I’ve been forever trying to puzzle through Republican hysteria. There are a thousand articles trying to explain the Trumpist mindset, because it’s baffling and immediate. Here are the basic tenets of Trump-era conservatism as I see it.
- Everything important was accomplished by straight, white men.
- You deserve to be wealthy. You aren’t because people are stealing from you.
- A cabal of others is trying to take away your way of life.
- Your world is simple. People who act like things are complex are trying to fool you.
Everthing important was accomplished by straight, white men.
This isn’t new. Trump introduced it with a new swagger and contempt, but this is very much in the basic mindset. If I’m being honest, this point isn’t very different from what I believed, and I’m still in the process of having parts of this mindset peeled away.
You deserve to be wealthy. You aren’t because people are stealing from you.
The fall of the middle class is an undeniable fact. I think Trump’s biggest success is co-opting this, which was a liberal talking point since Reagan.
A cabal of others is trying to steal your way of life.
Republicans have always had a big part of their base who were crazy conspiracy theoriests. When I was in High School, immediate fear of a possible invasion from communist countries was really strong. It’s a lot more clear how deranged this is because the cabaL has changed, and basically, it includes me.
By believing covid is a serious disease that warrants quarantine, by saying the new sweep of voting restrictions will stop a hundred times as many valid votes as it will stop fraudulent ones, by writing this blog entry, I am part of the enemy. If this article got widely read, I’d get the rash of death threats to prove this particular point.
I think Fox News is central to the problem here. The station has become an essential part of the Republican party. Neither one can now survive without the other. Fox News is an entertainment enterprise, and survives by the rule of entertainment that the stakes always have to be greater. If Fox says the Democratic party stole an election in 2020, they have to say something worse in 2022 or 2024. Otherwise, it’d be like having a sequel to a movie about the fate of the universe be about who wins a bowling tournament.
The world is simple. People who act like things are complex are trying to fool you.
I’ve seen what I’d call “weaponized ignorance” for as long as I’ve been aware of politics, but it’s explicit and central to Trump’s policy. He didn’t know the first thing about the economy or the federal government. He didn’t want to know, and he didn’t think there was anything to know.
In all these ideas, there’s a core of false comfort, a sweet surrender. I can trust straight white men, which is good because they’re heavily overrepresented in government. Maybe there was racism in the past, but none of it lead, for for instance, to the equity of my house. I should have more. Global warming sounds extreme. It must not be true. Even terror of Antinfa and Critical Race Theory can sound reassuring compared to people sleepwalking into peril because they won’t look at evidence.
Shortly before I started hitting keys for this, I thought about what the points would be for liberals, and it took me aback:
- Historical injustice has a huge impact, and you might have benefitted from it.
- Everyone deserves fair pay. They aren’t because the system in rigged.
- There are people everywhere who need and deserve help.
- The end of humanity is imminent.
Historical injustice has a huge impact, and you might have benefitted from it
Every time one of these points say, “You”, there’s an asterisk. In this one, “you” definitely includes me, Sam Jones, white male descendant of slave owners. Awareness of privilege is painful. I’m loosing a tiny slice of it as I get older, and it’s making me aware of how much I still have.
Everyone deserves fair pay. They aren’t because the system is rigged.
I’m not the first person to notice that a lot of the things the Tea Party said were really similar to Occupy Wall Street. There are sentences in Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’s speeches that could be switched without anyone noticing.
The messaging is a little different, more based on solidarity and less on individual ambitions.
There are people everywhere who need and deserve help.
I can’t dispute this statement, but honestly, it’s hard to hear so often. I understand why someone would want to sink into the idea that people get what they deserve.
The end of humanity is imminent.
This isn’t in Biden’s campaign literature, but if I’m going to include “a cabal of others is trying to steal your way of life” because it’s what you hear if you follow conservative Twitter. This is what you hear if you follow liberal Twitter.
All the conservative points I listed are things where I understand why they’re appealing. I’m trying to understand that viewpoint, but I want to be clear. I hate the conservative viewpoints, and, in my heart of hearts, wish harm upon those who hold them.
This, however, is something I can’t blame anyone for looking away from, even if the evidence pointed to it. And evidence doesn’t point to the end of humanity. It points near it, but there’s a lot of things. Maybe we won’t hold the line at 1.5 degrees like the Paris Climate Accords suggested, but maybe we’ll stay below 4 degress, which is where ecologists don’t know how people will survive.
I think pessimism is a bigger wound in the progressive cause than incivility. Extreme poverty is falling fast. People are becoming aware of racism. The voting laws are an outrage, but they’re a sign that some very awful people see the writing on the wall. It’s becoming cheaper to build a solar farm than maintain a coal mine.
And we’re beating a pandemic. We could have done better than 600,000 dead, but it’s looking like we could have lost 3-5 million if corona virus ran rampant. We managed that with a completely corrupt and unprepared president. In the wake, we’re seeing vaccines being tested for AIDS and Malaria.
So reject the false comforts and remember the real ones.
