Standing at Armageddon and Battling for the Lord
December 22, 2015 9:53 AM   Subscribe

They aren’t necessarily superconservative. They often don’t think in ideological terms at all. But they do strongly feel that life in this country used to be better for people like them—and they want that older country back. The Great Republican Revolt: from the pages of The Atlantic, David Frum explains how current state of the Republican Party, explains the different factions and movements within the GOP, and lays out four possible options for the future.

A majority of Republicans worry that corporations and the wealthy exert too much power. Their party leaders work to ensure that these same groups can exert even more. Mainstream Republicans were quite at ease with tax increases on households earning more than $250,000 in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the subsequent stimulus. Their congressional representatives had the opposite priorities. In 2008, many Republican primary voters had agreed with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who wanted “their next president to remind them of the guy they work with, not the guy who laid them off.” But those Republicans did not count for much once the primaries ended, and normal politics resumed between the multicultural Democrats and a plutocratic GOP.

This year, they are counting for more. Their rebellion against the power of organized money has upended American politics in ways that may reverberate for a long time.
posted by Apocryphon (91 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
David Frum! An insightful pundit, but also the person who brought us the “Axis of Evil”.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:55 AM on December 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


On similar note, from another side: How Republicans Trumped Themselves (from The Weekly Sift by Doug Muder).
posted by hat_eater at 10:11 AM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


The title of the webpage is "Will the Republican Party Survive the 2016 Election?" The short answer: of course. The longer answer: Yes, thanks to some really aggressive, successful gerrymandering efforts, which has also been divisive for the House. Still, GOP won a major victory with that.

And one lines of thought in this piece is flawed: "Politics was becoming more central to Americans’ identities in the 21st century than it ever was in the 20th." This is the idea that people are more attached to their parties than they were in the past. I would propose instead that political parties have crystallized into The Party of This vs That, losing the art of compromise and embracing black and white divisions as ways to rally and fortify their bases. With that, it makes sense that a third of Democrats and a half of Republicans would not marry someone of another political affiliation - those people are nothing like them, how could they ever get along?

People haven't, in mass, decided "politics really matter" without significant external reinforcement, but that's an idea that many narratives seem to indicate.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:16 AM on December 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


a third of Democrats and a half of Republicans would not marry someone of another political affiliation - those people are nothing like them, how could they ever get along?

So, basically, politics is the new religion.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 10:25 AM on December 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


A majority of Republicans worry that corporations and the wealthy exert too much power.

This is almost certainly untrue. Public polling from this year indicates that a majority (56%) of Republicans believe that the current distribution of wealth is "fair" and only 34% think it should be more "evenly" distributed.

Mainstream Republicans were quite at ease with tax increases on households earning more than $250,000 in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the subsequent stimulus.

Can Frum either name the national-level politicians who held this position or provide a citation showing that Republican voters felt this way?

[Republican] rebellion against the power of organized money has upended American politics in ways that may reverberate for a long time.

What in the hell is Frum talking about? The candidate that he cites as evidence of this tendency is a billionaire! More than anything else, Frum's argument resonates within a political model where words mean whatever we want them to.

Not so long ago, many observers worried that Americans had lost interest in politics. In his famous book Bowling Alone, published in 2000, the social scientist Robert Putnam bemoaned the collapse in American political participation during the second half of the 20th century...But even as Putnam’s book went into paperback, that notion was falling behind the times. In the 1996 presidential election, voter turnout had tumbled to the lowest level since the 1920s, less than 52 percent. Turnout rose slightly in November 2000. Then, suddenly: overdrive.

Putnam's book wasn't just about political participation. It was also, maybe even more importantly, about how social networks of the past have deteriorated, leaving people isolated, lonely, unconnected. Which is, I think, more directly germane to Frum's stated premise of reporting on middle-aged, middle-class voters who feel ferociously disaffected at the loss of the country this used to be. But that kind of wildly ironic misreading is hardly surprising, from this guy.

This whole thing is shot through, fatally, with facile reasoning and inexplicably naive conclusions, aiming at an exhortation too stupid to come out and say directly; Frum is arguing that Donald Trump is the anti-big-money candidate that reform-minded Republicans and Democrats should vote for, basically.
posted by clockzero at 10:26 AM on December 22, 2015 [30 favorites]


I tend to think of David Frum's presence on the Atlantic as a necessary conservative presence to balance out and come close to trolling a readership who comes over to read James Fallows and Ta-Nehisi Coates. I like reading him because he does have a good way of bringing up worthwhile details and insights, eventhough his politics almost seem to obligate him to push them into less agreeable conclusions. I'm only halfway through the article and I think it brings up observations on the Republican Party that are intellectually honest and worth considering in the name of listening to another side (especially with that notion around how the Republican base has been in a low intensity class war with itself for a decade now but has managed to somehow sustain denial over that war because of their shared enmity against liberals) , but who knows if I'll get to the end of the article and revert back to thinking that he's just an intellectually manipulative jerk.
posted by bl1nk at 10:31 AM on December 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


Also, the article keeps contrasting the wishes of the masses (well sourced or otherwise) with the politicians as if it's a shocker that politicians are courting a select few who have the money to actually sway elections (thanks, Super PACs), instead of the individuals doing the voting.


So, basically, politics is the new religion.

Well, GOP = Christian for many, including presidential hopefuls. Separation of who and what now?
posted by filthy light thief at 10:32 AM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


They aren’t necessarily superconservative. They often don’t think in ideological terms at all.

Most man-on-the-street conservatives don't think in ideological terms. Few people do, left or right. That's pretty much for policy wonks and serious players. It doesn't necessarily follow, though, that these people aren't superconservative. They are.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:32 AM on December 22, 2015 [8 favorites]


> Bush’s update of Conservatism Classic had made him a hit with the party’s big donors. He had won accolades from Karl Rove (“the deepest thinker on our side”)

I can't figure out if this is damning with faint praise or an inadvertent insult of the Republican Party or both or what.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:36 AM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


As far as the criticisms of Frum's neoconservatism go, it's interesting that the few points that foreign policy is brought up in this piece, it's almost in terms of how Republicans voters would react- and how Trump has garnered a lot of support by being anti-intervention.

What's more suspect is his stance on immigration. But what he says about GOP immigration policy and how voters have reacted are still worth examining.

---

Can Frum either name the national-level politicians who held this position or provide a citation showing that Republican voters felt this way?

From the article itself:

The closest study we have of the beliefs of Tea Party supporters, led by Theda Skocpol, a Harvard political scientist, found that “Tea Partiers judge entitlement programs not in terms of abstract free-market orthodoxy, but according to the perceived deservingness of recipients. The distinction between ‘workers’ and ‘people who don’t work’ is fundamental to Tea Party ideology.”

A substantial minority of Republicans—almost 30 percent—said they would welcome “heavy” taxes on the wealthy, according to Gallup. Within the party that made Paul Ryan’s entitlement-slashing budget plan a centerpiece of policy, only 21 percent favored cuts in Medicare and only 17 percent wanted to see spending on Social Security reduced, according to Pew. Less than a third of ordinary Republicans supported a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants (again according to Pew); a majority, by contrast, favored stepped-up deportation

---

The candidate that he cites as evidence of this tendency is a billionaire!

The whole point of Trump's campaign is that he portrays himself as a political outsider, a moneyed man but not of the monied interests, even though he has admitted to playing the game before with contributions. As a member of the class who's willing to engage in real talk about the class, he is thus portraying himself as a class traitor- have you not seen the numerous essays out there defining him as such?

---
Frum is arguing that Donald Trump is the anti-big-money candidate that reform-minded Republicans and Democrats should vote for, basically.

Not at all- he doesn't seem to be endorsing Trump at all. The article basically explains how the Republican party elite is out of touch with its base, and how Trump has found a way to appeal to them. The article remains silent on advocating for any sort of policy or plan, except perhaps reforming the GOP platform to no longer be so out of touch with that base. He never even says that Trump will bring those reforms, other than that the man makes noises in that direction that speak to the anxieties of that base.

---

It doesn't necessarily follow, though, that these people aren't superconservative. They are.

It depends on which part of conservatism you're talking about. In terms of economics, it appears that they are not as much as the Chamber of Commerce (or the DLC, for that matter) would like you to believe.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:36 AM on December 22, 2015 [9 favorites]


And one lines of thought in this piece is flawed: "Politics was becoming more central to Americans’ identities in the 21st century than it ever was in the 20th."...People haven't, in mass, decided "politics really matter" without significant external reinforcement, but that's an idea that many narratives seem to indicate.

I think what Frum was saying in that paragraph, and which I think is true, is that in recent times political identity has become more and more fused with personal identity. That's what he meant with those examples of hunting and marital status.

So it's not that people haven't decided that politics really matter, it's that people have come to view politics as entangled with behaviors and preferences in a way it wasn't in earlier periods. MeFi is guilty of this too: where someone lives, the car they drive, the food they eat, the music they listen to, even the coffee someone drinks now all have a political dimension that squarely labels you as a Democrat or Republican.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:37 AM on December 22, 2015 [8 favorites]


I want nothing more than a Thunderdome-style pundit death match between David Frum and David Brooks, where the victor chokes his opponent to death by force-feeding the loser with the reams and reams of "Last Reasonable Republican" columns each has written. "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!"
posted by KingEdRa at 10:38 AM on December 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


Trump’s surge was a decisive repudiation by millions of Republican voters of the collective wisdom of their party elite.

Or, Trump has the media presence to say crazy things and get invited back to say more crazy shit the next week, and people love a "no-nonsense truth-talker," especially when he feeds off your fears. By being self-funded, he has freedom that no one else has. If Ross Perot was more dynamic and/or volatile, he could have had a bigger impact. Still, 18.9% of the popular vote is a significant mark for a political outsider, showing that Trump isn't really one of a kind (just the loudest and most brash of his kind).
posted by filthy light thief at 10:38 AM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


[Republican] rebellion against the power of organized money has upended American politics in ways that may reverberate for a long time.

What in the hell is Frum talking about? The candidate that he cites as evidence of this tendency is a billionaire! More than anything else, Frum's argument resonates within a political model where words mean whatever we want them to.


The key word there is "organized". Frum is contrasting the beliefs and desires of the Republican donor class with what he says the base wants. Trump is rich enough that he has been able to ignore the traditional mega-donors entirely, so he is free to say the things that Frum argues the base is thinking, rather than what the party elite want.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:40 AM on December 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


He also claims that the Tea Party and other proto-fascist movements aren't motivated by extreme conservatism, then notes that they object to social welfare programs based on who "deserves" to be helped, which is about as conservative a position as it is possible to take.

Barely seven paragraphs in he refutes his own central argument:
In the United States, they lean Republican because they fear the Democrats want to take from them and redistribute to Americans who are newer, poorer, and in their view less deserving—to “spread the wealth around,” in candidate Barack Obama’s words to “Joe the Plumber” back in 2008.
That this is a near platonic example of arch-conservative thinking. That hierarchy is good, that wealth should be concentrated at the top, that spreading wealth around is bad. To argue that the Trump voters aren't deeply committed to conservatism is wrong on every possible level.

Looks a bit like some asscovering from a guy who has realized that he helped propel his party in a quasi-fascist direction and is now desperately trying to backpeddle and lay the blame on other people.
posted by sotonohito at 10:41 AM on December 22, 2015 [17 favorites]


sotonohito, he says pretty clearly in the essay that the "classic conservative" opposed all welfare and social programs, while the new breed (according to Frum) actually defends social programs, but only for them. That's what he means by the new wave not being "super conservatives", at least in the sense of the term that would have been used in the last few decades. For older conservatives, welfare itself is an evil and must be destroyed.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:44 AM on December 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


... a majority (56%) of Republicans believe that the current distribution of wealth is "fair" and only 34% think it should be more "evenly" distributed.

I'm not sure that poll result is all that meaningful, since most people don't have any idea what the distribution of wealth actually looks like.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 10:46 AM on December 22, 2015 [10 favorites]


One of the main points of fascism was that it was anti-capitalist (at least in rhetoric) and in favor of income distribution, but only for those of the nation/race/tribe. The whole point of its appeal is that it is in favor of good things (fixing income equality and broken social systems), and that's why it's so dangerous and seductive.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:47 AM on December 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


I'm not sure that poll result is all that meaningful, since most people don't have any idea what the distribution of wealth actually looks like.

If we compared poll results against empirical evidence, we would have to throw most of them out as out-of-touch with reality. Polls generally measure sentiment, not the accuracy of its putative empirical referents.
posted by clockzero at 10:50 AM on December 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


More than anything else, Frum's argument resonates within a political model where words mean whatever we want them to.

thank you clockzero. on the money (so to speak).
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 10:53 AM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's odd that he only references Skocpol's study on Tea Partiers framing it as an exclusively economic issue, when there are others that have found that it's very much based on religion (particularly evangelical and dominionist Christianity in opposition to Islam) and bigotry. And that doesn't even get into how Tea Party politics is not actually a grassroots effort that came from nowhere, but a movement created by and funded almost entirely from current and former GOP movers and shakers.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:55 AM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


If we compared poll results against empirical evidence, we would have to throw most of them out as out-of-touch with reality. Polls generally measure sentiment, not the accuracy of its putative empirical referents.

Sure. But then we need to know what it is that we're inferring from the poll. What I'm saying is that we should not infer that people think that the actual distribution of wealth is fine. We have no reason to think that, as opposed to thinking that people think that the distribution of wealth is radically different from what it actually is. And that the distribution they are imagining is fine.

This matters for the kinds of interventions one should pursue in order to change opinion. If people know what the true distribution is and think it's fine, then we have to change attitudes about fairness and what makes wealth distribution good or bad. If people don't know what the true distribution is, then it might be just a matter of convincing people what the actual distribution is.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 10:57 AM on December 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


this piece talks about Republicans as individualized political "consumers" who will or won't respond to particular messaging campaigns of which he outlines three. however, the problem is that the Republican base is composed of three politically organized and politically disciplined groups: christian theocrats, southern segregationists, and Reagan democrats. Frum acknowledges that the base rejected Bush III, but he couches in terms of issue politics ie. immigration and messaging rather than a real jockeying for power within the party. The "base" is tired of taking orders from the Wall Street, Old-money, New Money, and big business interests that make up the "establishment" and are making a play for power within the party. While people like Frum get to theorize "big picture" politics, it's the church ladies, white citizen's council officers and "gun nuts" who actually run the party machine at the bottom and the primary is where these groups are at their strongest.

The base has tried to kill JEB's candidacy and may have succeeded, but is unlikely to unify around Cruz. If Trump can get at least a strong second place finish in Iowa he could very well dominate the rest of the primaries. Because Bush dominates in the "super-delegate" category, he could still end up being the nominee if the Trump candidacy implodes. But the consequences of a Bush campaign in the general election could be dire for the Republican party. If the Frum-types think the establishment is losing control of Congress now, just wait until the circus of a Clinton II administration begins... That the establishments of both parties thought a Bush/Clinton match-up was a good idea shows just how out of touch both parties have become.
posted by ennui.bz at 10:59 AM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's older data, but as 2011 49% of Republicans wanted corporations to have less influence. Not a majority, but close. Wanting corporations to have less influence is distinct from wanting the wealth distribution changed, especially when, as has been pointed out, people generally have no clue how the wealth is distributed.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 10:59 AM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


But if our economic system was not inequality and in the favor of the elites making hundreds of times the income of those Tea Partiers, the Tea Party wouldn't even have had a reason to exist. If the fallout from 2008 had resulted in better economic results for "Middle Americans", they would not have been radicalized. Do you think the average Tea Party person cares about Paul Ryan's right-wing social engineering or Walker's libertarian ideology?

There most definitely is a nativist, or at least xenophobic, component to the Tea Party. But it's based upon economic anxieties. Seeing the bailouts as something that benefited the banks but not the corporations. Being afraid that Obamacare would take away their existing health insurance in favor of "others." As populist right-wingers have done again and again in history, the powers that guided the Tea Party have caused them to tie economic progressivism to something alien and suspect and inimical to their wellbeing. But even if the movement became distorted, the roots are still in genuine sentiment and it would be wise for politicians to be aware of the concerns of their electorate.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:01 AM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Frum's consistent unwillingness explicitly to identify racism as the motivating force behind Trump and Tea Party support really undermines the intellectual coherence of this piece. Is he really unable to see that "deserving" is code for white and "undeserving" means non-white? I wouldn't describe it as subtle.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 11:09 AM on December 22, 2015 [26 favorites]


Sure. But then we need to know what it is that we're inferring from the poll. What I'm saying is that we should not infer that people think that the actual distribution of wealth is fine. We have no reason to think that, as opposed to thinking that people think that the distribution of wealth is radically different from what it actually is. And that the distribution they are imagining is fine.

I understand the distinction you're drawing, but I think we're talking about two different things; I'm simply noting that Frum's claim about the proportion of Republicans who think that the wealthy have too much power and/or that wealthy should be distributed in a more egalitarian way is highly questionable.
posted by clockzero at 11:10 AM on December 22, 2015


Is he really unable to see that "deserving" is code for white and "undeserving" means non-white? I wouldn't describe it as subtle.

Racism and modern race relations is somewhat more nuanced than that.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:14 AM on December 22, 2015


I think it's possible, even if I don't agree with it, to believe that the distribution of wealth is fine, but to believe that the wealthy aren't using it presently the way that they should. If you believe God picked the king, then even if the king was terrible, you might be the sort of person who believed the king should be a better king, or perhaps who hoped that his son would take over and be more fair, rather than the kind of person who believed that maybe we're actually better off without a monarchy. To judge from some people I know, though, their idea of "better" wouldn't necessarily match mine; some of them seem to think more in terms of wanting a more restrained and pious upper class, not a more generous one.
posted by Sequence at 11:14 AM on December 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


Wealth distribution -- not the same as income distribution

That came from Mother Jones here:

More about that.
posted by hank at 11:17 AM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm simply noting that Frum's claim about the proportion of Republicans who think that the wealthy have too much power and/or that wealthy should be distributed in a more egalitarian way is highly questionable.

Maybe. I think it depends on what Frum is trying to say. If he is saying that when informed about the true distribution, Republicans think wealth should be distributed in a more egalitarian way, then he's probably right. At least, if the results of that Norton and Ariely paper on attitudes about wealth distribution (pdf) is either still true or has shifted in the right way. If he's saying that most Republicans think that the wealth distribution is problematic, then I agree, he's wrong.

I am much less hopeful than I was ten years ago ... but I still hold out some hope that my basic values are not so much different from the values of most Republicans. Such that informed discussion about facts might be enough to change people's minds on questions of public policy.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 11:18 AM on December 22, 2015


Hope, the cruelest plague in Pandora's box. I've met enough conservatives who have straight-up told me they don't care if the poor die that I can't believe there isn't at least a sizable minority of conservatives whose basic values are just alien to my own.
posted by Sangermaine at 11:23 AM on December 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


White Middle Americans express heavy mistrust of every institution in American society: not only government, but corporations, unions, even the political party they typically vote for

Even the military?
posted by Sauce Trough at 11:24 AM on December 22, 2015


Even the military?

Yep. See the freak out over Jade Helm.
posted by eyeballkid at 11:33 AM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Sizable minority, I believe, for sure. But I also know a fair number of conservatives, including family members, who are just badly informed about the state of the world and the likely effects of policies they nominally endorse. I'm not sure how to measure my record of success, though, so maybe I shouldn't hold on to the last vestiges of my youthful optimism.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 11:33 AM on December 22, 2015


>>A majority of Republicans worry that corporations and the wealthy exert too much power.

>This is almost certainly untrue. Public polling from this year indicates that a majority (56%) of Republicans believe that the current distribution of wealth is "fair" and only 34% think it should be more "evenly" distributed.


"Rich people deserve their money" and "rich people/rich corporations should run everything" are two very separate ideas.

It's quite possible to believe all of these things at one and the same time:

- The current wealth distribution is "fair" by some definition of the word that I personally like

- Rich people should, nevertheless, be taxed at slightly/moderately higher rates than poorer people

- Rich people/corporations have too much political power and this excess political power of the wealthy makes me very uncomfortable and should be controlled
posted by flug at 11:38 AM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


I am much less hopeful than I was ten years ago ... but I still hold out some hope that my basic values are not so much different from the values of most Republicans. Such that informed discussion about facts might be enough to change people's minds on questions of public policy.

I think this might be a self-refuting hope, though we might wish it were otherwise. Even if you could agree about what the facts are, you inevitably run into the is-ought problem. But the truth is that this doesn't work sequentially; unless you're participating in a structured debate, there is constant contestation over both what is and what should be.
posted by clockzero at 11:42 AM on December 22, 2015


I just had my first encounter with a Donald Trump supporter yesterday. I do not suggest that this man is representative of most Trump supporters, but it was interesting to see how the man thought and what the appeal of Trump was.

He is a black man who is just shy of 70. He is somewhat poor, but not destitute. He is a Vietnam veteran who believes the physical ailments that he and his children are currently experiencing arose from some sort of exposure to chemicals from when he was in Vietnam. He did not know what the chemicals were and has never been told that any chemicals have caused this condition. He expressed frustration with the VA, etc., for not helping him with his condition or exploring the chemical situation.

Then he said, "That's why I like Donald Trump. He is going to just wipe all that out and start over." I took that to mean that he thinks Trump will wipe out the VA or the procedure to address the physical ailments of veterans. I did not ask him what he thought the new procedure would be, as he is not the type of person that I wanted to engage with too deeply. Is that part of Trump's appeal? Do people think that he is going to do away with things that are bad? And then they think he will just come up with something better once the bad thing has been eliminated?

He went on for a bit about how much he likes Trump, and then he said, "And, you know, all this stuff about him being racist...I have 48 grandchildren and some of them are part white or part Mexican. I love them all the same. I just don't worry about that kind of thing." Was he really saying that he doesn't care if Trump is racist because he, himself, is not racist? I am not really sure what he meant by that, but he found it important enough to mention that he knew people think Trump is a racist, but he really doesn't care. It was all pretty strange.
posted by flarbuse at 11:54 AM on December 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


"Rich people deserve their money" and "rich people/rich corporations should run everything" are two very separate ideas.

I disagree. At best, they are distinct ideas, but if we follow their implications and trace their premises, I think it's clear that they amount to the same thing anyway.

If we say "the rich deserve their money," we're conceding that wealth belongs wherever it ends up, irrespective of how it got there; this is a profoundly anti-egalitarian idea. Because money and power are not really separable in any practical fashion, especially in modern America, saying that the rich deserve their money is effectively identical to saying that they deserve their power. It constructs a hierarchic vision of how society ought to work.

So, sure, one could say that immense economic inequality is okay but should be remedied anyway, or that the regulatory capture that enables this inequality is problematic but its beneficiaries still deserve what they have, but these don't sound like very carefully-reasoned positions.
posted by clockzero at 11:59 AM on December 22, 2015


Was he really saying that he doesn't care if Trump is racist because he, himself, is not racist?

I've found when dealing with right-wing family members and acquaintances that suggesting a politician they favor or a policy they support is discriminatory is are usually taken as an accusation that they themselves are personally a racist. (The Transitive Property of politics, I guess.)
posted by aught at 12:11 PM on December 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


Echoing flarbuse, I had an encounter with a Trump supporter a few days ago. The person in question was an older man who came to America from Colombia with his mother in his teens. Like a number of legal immigrants he has a lot of contempt and dislike for illegal immigrants, and finds Trump's rhetoric on that issue very appealing.

He's a conservative Catholic and believes that things were better back in the 1950's before America allowed secularism to become a force. He was very much a believer in the War on Christmas and was convinced that the only reason any person said "Happy Holidays" was either because they were intimidated by an "atheist" who had taken offense, or because they were secretly anti-Christian.

He also expressed the view that Trump was extremely intelligent and would be able to do literally everything he said he would, including and specifically building a border wall and making Mexico pay for it. When I asked how he thought Trump could make Mexico pay for the wall, he said he wasn't as smart as Trump so he didn't know, but he was sure Trump could do it.

He's also very much in favor of law'n'order and believes that Black Lives Matter is just a bunch of troublemakers who are stirring up false accusations of racism for their own nefarious, implied to be greed based, purposes.

He also believes that all Muslims are at least potential terrorists, that allowing in refugees is morally wrong as long as there is a single person in America who is homeless, and that the best solution to all issues in the Middle East is simply to, and I quote, "carpet bomb them until they surrender". He compared this to the problem with FARC in Colombia and said he was still angry that the Colombian government hadn't simply bombed FARC until they gave up.

Basically he supports Trump not because he's a follower who has been taken under Trump's spell, but because Trump is saying aloud everything he thinks.
posted by sotonohito at 12:13 PM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


I didn't ask if he was concerned that, as a brown skinned guy with a thick Spanish accent, he might be treated badly by other Trump supporters.
posted by sotonohito at 12:16 PM on December 22, 2015


If we say “the rich deserve their money,” we're conceding that wealth belongs wherever it ends up, irrespective of how it got there

No, because “rich” is an extremely nebulous category that may or may not encompass people who got their wealth illegitimately, bearing in mind that notions of legitimacy and illegitimacy are subjective as well. That’s not to say that this one interpretation isn’t possible, just that I don’t think it cuts much ice in convincing folks who disagree.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:18 PM on December 22, 2015


Even the military?

Yep. See the freak out over Jade Helm.


This sort of freak-out only occurs when the wrong person is President. There is very much a distinction between the "military" and "leadership" which has become traitorous or otherwise unAmerican.

Basically he supports Trump not because he's a follower who has been taken under Trump's spell, but because Trump is saying aloud everything he thinks.

That's what freaks out the Frums of the RP: when Nixon launched his "Southern strategy" it was about appealing to segregationist Democrats in the general election. Ditto for evangelicals and Reagan. Now, after 40 odd years, those voters have moved into the party and it's not about code words any more. They want both direct speech to their beliefs and power *within* the RP. They don't want to be kept in the closet.
posted by ennui.bz at 12:29 PM on December 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


Yeah, the Republicans have spent 40 years whipping these people into a lather to win votes and at the same time screwing them over economically. Now they've finally boiled over and the party bigwigs have the fucking gall to wring their hands over the mess they've made?
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:07 PM on December 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


Trump has the media presence to say crazy things and get invited back to say more crazy shit the next week, and people love a "no-nonsense truth-talker,"

I used to wonder what would happen if we had a no-nonsense, truth-talking Democrat run for President -- a loud-and-proud proponent of Democratic values as opposed to the meek, feckless, Republican-lite, triangulating, DLC-type Democrat we've endured for decades, who seem to have bought into, will-they-or-nill-they, the Republican project to make "liberal" a dirty word.

Well, now we have Bernie Sanders -- an FDR-style Democrat, as opposed to Barack Obama, an Eisenhower Republican who was labeled, of all things, a socialist -- and now we know: The media that can't get enough of Donald Trump all but completely ignores him.
posted by Gelatin at 1:14 PM on December 22, 2015 [19 favorites]


The problem with the left is that there are dozens of types of racisms- and indeed- types of bigotries, and for some reason despite having set up the academic framework to dive into all of them it seems like a lot of liberals- especially of the educated white middle-to-upper-middle-class American type- seem to jump into Manichaean black-and-white conflicts. Trump has undoubtedly said prejudiced and racist things. However, being racist isn't some sort of automatic marker that turns someone into a villainous stereotype- a hooded Klan or a jackbooted Nazi- that is automatically to be ostracized, ignored, and completely discarded. You don't always have the luxury of being able to do that. The transitive property of politics, or perhaps guilt by association, is used by liberals and conservatives alike, and lead to all sorts of problematic things such as purity tests, or strawmanning the opposition, and most of all not having the empathy to understand your fellow man.

And a more specific lesson from the two Trump supporter anecdotes above: minorities can be, and often are, just as racist or racially insensitive as majorities are. Not all minority groups are in the same situation, and indeed many minorities have animosities, or at least indifference, towards each others' plights. Not taking this into account makes you worse at dealing with the problem.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:17 PM on December 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


Well, now we have Bernie Sanders -- an FDR-style Democrat, as opposed to Barack Obama, an Eisenhower Republican who was labeled, of all things, a socialist -- and now we know: The media that can't get enough of Donald Trump all but completely ignores him.

Why settle for an angry person when you can have an angry person who says racist things? In a different year, Sanders would be outré - and he certainly will be if he gets out of the primaries. This year, he’s nothing special.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:31 PM on December 22, 2015


Trigger Warning: huge up close photo of Ted Cruz
posted by Damienmce at 1:35 PM on December 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


If you're going to be making accusations of strawmanning, beginning your comment with "the problem with the left" and then continuing with evidence-free misrepresentations of other comments probably isn't the best way to prove that. Particularly when you posted the FPP.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:37 PM on December 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


It seems inevitable that we will have the Trump Presidency in the style of Belisconi in Italy and Putin in Russia. God have mercy on us.
posted by humanfont at 2:23 PM on December 22, 2015


The problem with the left is that there are dozens of types of racisms- and indeed- types of bigotries, and for some reason despite having set up the academic framework to dive into all of them it seems like a lot of liberals- especially of the educated white middle-to-upper-middle-class American type- seem to jump into Manichaean black-and-white conflicts.

Leftists are not necessarily liberals, and liberals are not necessarily leftists. The kind of people Phil Ochs was mocking in "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" are of course less interested in thinking critically about the complexity of race and ethnicity as socially-mediated boundaries; if you look, you will find lots of good academic literature on those complexities. But most people are not academics, even amongst we left-wing malcontents.
posted by clockzero at 2:24 PM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Is he really unable to see that "deserving" is code for white and "undeserving" means non-white? I wouldn't describe it as subtle.

You should probably sit down with a white single mother sometime and listen to some tales. Or, increasingly, a poor white person who has lost their job (lazy, obviously) a white person dealing with drug problems or mental health issues (insufficient willpower), or a white veteran with PTSD (not patriotic enough). Racism is a massive factor, but it is one of several vectors by which people are ranked, and increasingly there seems to be a sort of bastardized pseudo-Calvinist link between worldly success and presumed moral virtue. Or just a ritualized expulsion of the unlucky or weak to prevent contamination.

I like the Frum piece. He's wrong on some points, but he makes a coherent case for a real division between the party elite and the grassroots, which has been something a lot of liberal/Left commentators refused to do for quite some time (the astroturf origins of the Tea Party being a particular talking point). I agree that he doesn't seem to be shilling for any particular group - he's certainly not in favor of the populist conservative call for more and more racist immigration policies, but he recognizes that the elite's attempts to integrate either immigration liberalization or its opposite into the party platform is an attempt to compensate for deeper economic and social failures. Wall Street can handle more or less immigration, it doesn't really threaten them either way.

A while ago I was reading Francis Fukuyama's most recent book on Political Order and Political Decay (my stupid browser won't let me use the link button, for some reason), in which he points out that up through the early to mid 1900s politics in America had a very strong retail flavor - it was about constituencies trying to get a hold of the government apparatus (local, state, national) in order to improve their own lives and chances. With the growth of a postwar affluence, space grew for ideological politics - you support politicians not because they will look out for your economic interests - because you feel more secure now and able to look out for yourself economically, whether or not that's actually true - but because you share values or views on public policy.

I wonder whether the steady receding of that affluence from the working and lower middle classes is going to lead to a reconstruction of politics along those older lines. It's about protecting you and yours (however you define "your" group) in competition with everyone else, with government functioning not as something you approve of or disapprove of "in principle" but a tool you seek to control because it's loss endangers you. And I feel like there's an element of that in Frum's analysis. The Tea Party isn't opposed to government acting in their interests, rather they're actively trying to force the Republican Party and the Federal government to place their economic interests above those they see as in competition with them, groups which include can include nonwhite citizens, immigrants, political opponents (white liberals, the Left), and also a corrupt class of professional politicians and ultra-rich employers.

Frum mentions at a couple point the fact that we're seeing something similar playing out in Europe - many of the areas that UKIP in Britain and the National Front in France are targeting or succeeding in flipping to their electoral column have been traditional strongholds of Labour or socialist parties in those countries. It's small-p populism trading on the identification of an "international" class of the rich, the politically well-connected ("Brussels" is the way it's often shorthanded over there) and an "international" threat of immigration, terrorism, multiculturalism. That lens seems strange to liberals and Leftists for whom racists, nationalists and rich capitalists are all "on the same side" (because they are all groups that they find horrific), but as a vision it makes sense to many people whose experience over the past thirty years is of a simultaneous loss of economic security and affluence and the loss of a culture which took the unquestioned supremacy of their cultural values for granted.
posted by AdamCSnider at 2:57 PM on December 22, 2015 [14 favorites]


Well, now we have Bernie Sanders -- an FDR-style Democrat, as opposed to Barack Obama, an Eisenhower Republican who was labeled, of all things, a socialist

It's easy for Sanders to get angry. It shows he is passionate, and cares what he's talking about, and is authentic. If Obama ever got angry he'd be called divisive, resentful, and unAmerican. Remember when Obama showed a bit of annoyance when Gates got arrested? Glenn Beck then said he hates white people.
posted by FJT at 2:59 PM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Jesus, republicans are whigging the fuck out.
posted by clavdivs at 3:01 PM on December 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


Maybe Sangermaine will one day write the epic tale about the mind of David Frum. Were he already his homunculus this would obviously have been a much better written piece!
posted by nofundy at 3:29 PM on December 22, 2015


That's the best article I have seen on what ails the Republican Party. This stuff has been brewing for a very, very, very long time. And thanks to the Republican elite and its hubris, we wound up with Trump.

I am grateful that this is a year my family is NOT INVOLVED.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 4:09 PM on December 22, 2015


(I know that at least for some of these folks there is racism involved, but not for all and I think not for most, really. They are security driven and they see their security threatened, big time.)
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 4:11 PM on December 22, 2015


Right wing voters have finally figured out they are being baited and switched, and they are supporting Trump as a form of protest. The bait has always been cultural issues. The switch has always been neoconservatism. The base wants no part of neoconservatism. They are flat out rejecting it. They don't want free trade. They don't want interventionism. They don't want more tax cuts for the rich. They don't want more work visas for big business. Whether Trump wins the nomination or not, neocons are finished as major players in the Republican party. There is no going back to the post 9-11 "good old days".
posted by Beholder at 4:13 PM on December 22, 2015


Half of Trump’s supporters within the GOP had stopped their education at or before high-school graduation, according to the polling firm YouGov. Only 19 percent had a college or postcollege degree.
And the Trump supporter anecdotes above suggest at least a similar cognitive state. Critical thinking? Not so much. Ability to discern more objective truth from obvious pandering, subjective, and ultimately illogical falsehoods? Sorry, no.

I think the article has some good insights into legitimate concerns and fears of the Republican base, or Trump supporters, or whatever label you wish to apply this week. But the confounding viability of their ridiculous chosen outlet of resolution is rooted entirely in the ease with which they're swayed by patently emotional appeals that run orthogonal to reason.

The foundering education of our populace is the single biggest threat to long-term national security in this country. Its erosion/stagnation over generations is what's created (or sustained) such a large portion of the population who can be swayed into supporting leaders and policies that are 180 degrees from their best interests. It's what renders people incapable of digging down even one layer on statements and positions that clearly can't stand up to scrutiny—and that allows an ever more emboldened media to simply parrot the same, for nothing more than their own financial gain. It's almost singularly responsible for the vicious cycle of anti-intellectualism. And, to paraphrase one of the anecdotes above, it's what allows an unimaginative political dilettante like Donald Trump to suggest simply tearing down and paving over everything he doesn't like—and for that to seem like a perfectly good approach to fixing the large-scale problems facing our nation.

It's all possible because there are large numbers of people in this country who simply can't think straight. It impacts perspective, reasoning, economic opportunity—all very negatively. So many vicious cycles, straight to the bottom of the barrel. It's depressing.
posted by Brak at 4:17 PM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Right wing voters have finally figured out they are being baited and switched, and they are supporting Trump as a form of protest.

Are we living on the same planet? How is it a protest against their exploitation to support the election of a billionaire would-be autocrat who has no sensible policy positions, can't speak a single sentence without lying twice and insulting whole swathes of the country, and supports policies that would make their lives worse? Wouldn't it be a much more radical protest, as well as a service to their actual fucking interests, to support Bernie Sanders? He's the only one who has even suggested that the working poor and formerly-middle-class need to get back some of what the plutocrats have been stealing from us for the past few decades. If they're so fed up with the Republican Party, with politics as usual, with the same old crap from the people who obviously don't have their backs, why are they loyal to the party above absolutely everything else?
posted by clockzero at 4:24 PM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Because they see Bernie Sanders as a socialist, and that is still a dirty word in their circles.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 4:30 PM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Trigger Warning: huge up close photo of Ted Cruz Grandpa Munster

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know; it's petty and only debases the conversations etc.

But seriously, there is something uncanny about his face.
posted by Panjandrum at 4:32 PM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Because, from their point of view, Bernie Sanders is going to implement communism and redistribute their wealth to minorities and immigrants. Because they have not actually heard anything Bernie Sanders have said, other than soundbites and quotes from their chosen media outlets. Because the Republican Party is full of weaklings and sellouts, but the Democratic Party is full of cultural Marxists and terrorist-sympathizers. Because reality broke sometime during Bush v. Gore and everything in American politics since has been all the king's horses and all the king's men picking up the shards and breaking them into smaller pieces.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:32 PM on December 22, 2015 [9 favorites]


clockzero: you seem to be making the mistake - over and over again - of expecting people's political expressions to be coherent.
posted by nicolas.bray at 5:03 PM on December 22, 2015


I think the more our culture treats politics as being about about who we are as people--our personal identities, rather than about ideas, reasoning, or facts--the more we treat it like it's a team sport where the main point isn't the policies and the outcomes of those policies, but only winning, with our political commitments all bound up with our social identities, the less coherent our political views will keep getting. But I don't know the solution because the issues often are deeply personal. I also think we have marketers, new personalization technologies, and so much other shit messing around and playing games with our senses of personal identity, our whole society's in a pretty serious identity crisis. But I'm probably a crackpot, so YMMV.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:57 PM on December 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


clockzero: you seem to be making the mistake - over and over again - of expecting people's political expressions to be coherent.

Well first off let me thank you for so gamely stepping in to disabuse me of that naive conviction. In all my years of graduate study, I somehow never had that theoretical piety questioned! I'm almost flabbergasted.

I don't expect political expression to be coherent. I do expect explanations of political trends to be, however.
posted by clockzero at 5:59 PM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


The Freedom Caucus, Ryan Lizza
Nunes, who is the chairman of the House Committee on Intelligence, told me that the biggest change he’s seen since he arrived in Congress, in 2002, is the rise of online media outlets and for-profit groups that spread what he views as bad, sometimes false information, which House members then feel obliged to address. The change has transformed Nunes from one of the most conservative members of Congress to one of the biggest critics of the Freedom Caucus and its tactics.

“I used to spend ninety per cent of my constituent response time on people who call, e-mail, or send a letter, such as, ‘I really like this bill, H.R. 123,’ and they really believe in it because they heard about it through one of the groups that they belong to, but their view was based on actual legislation,” Nunes said. “Ten per cent were about ‘Chemtrails from airplanes are poisoning me’ to every other conspiracy theory that’s out there. And that has essentially flipped on its head.” The overwhelming majority of his constituent mail is now about the far-out ideas, and only a small portion is “based on something that is mostly true.” He added, “It’s dramatically changed politics and politicians, and what they’re doing.”
Why conspiracy theories flourish on the right references Conspiracy Endorsement as Motivated Reasoning: The Moderating Roles of Political Knowledge and Trust
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:08 PM on December 22, 2015 [9 favorites]


"deserving" is code for white and "undeserving" means non-white? I wouldn't describe it as subtle.
posted by Horace Rumpole


Out here in the whitebread part of the country, undeserving generally means tweakers and their support system, girlfriends in section 8 housing, etc. Sharing prenatal WIC food with junkies really doesn't go over well at all.

Some Tea Partiers are flat-out racists, and others are heartless social-darwinists. I'm old, but the only thing I really want back is being able to tell the boss " Fuck you. I was looking for a job when I found this one." and have a new job that payed pretty good too the next week.

My kid's friends have no idea how cool it was to work in a tight labor market. 31 hour work weeks? Clock out and then do clean up? Listen to voting "advise"? Fuck all that. I feel sorry for kid punching a clock today.
posted by ridgerunner at 8:24 PM on December 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


Query: partition Trump and his billions, Whatta got?
posted by clavdivs at 9:02 PM on December 22, 2015


Are we living on the same planet? How is it a protest

I didn't say it was logical. Trump is seen as the firebrand outsider who won't be beholden to the rich Republican donors. That's the narrative, and he's also reveling in a lot of the establishment media going after him, such as National Review.

I'm certainly not voting for him. Sanders is my choice, but let's be honest about this. Trump's a right wing populist, not a neocon. He won't embrace the GOP party line on immigration, free trade, work visas, or military interventionism, so he's as close to anti establishment as a Republican is ever going to get. Of course he might also be lying about all of those issues. He does have a long distinguished history of being a bullshit artist.
posted by Beholder at 9:40 PM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I know that at least for some of these folks there is racism involved, but not for all and I think not for most, really. They are security driven and they see their security threatened, big time ...

... by people of other races.
posted by JackFlash at 12:53 AM on December 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Well first off let me thank you for so gamely stepping in to disabuse me of that naive conviction. In all my years of graduate study, I somehow never had that theoretical piety questioned! I'm almost flabbergasted.

I'm not sure what the point of bringing up your years of graduate study is supposed to be. One other thing that you might have observed during those years of graduate study is that it doesn't magically cure people of having incorrect ideas of how the world works.

I don't expect political expression to be coherent. I do expect explanations of political trends to be, however.

I'm not sure what the difference is supposed to be in this context. People (Frum and others) have been saying, "People are supporting Trump because of [whatever]" and you've been responding, "That makes no sense!". Yes, it makes no sense. People support Trump for reasons that make no sense. That's almost a tautology.

If you don't actually think that's a reason to object to what people are saying, I don't understand why you keep doing it.
posted by nicolas.bray at 2:05 PM on December 23, 2015


I'm not sure what the point of bringing up your years of graduate study is supposed to be.

I regret that the meaning was unclear. I meant to make it clear that your suggestion was obvious to me, and that you perhaps shouldn't assume that any given interlocutor isn't aware of what you're about to say.

One other thing that you might have observed during those years of graduate study is that it doesn't magically cure people of having incorrect ideas of how the world works.

You're right, of course. It is not magical.

I'm not sure what the difference is supposed to be in this context. People (Frum and others) have been saying, "People are supporting Trump because of [whatever]" and you've been responding, "That makes no sense!". Yes, it makes no sense. People support Trump for reasons that make no sense. That's almost a tautology.

Frum is not saying "here's why people support Trump," at least I don't read it that way. He's saying "Given the apparent divisions within the party, here's an explanation of where those come from." One component of his explanation is the idea that people are supporting Trump because they feel frustrated with the influence the wealthy have over everyone else, that there's a revolt against "organized money," and that support for Trump is symptomatic of this. That's the part I think is incoherent and inaccurate, and that was the viewpoint Beholder echoed earlier.

I'm not insisting that people must have a strictly rational orientation to political viewpoints and engagement. But if we want to say that people are "in revolt" and are splitting the GOP in half because they're opposed to plutocracy, or that there's a "class war" going on, it's worth asking whether this is the most useful explanation of something like the Trump ascendancy. I think it's a supremely unconvincing explanation. There is of course a class war going on, but it's waged along lines like race and gender rather than being staged between formerly-middle-class White middle-aged folks and the 1%.
posted by clockzero at 8:06 PM on December 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Charles P. Pierce in Esquire has some thoughts:
As far as I am concerned, David Frum has not cleaned anywhere near enough bedpans at Walter Reed to be allowed back in polite political society. So you will have to forgive me if I fail to join the general chorus celebrating the brilliance of the lengthy weeper he's penned for The Atlantic about the "civil war" in the Republican party, and how that conflict has produced the phenomenon of Donald Trump. As regards Middle East policy, and domestic security measures, Trump hasn't said anything on the stump that Frum and Perle didn't say first in their book, except without the schlongs.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:17 PM on December 24, 2015 [7 favorites]


Trump is (sadly) more anti-war than Hillary, given that he has not actually participated in any drone action, and the article is surprisingly light on any mention of foreign policy in terms of war- it does mention immigration quite a bit, and Frum is certainly suspect on that. However, all of this "neener neener Frum is a neocon, his views are invalid" are classic examples of ad hominem. He may have been murderously wrong on the state of Iraqi internecine warfare, but the FPP is about GOP sectarian violence.

That said, the Pierce article actually offers more than the blurb above would suggest.

That said, the fundamental flaw in Frum's analysis of the effects of the prion disease on the Republican party is that history somehow begins in 2008, with the election of Barack Obama, or in 2010, when the people in their infinite wisdom elected the second-worst Congress of all time. By placing the beginning of the "civil war" in that period of time, Frum not only dodges his own responsibility for promoting the bad policies of a bad president, he also enables himself to see the rise of He, Trump as a recent phenomenon, rather that the logical end point of all the prior manifestations of the prion disease that first took hold when the party ate the monkeybrains to elect Ronald Reagan in 1980. The book Frum and Perle wrote when they were flying high was a symptom, too.

Pierce is right to point out that the Republican approach to courting division and madness is something that predates 2008, it actually probably predates Reagan and goes all the way back to Nixon and the Southern Strategy. That said, he is missing the point of 2008: the Great Recession and the clear beginning of the end of the American Dream As We Know It for the once-dominant Middle Americans. He later goes on to makes good points about how the article minimizes the culpability of the Bush administration and its boosters, but he misses the point:

The reason why Trump embodies a "rebellion against the power of organized money" doesn't have to be something based on real facts and policy, but the appearance of it. Think about the media narrative so far- Trump is at war with the establishment. He is against the donors who back Rubio and the Bush dynasty and pissed away millions on Walker. He's dropping truth bombs at debates about how he himself played their game by being a donor. There's rumors of a brokered convention, that the party will go back to its smokey rooms and shadowy operators to eliminate Trump as the nominee, even if he gets the votes for it. Portrayed thusly, Trump sure looks like a rebellion against organized GOP money, against the powers-that-be. Sadly, Pierce's namedropping of Steve Forbes and Citizens United, of Glass-Stegall and Jon Huntsman, is too substantiative. The average Trump supporter is dimly aware of few if not none of those topics, but it doesn't matter. Trump has played an insurgent role all along, and the media has dutifully helped to give him the ample coverage to shape that characterization.

It's all well and good for Pierce to make a few cutting jabs at the washed up neoconservative movement- never mind that the eight years demonstrated adequately that military-industrial-surveillance complex belongs to no party, but instead guides all- but the "Republican civil war" is something that should also worry those outside of it. His failure to see Trump's rise as a genuine populist phenomenon, even if the populism contains ideas that he sees as wrong and harmful, is worrying. When western liberals and the left dismiss Trump as a creation of GOP policies, they overlook the populism that drives his popularity. Remember Weimar.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:05 PM on December 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


He may have been murderously wrong on the state of Iraqi internecine warfare, but the FPP is about GOP sectarian violence.

I hope you don't mean to draw an equivalence between Iraqi sectarian violence, which has killed thousands and has displaced thousands more - never mind the American invasion and occupation which unleashed it, which Frum, a hack among scores of others, urged on with great enthusiasm - and powerful Republicans saying mean things about each other in public.

It's all well and good for Pierce to make a few cutting jabs at the washed up neoconservative movement-

Man, I wish my movement were so washed up that I could minimize its crimes to wide acclaim in a major national magazine.

When western liberals and the left dismiss Trump as a creation of GOP policies, they overlook the populism that drives his popularity.

When liberals and leftists point out that Trump's campaign has its origins in Republican policies, it isn't to dismiss Trump, but to attack the Republican Party for having fomented the right-wing populist stupidity on which his campaign thrives. Either that, or it's to point out the other Republican candidates' similarities to Trump despite their superficially more moderate rhetoric.

Remember Weimar.

I'm sure it's nice, but I've never been there.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:51 PM on December 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


I hope you don't mean to draw an equivalence between Iraqi sectarian violence, which has killed thousands and has displaced thousands more - never mind the American invasion and occupation which unleashed it, which Frum, a hack among scores of others, urged on with great enthusiasm - and powerful Republicans saying mean things about each other in public.

Both are examples of muddled civil conflict over seemingly arcane and pointless ideological tribalism to an outside observer, actually belie serious long-term ramifications that will upset not only the organization in question, but the greater world external to it.

Man, I wish my movement were so washed up that I could minimize its crimes to wide acclaim in a major national magazine.

Given that the current administration, and GOP hopefuls both in the current election and in the last one have been able to call for more war regardless of the presence of Kristol and co. in power, it seems that regretfully that we do not need neocons to be in power for militarism, both realists and jingoists will do. Malthus is as insatiable as Mammon.

When liberals and leftists point out that Trump's campaign has its origins in Republican policies, it isn't to dismiss Trump, but to attack the Republican Party for having fomented the right-wing populist stupidity on which his campaign thrives. Either that, or it's to point out the other Republican candidates' similarities to Trump despite their superficially more moderate rhetoric.

The jury is still out on how important Trump is or dismissible he is. The point though is that regardless of who started the fire, right-wing populism is an important threat to American civil society and must be answered.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:41 PM on December 26, 2015


Can right-wing populism be stopped? "White working class populists cannot be bought off with redistribution or regulation"*
posted by kliuless at 12:21 AM on December 29, 2015 [2 favorites]


Excellent links. From a reply Tweet to the second one:

"Sympathy for the (blue-eyed) devil" by Chris Ladd at GOPLifer

For all his many insights, [Martin Luther] King seems to have failed to perceive what professor Derrick Bell would describe thirty years later. In the strictest sense, blue collar white workers were not voting against their interest by supporting racist politicians. They were rallying around their last tie to a form of racial solidarity that for centuries had delivered meaningful, material rewards. Voters in the Kentucky counties most desperately dependent on the welfare state voted overwhelmingly for Romney in 2012 and elected a Tea Party extremist Governor in 2015. By the same logic, that cohort of voters is flocking to Donald Trump and ignoring Bernie Sanders.

...

As the knowledge economy shifts into second gear it is fueling greater and greater variation in incomes. Those with the education, positioning and drive to get in the game have a chance to reap inordinately large payoffs. Those who do not compete successfully get less than in the past. It is an economy of extremes. That thick layer of predictable, middle income jobs is thinning steadily.

An obvious solution might be to deliver a basic level of income and lifestyle for everyone, without regard for old concerns about “need.” Pay for it with taxes on the higher earners who made it into the express lanes of the knowledge economy. Those who want to reap the rewards of the knowledge economy will be free to do so. Those who either don’t want that high-pressure, high-speed lifestyle, or for some reason cannot perform there, will be prevented from falling into penury.

One glaring political problem blocks this move. A large minority of US voters who might seem like the prime beneficiaries of this reform are determined not to go there. Lower income whites, especially in the South, are not interested in a new deal. They want to restore the old one.

...

Want to convince lower income white Americans that they are voting against their interests? Explain how you can offer them something better than white supremacy. When we understand what white supremacy actually delivered for these folks, the scale of our challenge in building a just post-racial society becomes evident.

Perhaps King failed to recognize the depth of the challenge he faced in trying to forge an alliance with lower income whites. That said King didn’t become an American secular saint by setting modest goals. No one who is serious about challenging racism in America should ignore the structural, functional importance of bigotry.

...

Until we address this imbalance we will continue to be hounded by populist politicians profiting from fear and hate. The longer we ignore the problem, the more powerful will be our reckoning. This devil will have his due.

posted by Apocryphon at 10:10 AM on December 29, 2015


“When Fascism Was American,” Joe Allen, Jacobin, 29 December 2015
Before Donald Trump, there was Father Charles Coughlin, who popularized fascism for Americans in the 1930s.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:54 PM on December 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


I find it telling, as an indication of where the Overton Window currently rests, that in an article about the growing threat of nationalist, xenophobic, proto-fascist, populism on the right the "liberal" solutions proposed are a tiny handful of tinkering at the edges of the tax code style token proposals that will not address the core problem.

No, of fucking course the right wing populists won't be bought off by some penny ante done purely for show tinkering with the fucking tax code. They know, as much as the people on the left know, that the economy is designed to harm them, and that a bit of symbolic, cosmetic, tinkering with the tax code won't do jack shit to fix the problem. That sort of milquetoast, plutocracy in disguise, trying to buy off the plebes for a few table scraps, approach won't work.

The reason why so many people are flocking to the right wing populism around the world is because it's simple, sure. But also because it is the only thing being proposed that isn't just more of the same in disguise.

Trump, Le Pen, Farage, etc, are popular and getting support because they are offering something that, at least on the surface, sounds like it might be a true change, a real break from the status quo of policies that do nothing but continually redistribute wealth from them to the elites.

If the left wants to survive, and if we'd like to have a nation that doesn't decend into a hellhole of fascist/nationalist evil, it needs to start real liberal alternatives to the status quo.

That's why I think Clinton will win, and in winning set up America for the next Trump to sweep in a neo-fascist storm. Because Clinton represents the status quo, she's the politician by, of, and for, the bankers and the other 0.01%. And right now, America isn't ready to elect a fascist.

But after 8 years of Clinton selling America out to the 0.01%, I think America may well be ready to elect a fascist. And that terrifies me.

What really disturbs me is that clearly I'm not the smartest person in the room, and if I'm seeing a rise in populist fascism due to economic abuse then other, smarter, people must be seeing that as well. So why the fuck is Clinton basically doing everything she possibly can to assure that the America that comes after her will be a fascist hellhole? Does she know something I don't? Is she just planning to flee the country after she helps loot it a little more?

Even Sanders, much as I think he's better at really addressing the problem, isn't a radical enough solution to avoid the right wing populist machine. He wants to tinker more with the system, but he isn't willing to go far enough to advocate the sort of radical economic changes that need to be made to end the threat of right wing populism leading to fascism.

Right this second twenty individual people have more money than 50% of the American population. that, right there, is why Trump is getting his level of support. The Trumpists are too besotted with xenophobia and nationalistic BS to recognize the true cause of their misery, but that's the cause, and that's what will (if Clinton wins and keeps on draining money from everyone else to feed the hoarding psychosis of the elites as she seems so hellbent on doing) usher in the new era of American fascism.

To stop that we need major, real, change. We need to break up the massive corporations, we need to institute a gigantic tax increase on the elites, we need an estate tax that takes 90% or more of the money from billionaires, we need a functional universal basic income, and universal health care, and if we don't get that then the next Trump style politician will win in a landslide.
posted by sotonohito at 7:18 AM on December 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


Trump, Le Pen, Farage, etc, are popular and getting support because they are offering something that, at least on the surface, sounds like it might be a true change

A simpler theory is just that lots of white people are horrifically racist.

Another big change between now and, say, 1970 or 1980 in the US anyway is that the immigration rate and foreign-born population are both vastly higher than they were, and immigrants are much less white than they were in the 1950s-1970s.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:31 AM on December 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


What really disturbs me is that clearly I'm not the smartest person in the room, and if I'm seeing a rise in populist fascism due to economic abuse then other, smarter, people must be seeing that as well.

Alternately: other, smarter people in the room are seeing the problem in a different way and thus are trying to solve it with different methods.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:45 AM on December 30, 2015


ROU_Xenophobe, of course a lot of white people are horrifically racist. Thus their eagerness to jump onto the "blame brown people" bandwagon when it comes to their economic problems.

But people think in narrative terms, and right now the only side offering a narrative about the economic problems is the right wing. They offer a nice, simple, easy to understand narrative with a nice fill in the blank at the end that allows any bigot, regardless of their specific bigotry to join in the narrative:

White people are naturally entitled to economic success. Clearly a lot of white people aren't getting economic success. Therefore someone must be STEALING the economic success you white people deserve! Its the hippies/communists/socialists/unions/liberals/college professors/homosexuals/black people/Mexicans/foreigners in general/insert any random group despised by the right wing here.

Mostly that means "black people and/or foreigners", because hey that's nice and easy and a bigotry shared almost universally by the right wing.

But the problem here is that the left counters, not with a narrative based on truth, but at most with milquetoast plans to eventually, after a great deal of consideration, maybe nibble a bit at the edge in the most wonkish possible way. Plans that put you to sleep after the first ten seconds of listening because they are, at heart, total bullshit and designed specifically not to solve the problem, but to provide the vague appearance of doing something while, in fact, accomplishing nothing.

So is it any surprise that the giant mushy majority of the country is inclining towards the side with the narrative?

If the left were actually pushing a counter-narrative they could actually counter the threat of right wing populism pretty effectively. As a society we've built up a tremendous amount of social pressure against open racism, that's holding back the right wing populists but crumbling quickly as problems get worse.

Conveniently the only real counter narrative available to the left is the one based on the truth, which is that we're all poorer because the richest of the rich are hoarding all the money.

But even Sanders isn't really pushing that one. Clinton won't touch it, she's never been anything but an activist for the elites and their money hoarding. But even Sanders, the "socialist" won't get behind the truth that people are doing badly because all the money is being hoarded by the ultra rich.

Racism explains a lot of the appeal of Trump and right wing populism in general. But not all of it. People need stories, narratives, to explain things. And right now only one side has any narrative at all.
posted by sotonohito at 2:07 PM on December 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


I think the informational and sophistication requirements for the kind of thinking you're describing are too high for the common or garden variety Trump supporter.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:21 PM on December 30, 2015 [1 favorite]




I think the informational and sophistication requirements for the kind of thinking you're describing are too high for the common or garden variety Trump supporter.

This willful caricaturing of entire segments of the electorate as hopeless fools is not what we need.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:59 PM on January 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Apocryphon: “This willful caricaturing of entire segments of the electorate as hopeless fools is not what we need.”
Quite right, of course. On the other hand…

“Real Time Interviews NJ Tea Partiers Who Can't Name Which Government Programs Should Be Cut,” Crooks and Liars, 22 March 2013
posted by ob1quixote at 8:03 AM on January 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


This willful caricaturing of entire segments of the electorate as hopeless fools is not what we need.

Nor should the willful miseducation of 50 years ago be discounted. Coming out of a large district-small school, I was shocked to later learn that some districts taught lobbying in high school.
posted by ridgerunner at 12:16 PM on January 2, 2016




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