The Republican Genie, Released
By Ken Winkes:
Looking back over the country's state since Reagan's reign, specifically at the trajectory of the Republican Party over those same years, I don't see that that much has changed. The party elites expressing dismay at Trump's boorishness can't have looked in a mirror in years.
After all, before Reagan we had Nixon, whose attorney general was himself a criminal [and whose vice president Spiro Agnew was his thug-in-chief]. As they developed the nativist anti-minority Southern Strategy, Republicans joyfully applauded the hard hats who pummeled hippies, while at the same time Nixon and CREEP deliberately employed bullies and thugs to do their bidding. Nativism and violence have been Republican staples for a long time.
And always just below the surface of the occasional public violence was the economic violence the Party and its supporters deliberately inflicted on millions. With its top-down organizational principle, its pursuit of immediate profit regardless of social cost, its anti-regulation stance, and its worship of the giant monopolies that have replaced a nation of independent shopkeepers, the capitalism the party elites espouse and profit by is itself virulently anti-democratic.
As are their social policies, with abortion and gun control two obvious cases in point. That people favor choice and more gun regulation matters not at all to Republicans and their conservative base. Democracy and American conservatism are not friends.
In Trump's intellectually shallow arrogance and strong-man tactics, the Republican genie has been released from the bottle for all to see. He's ugly and naked, with no fine rhetorical clothing to soften the harsh picture of its essence. For the last sixty years at least American conservatism has not been and cannot be any more humane or compassionate than it is democratic. Conservatism and compassion are in natural opposition.
Trump then is the embarrassing mirror image the party elite, the puppet masters, can no longer avoid.
No wonder they don't like him and want him to go away.
But we all know how genie stories often end.
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Reader Comments (4)
Right on, Ken! Reagan was the embodiment that no matter what some people say about democracy, they want monarchy or what looks like it to me. And how many mentally ill people have gone wanting for access for resources while Reagan's Trickle Down bullshit held the floor of debate? It's just a bummer we have to be around to watch the chicken's of policy and politics come home to roost for people outside the Republican party.
CW: Here's a comment I copied from today's Commentariat Comments section:
I would like to add a note to one sentence from Ken Winkes excellent post. " Democracy and American conservatism are not friends."
As I have said before, Conservative means I don't give a damn about anyone or anything except myself. So that is why they hate democracy.
But note something that conservatives complain about, you know goberment. Somehow in America we manage to ignore the fact that government is an activity that was elected to represent the people. in other words, the Democracy Management Service. So if the DMS does something you don't like you can use your rights in the election process to change the policy. If you lose, you are obligated to realize you are the minority on that issue.
In other words, being a part of democracy requires commitment to the concept. Again the problem is that conservatives have no commitment to anything except themselves.
Marvin Schwalb
Ken,
Excellent observations. The obbligato of any decent teacher of writing is "Don't tell me, show me." If we apply that useful dictum to the works ("works" in the broadest sense) of one Donald J. Trump, we see two of the most important roles in his organization as clear demonstrations of the Trump campaign's propensity for violence and shallowness, two of the signature qualities, as fate would have it, of the Republican Party (which sits on its hands for seven years but gets all pumped up to pass a resolution announcing its appreciation for magic).
His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, former Koch brothers thug and state police officer from New Hampshire, treats the public and the press as if they're perps being lined up for handcuffing and beatings with a rubber hose. His communications director, Hope Hicks, is a former Ralph Lauren model with zero experience in communications or politics who has next to nothing to do with the press and never returns calls or e-mails. Who cares if she can't do her job? She's great eye candy for Herr Drumpf.
If one believes that much can be gleaned about how an administration might be run from the way a candidate conducts his or her campaign, a Trump regime promises to be every bit as nasty, thuggish, amateurish, ignorant, and self-aggrandizing as could be imagined. And he doesn't have to tell us, he's showing us.
Trump is the incarnation of violence, shallowness, intolerance, and ignorance that Confederates have promoted, encouraged, and hoped for since they started rubbing that bottle Reagan left for them in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
We might also inspect the Republican/giant monopolies alliance with respect to energy. After Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House, Reagan removed them, a gesture going far beyond symbolism, further cementing the ties between the fossil fuel industry and the Republican party. Of course: solar panels represent a way for individuals to harness energy house by house (or local cooperative by local cooperative), rather than depending upon a select few billionaires in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky. Trump's position is that climate change is a myth invented by the Chinese. This issue is actually the biggest one facing not just the U.S. but humanity. Unfortunately, Trump's media-annointed opponent in the U.S. political duopoly was drawn to the issue kicking and screaming (or, in Kate McKinnon style, morphing) only recently, and we probably can't count on her, if she wins, not to pay back Wall Street proponents of Big Energy.