From a Google Image Search - CBS News
For a party like the Republican Party “champing at the bit” to be back in control of all the reins of government, a party that did not even announce a platform in the 2022 midterms, you would think that they had accomplished nothing over the past decade and wanted nothing. However, this is party that has been pulling America to the right at an inexorable and surprisingly rapid rate, whether they were in control or not. It’s important to step back occasionally and sum up what gains the right-wing has made because this is a different world from what we had a decade ago.
The Republicans may not have an expressed platform, but they do have an agenda and it is hardly a secret. We heard it in the “talking points” that predated the Obama administration. They said and still say they want a smaller federal government. These are basically the same states that have raised this same State’s Rights hue and cry whenever the federal government would not pass their racist policies. It is difficult to comprehend how resentments over losing an argument about slavery could linger this long in America and underlay all our politics, especially when Americans always seemed to avoid humiliating those who lost. Also, difficult to comprehend is this need to win and keep winning. Their ancestors once, years ago, lost a battle for a way of life that was already destined for the scrap heap of history, yet they retained power and were even able to romanticize a way of life that kept former slaves separate and unequal for over a century. Even now we see the allies of the right-wing using the Confederate flag as a rallying point to keep racism alive and own the liberals. An insurrectionist walked across the crypt of our Capitol with a Confederate flag on January 6, 2021.
Did moving to the right begin with the Tea Party which began as a group that expressed anger about taxes? These Americans felt that their taxes were being used to support other Americans and “illegal” immigrants who did not work. Rumors passed along as in the old game of Gossip, were not always passed along correctly. Bush phones were labelled Obama phones. Immigrants were being given cars, for free. Our taxes were paying for welfare checks and SNAP food cards and even disability checks all for people who did not work. Social Security was a Ponzi scheme.
Companies that had offered jobs for the middle class had fled the country for markets with cheap labor and new consumers. The collapse of the housing market led to many foreclosures. A Great Recession was announced. Money was scarce and sharing with people who did not seem genuinely needy caused anger to mount. Through the nights truckers on the road and men in garages all over America tuned into skilled right-wing radio talkers who listened to the disenchanted, prayed with them, sympathized with them, and gradually pumped their resentments into rage. They hyped the Second Amendment and warned listeners that the Democrats intended to take away their guns. The answering refrain still rings out today, “no one is taking my guns!” Many men joined militia groups.
Perhaps the slow march to the right began with the collusion between the wealthy and the Christian churches, especially Evangelicals. There was a new message from the new church, and it did not prod believers to help the poor. The new theology claimed that being rich meant that you were favored by God. Those who are successful financially are obviously being rewarded for being successful by becoming even more rich and successful. The successful were not put here to save the unworthy. The unworthy must pull themselves up and find their own wealth and success. Helping the less fortunate was making them even less fortunate. They became dependent on the programs designed to move them upward. They became deadbeats who simply fed off the public teat forever. To be good Christians was to take away all government “entitlements,” to leave Americans without a safety net so that others may work their way up by their own labor and win God’s favor. They forgot that Jesus said there would be poor always.
But the wealthy who leaned right in their politics wanted America to be like it was in the 1950’s. They wanted people living in nuclear families no matter how dysfunctional some families might be. They wanted everyone to be either a male or a female, as determined at birth, no exceptions. They wanted segregation between white families and all other minorities. They wanted no contraception, no legal abortion, and they wanted people in church and prayer in schools. They wanted Sunday School picnics and they wanted these white Christian traditions to define America. Minorities could assimilate or leave. They still want this so badly that they are willing to do anything to make it happen, although it is an impossible and twisted thing to want. Wanting these things is poisoning our nation and our democracy/republic is suffering possibly irreparable damage so that a minority of Americans can create their own sick American Nationalistic Christian Amusement Park. You must be white to enter.
Did it all begin with extreme gerrymandering to skew the vote or decimating the Voting Rights Act by taking out the Pre-clearance rules. If the pre-clearance rules were no longer needed, we would not have seen mostly southern states begin to change voting rules, making it harder to vote. These new rules proliferated in “red” states, and many states that were not in the original Confederacy had become right-wing or red states. The Republican Party turned out to have a well-connected, relatively secretive web of organizations, both political and religious who were colluding to win and become a single-party power in American politics. They were using media very effectively to spread their ideas and to make promises to middle-class Americans they had no intention of keeping while they dismantled worker protections through a tricky campaign to free workers from paying fees to unions they did not belong to– the right-to-work campaign. Taking power from unions meant taking power from Democrats.
Then along came Trump, down the golden escalator and he escalated everything.
To be continued on Saturday.