getting hurt; that wasn't sixty-two million nine hundred eighty-five thousand white men alone who voted for Donald Trump.
I think of this Latinx guy I know who will defend white supremacism
because it is traditional; it's kind of like toadying up to a corrupt system because one has no choice, but not wanting to abandon it because at least one found a place to survive. And maybe after all this time I get his point, or, perhaps,
theirs; suddenly I see a manner of overlap with the most curious
amici in
Obergefell, whose brief essentially came down to arguing they would feel demeaned for having done something else: It's this really weird tragedy by which
gay men who married women↱ wanted gay marriage to stay illegal because marriage equality would mean they chose wrong when they married women ... or something ... because, really, that's how much it means to find a way to pass in society—but, really, to this day that
amicus brief puzzles the hell out of me, and it probably will forever. Meanwhile, Christine "Not a Witch" O'Donnell was hardly unique in believing feminism should be the empowerment of women to fulfill their righteous place in service to their husbands.
Horatio Alger Syndome↗, also known as the
Tea & Crumpets Party↗, has driven a tremendous amount of self-inflicted harm against the working classes and petite bourgeoisie. Plenty of people, over the years, have paid into a system that harms them because it was their best chance at surviving.
Interestingly, the closer we came to change, the more oppressed and ruined the politically empowered classes felt. What we have in the Trump election is what we hope history will show as a fire burning brightly just before it burns out. Yet, for the moment, we'll have to see. The underlying authoritarian temptation doesn't really have another mythography or mythopoesis to ride, right now. There is, of course, outright greed and class warfare, but that's a given. For Americans, an important question will be how many of that sixty-two nine eighty-five are really in it for that sort of outcome. I'm thinking the opioid-riddled counties that broke for Trump, at the very least, are about to suffer for their choice, or tantrum, or outburst, or whatever it was. How are those female Trump voters feeling about their health insurance, right about now? Then again, who says any of that matters? Kentucky Republicans apparently were sending a message not about repealing their Obamacare, but telling gay marrage to eff off.
Which does bring us back to theocrats. And, of course, something about authoritarian temptation, but after all this I still haven't a useful thesis.
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Notes:
Haddad, Yvonne. "The Islamic Alternative". The Link, v. 15, n. 4. September/October 1982. AMEU.org. http://bit.ly/1KB97vq
