read this first http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com...-cause-tomorrows-historical-revisionism-today OK, is the Trump presidency more the emergence of a unique individual representing discontinuity, or the inevitable result of various trends and representing continuity? This could be an awesome debate. Me, as a devout reader of Nixonland, and as one who lived in Jesse Helms' North Carolina, and as one aware of the racial views of the intellectual godfather of modern conservatism William Buckley, am very much in the latter camp. Trump=continuity My case: 1. Nixonland 2. Jesse Helms. Did you know he tried to create a group of rich ********s to buy CBS news to get rid of its liberal bias? He did. 3. Bill Buckley 4. Lee Atwater, both as the manager of Bush's 1988 campaign, and for his famous quote about how to rebrand racism 5. Reagan's young bucks buying T-bone steaks and starting his campaign in Philadelphia Mississippi emphasizing states rights. 6. Let's not pretend that Trump just came out of nowhere. There was Palin 2008, Cain 2012, Bachman 2012, and Carson 2016. 7. I think it's partly coincidence, but energy extraction states are almost all conservative anyway, so those pols have a vested self interest in the stupidest forms of climate change denialism. 8. Oh, I forgot Newt Gingrich being foisted on us as an intellectual when he's actually a dumbass with a rich working vocabulary. 9. American Brummie can probably give all the cites we need, but there is a history of racial/ethnic panic in the world among groups about to lose their majority through demographic change. The US isn't immune. Basically, IMO small government conservatism has always been a view with a very small, even tiny (in a 2 party system) faction. GOP success over the last 52 years has all been about federalist and small government rhetoric acting as a respectable veneer for barely contained, seething white nationalism. Trump, to me, is the final proof, the match point, the victory formation of that belief. Thoughts?
So, functionalist? On the functionalist view, Trump’s rapid co-optation of the entire leadership of the Republican party once he was elected merely proved that the elites who at first resisted or at least hesitated to embrace him were deluded about the nature of movement conservatism, which in retrospect was always first and foremost a form of white ethno-nationalist reaction. From this perspective, Trump’s campaign and presidency simply tore the mask off the actual project of modern American conservatism, which at its most fundamental was not about “smaller government” or any other libertarian platitudes, but rather about — especially in the wake of the psychologically shattering fact of Barack Obama’s presidency — reinstating white supremacy in America. I remember early several GOP-leaning policy wonks like, for one example, Avik Roy, expressing shock that Trump's ignorance and overt racism could appeal to so many voters, the same voters who liked Roy's attacks on Obamacare, for instance. As I always wonder at those moments: have you guys never watched Fox News? Listened to Rush Limbaugh? Surfed the web toward Drudge or Breitbart? Here is the kind of question that’s likely to mark this debate: Was the rise of a radically reactionary media ecosystem, especially in the form of right wing talk radio, Fox News, and Breitbart, a mass phenomenon that eventually overwhelmed initially reluctant Republican elites? Or was it rather an essentially elite-driven search for profit and power, that manipulated the ever-manipulable masses for those ends? Both. The elites were making big bucks off that radically reactionary media ecosystem, manipulating the masses, AND said masses overwhelmed the elites.
I don't think you're going to get your debate @superdave.... Unless someone here tries to argue that the Dixiecrats were Democrats, hence every racist thing happening from the 1960s till today was actually because the Democrats...
I don't think any of the "Democrat Senator Robert Byrd was in the Klan!!!!" people are still posting. Or are they?
Precisely. You might get a couple of states rights people ranting something about, errr.. something... and a couple others saying that BSDI™, but most of the right of the spectrum posters are now gone, as are the days when people would argue that we would get equally the same evil from both Hillary or Trump....
I dunno...some liberals seem to think the question between "hostile takeover or inevitable conclusion" is not real clear cut. And then you might get ASF or stanger or Cris09...they're fairly principled conservatives. I dare KarlK or Bill Archer to post here.
Does it have to be a binary choice? I don't disagree with your premise, Dave, you've pointed out a linear progression that we all can see. But maybe Trump has the perfect charisma and attitude to bring all these trends to a head. Say Scott Walker had been elected. We'd still have these angry strains of Republican racial consciousness submerged in our society and most of us democratic liberals would hate the guy the way we hated Bush II, but America would not be in the throes of a budding cult of personality. The daily shock and awe of a president's gross incompetence wouldn't be so soul sucking. Like most either/or choices in life, I choose "both".
He ran. He got nowhere near the nomination. That’s my point...the GOPs have been clown-curious since the emergence of Palin as one of their leaders. The argument is that we aren’t unlucky that Trump got nominated...it’s that the odds were if it wasn’t Cain or Bachman in 2012 or Trump or Carson n 2016, it was going to be a clueless charlatan soon. And the odds that the clueless charlatan would be a white nationalist are/were very high.
Not remotely so. Trump was the biggest liar in the GOP field, the nastiest, and either the most loathsome or the second most.. He won. Cruz was the second biggest liar, the second nastiest, and either the first or second most loathsome. He finished second. Being awful was a feature, not a bug. Following the footsteps of Palin, then before Rudy, then before him Newt. This has been brewing for a while now.
Question: Since the party is a reflection of its voters, does it mean that the Republican party is made of horrible human beings, or the stage just potentiates their worst qualities? Additionally, how much of that is done to say “take that, liberulz!!!”?
On your first question, I am going with Hillary. Half of Trump's early support consisted of deplorables. That was his base, and a base larger and more eager than the other candidates. But that is well under half of Republicans. The rest were either enticed by the prospect of winning, or are not enticed but still believe that any Republican is better than any Democrat. On the second, yeah, there is a lot of that.
I'm going with both as well, but I'm hedging on how the author defines intentionalist a bit. On the functionalist side, no one can deny the trajectory. Especially as it has gone since about 1980. The GOP petri dish has become more toxic in every successive election cycle. In many ways it's like natural selection. Add some nasty stuff to the mix, and a certain breed of politician dies off while a previously marginalized breed that can handle the environment fills the vacuum. On the intentional side, I do think it was logical for party leaders to understand that this was getting progressively more vitriolic, but I don't think they sought someone like Trump, nor did they really know what to do with him once he showed up on the scene. If they did, he would not have survived to the end of the primary campaign. They did buckle and go along for the ride though. He wasn't what they were looking for, but they acquiesced to give them a chance to win. The difference is that Trump is a singular political character. No career politician, upper level civil servant or military leader could say and do the things he did, nor could they be as ideologically inconsistent as he is. Cruz is vermin, but he couldn't do those things. I can't think of another outsider with his level of name recognition either. Most people in this country have known who Donald Trump for 30 years. They have known who his family is, they've seen him on TV and his persona slowly became more political over the course of the Obama administration. He needed that to win the nomination and the election. Somebody else could have come along...eventually. But that person wasn't a Herman Cain or an evangelical pastor or a Pat Buchanan type. If anyone can name someone who could run the way he has as an outsider with a critical mass of public awareness, I'd love to hear who that person is. On the other hand, maybe it would have grown so toxic that even the average GOP pol could have run a successful POTUS campaign the way he did in 10 or 15 years. It's impossible to know. But by reaching the office, he's opened up the floodgates. It has become more acceptable for others to do things they could not have done/said otherwise. He and he alone could break this.
IOW, evolution is not necessarily a linear growth. Once in a while mutations happen that change the whole species, or create new ones.
Yes, that's pretty much exactly what it means. ftfy. It's a lot like the Reconquista, in a way. Decades of education and civility wiped out because not White and not Christian (enough). Except mainstream White Iconservatism isn't dead enough to be put on a horse in the morning
Linear according to whom? Evolution only "looks" linear because all we can do is look backwards, and we assume we are the pinnacle, or that there is some thought or rationality behind it. However, evolution doesn't lead to stronger, faster, smarter.... It leads to what survives best given the circumstances. It used to be trilobytes. Now it's us. What will it be in another 300million years? Jellyfish? Alright, I'll chill out.
While you may be accurate in general, there are multiple truths that can coexist at the same time. The problem is that the country is stuck in a cultural polarity. A lot of people don't frame things as what they like about Trump. They frame things as what they hate about the mainstream narrative. I see this in several acquaintances of mine who swear they're not pro Trump, but 90% of their social media politics is spent bashing the main stream media, campus hyper political correctness, Hollywood snobbery etc ... Every culture has a counter culture. A lot of Trump's soft support is from people who are just weary of the mainstream ... The weird appeal of conspiracy theorism. Flat earthers. Crypto currency boosters. The Ben Shapiro/Jordan Peterson wannabe "intellectuals". The problem for the GOP is that most of these people are not reliable conservative allies. And they are overwhelmingly in the younger generation of Trump voters, so this is their future. For example these people generally dislike religion, something that will eventually catch up to the evangelicals. They also mistrust corporate America which will eventually catch up to the Koch brothers version of conservatism. This is an imperfect coalition and their future is extremely problematic. The only common thread holding it together is their counter culturalism, since we can all agree that American mainstream culture has been increasingly skewing to the left. Which is obvious since most mainstream culture is being driven by media, entertainment and academia which is located in liberal parts of the country.
The dying embers of an angry minority lashing out and forcing the rest of us to play "Monopoly" one last time before we can play Terra Mystica and Pandemic and the other cool games. That's all this is, and trying to discern any deeper meaning or understanding is futile. They're just angry, irrational, medicated old people.
Everything to the 2016 political pundit sounded like economic anxiety. This truck was economic anxiety. If they had wondered why it was always the trucks that were Trumped, and never the sedans, they might have written something useful.
Probably ... if you look at demographic trends, but I wouldn't bet my house on it. Things are always shifting. Look at the realignment in the 60s. Definitions for "conservative" and "progressive" are always shifting. Who would have guessed 5 years ago that the conservative position would be pro tariff? Look at some new European conservatives who promote more ambitious welfare programs than American progressives. You should never underestimate mankind's impulse to "conserve" aka tribalism. Especially in environments of crisis and conflict. Looking forward the future is uncertain. Population growth, economic depression, strain on resources and environment, war, terrorism etc ... Look at how a simple low tech terrorist attack like 9/11 was able to completely change the arc of history. All I'm saying is that I don't trust crystal balls. Nobody saw Trump coming 5 years ago, and yet here we are. I expect some form of regressivism to persist throughout my lifetime, even if the current form of conservitism crumbles like you predict. Some new regressive movement will take its place. It's in our nature of polarity. The yin and yang, good and evil, left brain right brain, black and white, male female, ketchup mustard, Beatles Stones, boxers briefs etc ...
As others have said I think the article misses the point somewhat. I'd add that a certain element of this is driven by the Information Revolution's winners vs losers (urban vs rural too), a lot of the MAGA narrative focused on this - and capitalized on the zeitgeist of people who've at minimum not benefited from the Information Age, or have been negatively affected by automation and/or outsourcing of their work. Yes the reaction has been to retrench the white supremacy and support tariffs and other anti-trade policies to try to roll back the clock, but that is just smoke and mirrors that is masking the underlying trends away from low education work towards higher tech and information dependency. So in my opinion the major focus isn't the how we got here politically, and is more that how we got here politically explains a lot of why the specifics of the Trump model worked in the USA (as they have worked in the past). To me - the bigger issue is where this is going. In many cases - as Brummie points out - there is a huge demographic factor at play here. As the older, whiter, less tech savvy Republican base dies off where does this go? I think as JohnR and Chicago76 mentioned - Trump is the pinnacle of this trend, and barring some mighty shenanigans, the likelihood of any long term trend including any form of Trumpism is pretty low. As for conservatism, there will always be the element of maintaining the status quo, and as Boloni mentions, a significant portion of Conservative thought in the not-USA is happy to maintain universal healthcare and other progressive policies that the US doesn't really have to conserve. In the near term a significant amount of conservative thought will be driven by the right wing media landscape - and due to its reliance on eyeballs to drive profits will likely mean the conservatism we see from media will be focused on what sells to to whatever the Republican/conservative base looks like in 15-20 years.