My sixteen-year-old Chilean nephew was curious about what’s going on with ICE. In Chile, the word “conservative” is associated with capitali
From Teri Kanefield:
My sixteen-year-old Chilean nephew was curious about what’s going on with ICE. In Chile, the word “conservative” is associated with capitalism, and the word “liberal” is associated with communism. He observed that Donald Trump says he’s a capitalist but doesn’t act like one.
I told him things are different here and labels have different meanings because we have a different history.
I could see he was curious, but I knew he had no interest in lengthy history lessons, so I said, “I can do it in 15 minutes. I can give you a 15-minute history lesson that will explain ICE and our current politics.”
“Can I use a timer?” he asked.
I said certainly.
I prepared the lesson, and my nephew started the timer. Here is what I told him.
There was an explosion of news this week with a theme: The increasing radicalization of the Republican Party. First, we have the abortion pi
An excerpt:
The “Conservative dilemma” goes like this:
Conservatives represent the interests of a few wealthy people.
Their economic policies are unpopular.
So when more people are allowed to vote, conservatives have a problem.
Plutocracy is incompatible with democracy for two reasons: (1) most people will not knowingly vote to keep a plutocrat in power when that plutocrat is essentially robbing them, so plutocrats have trouble winning elections the normal way, by putting forward their policies and plans. (2) As more money becomes concentrated in the hands of a few people, power, too, becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people.
Plutocracy is not new in the United States. Slavery, after all, was a plutocracy, as was the era of robber barons. (Heather Cox Richardson in her book To Make Men Free refers to these as our first two oligarchies. We are now heading toward a third.) The Civil War got us out of the first oligarchy. Roosevelt’s New Deal got us out of the second.)
To win elections with unpopular economic positions, plutocrats can either:
Move to the center by agreeing to implement economic policies that benefit more people, or
Consolidate minority power so they don’t have to compromise on economic issues.
Beginning with Nixon, guess which the Republicans chose.
To win elections with unpopular policies, the Republicans formed an alliance with Fox, the NRA, and white Evangelical groups. The alliances worked like this: Fox, the NRA, and Christian nationalist groups turned out voters. In exchange, the Republican candidates and elected officials gave them the social policies they wanted: Get rid of abortion, deregulate guns, etc.
You see, plutocrats don’t care about things like guns and abortions, but they needed the votes, so they made a deal with organizations that could turn out voters.
At first, outsourcing voter mobilization was a boon to Republican candidates, but to please their audiences, talk show hosts like Tucker Carlson swung farther to the right. Meanwhile, because Republican elected officials needed Fox to turn out voters, Fox began exerting more influence on Republican candidates, creating a radicalization cycle. As these organizations moved farther to the right to accommodate their readership, Republican officials had to similarly move to the right to win their votes. Even so-called moderates like Mitt Romney were forced to make deals with Fox and other right-wing groups.
The difference between so-called Republican “moderates” and crazies like Marjorie Taylor Greene is that the moderates made a deal with right-wing extremists and Greene is a right-wing extremist. (I would add that moderates like Romney are also simply plutocrats.)
Before Trump, Republican candidates would position themselves far to the right to win primaries, and then adopt a more moderate stance in the general election. By 2016, the base had enough of that. They were tired of voting for candidates who they felt gave their issues lip service in the primaries and then, in the general election, promised to govern from the center-right. So they went for Trump. No more Mitt Romneys. No more candidates making deals with the far right. They wanted someone who was far right.
What looked like a 2015-2016 Republican civil war (moderates v. far right wing) was simply the Republican Party officials, including people like Lindsay Graham, panicking because Trump refused to hide his racism and extremism behind euphemisms and dog whistles. But when Trump won the nomination, the Republican leadership fell in line.
Another way to say the same thing: To win elections, Nixon and Reagan invited white Supremacists and Christian nationalists into the party. Now the white Supremacists and Christian nationalists have taken control.
Yet another way to say the same thing: To stay in power, plutocrats have employed strongman psychology: They promise to protect their supporters from their “enemies” (woke Democrats who want access to abortion and gun regulations, and who refuse to lie about American history).
Plutocrats offering “protection,” leads to what Timothy Snyder calls sadopopulism, which works like this:
Plutocratic leaders enact policies designed to protect their own wealth. For example, they lower taxes on the wealthy and remove access to healthcare for those who are not wealthy.
These policies inflict suffering on the people.
The leader blames their pain on the “enemies” (immigrants, minorities, migrants seeking asylum, Democrats, etc.)
The richer the plutocrats become, the more general suffering exists in the population, so there is more anger to direct against the “enemies”, thereby creating a need for a strongman to “protect” the “victims.”
There are no magic bullets. The only way to contain the threat of right-wing extremism is for Democrats to win the upcoming elections, which can put into motion another cycle that would favor the expansion of liberal democracy.
The Christian Right spent 5 decades turning out their voters with the promise of overturning Roe v. Wade, and then when they succeed, voters blame the Democrats. What a neat trick.
As you’ve no doubt heard, Trump was indicted Tuesday for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and remain in power. This is th
As you’ve no doubt heard, Trump was indicted Tuesday for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and remain in power. This is the Big One.The indictment is here.(A word about the title: I asked my readers once what I should call my detailed notes about legal documents and my favorite suggestion was “Over the Cliff Notes.”Here, I lay out the facts and allegations. In the next installment, I will answer questions.
