As the ideologically-driven economics profession gradually assumed dominance across the country, economist Paul Craig Roberts, who trained through a part of this period, reflects, "At four of the world's best universities that I attended, the opinion was that competition in the free market would prevent great disparities in the distribution of income and wealth. As I was to learn, this belief was based on an ideology, not on reality."
Fanatics are nothing if not exhaustingly thorough. Republicans handling the Party and its platform were long ago nothing if not fanatical, only to discover that fanaticism was itself the formula for success. The American underclass neither knows nor cares that Hitler and Mussolini campaigned on progressive platforms in order to win elections in nominal democracies. Telling them this receives blank stares. But the vast majority of Republicans doubtless know it, and it doesn't produce so much as a wrinkled brow. The iron-clad logic of fanaticism becomes, at full tilt, sheer fascism. Not just a few commentators saw serious glimpses of the unthinkable degradation into fascism in the Bush presidency.
As those who follow history know, such a philosophy necessarily starves the middle and lower classes, who yet act as if brainwashed with nationalism with an almost religious fervor. Hello, one-time Germany, one-tine Italy, North Korea and, periodically, China. Never was Santayana's admonition about history more relevant and never has it been less observed. The American underclass needs desperately to wise up before everyone pays the steep price for their ignorance and cupidity. While saying so publicly only encourages them to dig in their heels, there is a way to shame these duped wonders into some comprehension of reality. That process begins with demonstrating that their Republican minions don't care about anything but themselves, that they are thieves, and that the thievery is blended with contempt that increases as their status in the Party elevates. No one likes being duped, least of all the honor-based underclass.
The Republican fodder (er, faithful) secure and solidify their association with a deadbeat ideology by avoiding the truth, easy enough to do when relying on the experience that friends don't so often get down and dirty about redline politics. They find they can hide behind their own variant of political correctness. They know well-enough just what their elected representatives vote for in the Statehouse and in Washington. But again, they count on few of their associates staying well informed, and they not only have recourse to he-said-she said, but they can lie about what no one has the information to question them over.
But they can be stood up to, and they can be humbled, humiliated and shamed. Former Republican Governor Charlie Christ has bolted, throwing his support behind Obama. He will be the subject of a Republican honor-killing. He was shamed into defection by the realities of the day and time. In 2009 the Pew Research Center published a thorough study on voter party identification, where the results make it difficult not to appreciate that George Bush's policies shamed Republicans into denying their affiliation. We know from other sources that once churches had become all but local chapters of the American Enterprise Institute, thousands of shamed Republican churchgoers bolted, joining the growing 'Emergent Church' movement, one of whose members of which wrote (28 Sept. 2007 post), explaining the break from the evangelical establishment:
"I believe one weakness in evangelicalism that the emerging church is responding to is " an impulse in evangelical fundamentalism towards (a) an intolerant judgmental exclusivism, (b) an arrogant, even violent, certainty about what we do know, and (c) a hyper-cognitive gospel that takes the mystery out of everything."
Does anything about these strike you as Republican calling cards? You bet they do. It's classic honor-based / cult of dignity crap. Republicans can and do respond to shame. Liberals, take heed.
In the meantime Republicans have gone for blood, twinning with the Christian right to gain votes with family values and religious wedge issues, pandering to people easily manipulated and conservative by nature and tradition. Republicans wanted to make sure that those groups who in particular had previously voted straight-party Democratic, would with a little coaxing return as it were 'to their roots', which indeed they did. And which answers Thomas Frank's provocative question and our paraphrastic: Why do minorities (and the underclass in general) vote against their interests? Now that you have my answer, what does it say about honor in conservative America?
Life in hell
Republicans have always taken pride in selling themselves as successful, a surefire 'sell' for the honor-based set. Rural, laboring, minority and religious subgroups, nearly always honor-based and conservative, are usually willing to take the bait when respected source takes to the waves with a positive spin on life. Far and away the best-received sermons are on self-help and the lore of the boot-strap legacy. What galls them to no end, on the contrary, is the fear of being made, as in mandated, to become dependent and without choices in the matter. Never mind that the dependence is to something good, something needed. What is not their idea doesn't muster much respect. All of which makes dealing with these folk a tad difficult, but hardly impossible. Here, however, is what crosses the transom upon screwing it up --
Blogger: Liberalism and Islam are diseases that should be wiped from the face of the Earth.
Banker: A combination of altruism and pragmatism foster a mindset of the many depending on the few.
The first equates liberalism with those deserving of xenophobic antipathy; the second stresses the honor-based distaste for dependence on others. Failing Cultural Psychology 101 is about as bad as failing the actual Psychology 101 and 202. Americans are experts at all three, which does not leave much room to wonder why we see no further movement against Republican antics than we do at present. I hear yelling and screaming, but not the tactics that actually work.
On the abortion issue it is desperately difficult to determine how much of what they say is for show and how much out of sincerity. The issue, however, is over rights versus sleeping well. No one ever said Republicans had to undergo abortions. The private Catholic hospitals will kill the mother to save the baby and no law is going to stop that (that I know of, please correct me if that is incorrect). For liberals the issue is that the Republicans want to legislate morality across the board. This is the one time we want Justice Scalia opening his big yap, the only time. He will argue that if it was done a million years ago it is up to the states, each on their own, whether to grant it -- but regardless, it can't be off the books until a state deliberately chooses to make it so. Of course, Scalia is one of the five Catholics and there's no guaranteeing he will adhere to his legal philosophy when politics and religion enter the fray. Gotta love them Republicans.
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