One thing that has come up repeatedly in discussion of the current state of the Second Civil War - in the "cold war" phase, but, still... - is "how do you back the public away from the abyss" or, as Ael likes to put it, how do "...you start (really) talking to them."
I'll say upfront - I'm all in on jaw-jaw as better than war-war.
My point, and our problem, is that I don't see how there's a "jaw-jaw" that works with the 30% of the US public that's currently stroking their Trump flag and dreaming of revanche.
Back in 2016, when Trump was the frontrunner for the GOP, I characterized it's and his "platform" (as much as there was anything there other than Trump's million lies about criminal Mexicans and his beautiful health care and Infrastructure Week "plans") as fluffing plutocracy and tossing red meat on social issues to the Base.
I think we've seen that proven beyond a scintilla of doubt over the past four years.
Trump's approval level and the 2020 popular vote suggests that about a third of the US public is hardcore Republican. That tracks with the base-level "crazification factor" of 2008 - about 27% of the public still "liked" Dick Cheney by that point.
If you're all in for Darth Cheney after eight years of the Dubya Shitshow? You're a hardcore Republican.
So, now that we've seen how many of us they are, and what they are and what they want, what can we do to "really talk to them"? How many will talk back?
Let's take them as the groups in which they present themselves.
The Plutocrats.
The keystone of the GOP Archway to the Gilded Age are the fatcats. The 1%. The plutocrats and wanna-be oligarchs of business and finance. The people that the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" of 2017 were written for.
These folks were the ones that were shaved by FDR back in the Thirties and had to bend the knee because an infuriated public had the examples of the Soviet and Italian revolutions to look to, and were at least potentially likely to go to communist or fascist revolution if the US government hadn't done something to ease the brutality of the Dickensian/Randian crony capitalist society of 1929.
They hated that haircut, and have worked tirelessly and successfully to largely reverse it.
The Left has nothing to offer these people except safety from the popular mob. And the current lack of danger from the Left - there's nothing remotely resembling the weird coalition of muckraking journalists, militant (typically socialist or even communist) labor, and political strength ranging from Huey Long every-man-a-king "populist" to noblesse oblige aristos like FDR - means that the "danger" there is nonexistent and the need for "safety" is, as well.
The Rich have neutered "populism" by monkeywrenching the delusions and racism of white people. And since they have nothing to fear from the pop mob they have no real reason to compromise or even talk to the Left. They've succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the aristos that wrote the Constitution, so why give ground now?
The way arrant nonsense like "trickle-down economics" and "tax cuts create jobs" have succeeded with the public just confirm their wisdom. They're not going to fold unless they lose the bulk of their coalition, of which the next segment we'll talk about are
I'm not sure to what extent "true believers" make up any significantly large group within the Republican Party or the US Right in general. To the extent they do I'd have to say that they're living embodiment of Chief's Third Law of Republican Politics: "Any sufficiently ridiculous Republican idea is indistinguishable from magic."
(The other two are "Nobody went broke betting on the stupidity of the Republican voter" and "Never give a Republican the benefit of the doubt.")
I mean...you can't really believe ludicrous stuff like the contents of Atlas Shrugged or the Laffer Curve or the Ledeen Doctrine. Well, I suppose you can, but you'd be such a complete wanker so as to be unable to appear in public because you'd be too stupid to figure out how to unlock your front door.
But to the extent there are people who pretend enough to get the cosplay close to real, well...if you do believe this stuff I can't see a way to wrangle you out of that cult by talking sense to you.
That sort of belief depends on utter disregard for actual practice and life experience, factual evidence, and common sense. You believe it because you WANT to believe it. It's like a religion or, more precisely, like a cult, and like both of those it's not about "talking" it's about belief.
Which brings us to two related groups,
The Bible-bangers and The QANuts.
I'm sorry, but to me there's no true distinction between "talking" to these two groups of fanatics. They both believe impossibilities so they can both be convinced to do atrocities and they can't be talked down out of their trees.
I'm not talking about nice suburban Presbyterians or douce Catholic church ladies. I'm talking the reeeeeal red-meat foursquare megachurch fanatics and the QANut-Pizzagate-conspiracy-threory-wingnut hordes.
Ever tried to discuss how unrealistic the basic tenets of monotheistic religion are with a real hardcore fundamentalist believer of any faith? The responses are either to simply shut off the conversation, or to respond by saying that faith is belief beyond reason.
I'm not saying "religion is bad"; religious faith has been the engine behind some of the great works of art, music, literature, and even politics in human history. It's also been behind some of the most appalling atrocities and horrors, which simply points up that it's 1) not "religion" per se but the tenets of the religion and 2) not religion but the people who are involved.
One person creates a transcendent work of art, another slaughters other people for their "sins".
But regardless of the person involved, "talk" is a another term for "debate", and faith isn't debatable, it's based on emotion, not reason.
There's a rather sad little story in a recent NYT about some sort of QANut "meme queen" (paywall, so no point in linking) but the author sums up the whole futility of "talking" to these people pretty well:
“These people aren’t drooling, mind-controlled cultists,” Mr. Rothschild said. “People who are in Q like it. They like being part of it. You can’t debunk and fact-check your way out of this, because these people don’t want to leave.”
There's a sort of bizarre subset of these groups, or a parallel to them;
MAGAts. Trump Cultists. People who either genuinely or performatively believe that Trump is like a living God.
I have NO fucking idea how to "talk" to these people. If you're literally in thrall to this mook after his four year reign of terror? I can't possibly have anything to say to you that you'll listen to, or whether you can get through to them with anything short of those "deprogramming" things they use on other culties
So, "talking" to any these cultists? Not really helpful.
Yeah, well.
The only real disconcerting part is how the sheer number of these sonsofbitches seems not to have dwindled since the Civil Rights Era and how, despite all the talking we're already done since the 1950s (and before), how they're still the same goddamn ignorant shithead racist sonsofbitches they were then.
Good luck with trying to talk to them about being less racist sonsofbitches. I'll go get some coffee and wait for you here.
The Gun Nuts.
I'd like to think that there's a reachable discussion here, simply because I'm a gun owner and enjoy both hunting and target shooting.
I think the problem is that there's a couple of subgroups within the larger assemblage of "gun owners" whose obsessions drive them into wildly and irretrievably into Right Wing politics; the "Second Amendment" cultists who have managed to completely blank out the "well-regulated militia" portion of the amendment as well as the documented reasons that it was added, the "Fallujah-cosplayers" who want the military hardware without the nuisance of actually having to join a service.
The bottom line is that there's no demonstrable reason to assume that the Founder and Framers wanted to reserve the "right" of Joe and Molly to overthrow the US government.
(Hint - That's why we have fucking voting..!)
But these people - and I think this includes the weird sub-subgroups like the "open carry" loons and sovereign citizens - believe they did, and seem to have gone way too far into the weeds to be talked back; they're the American equivalent of those post-WW2 Japanese troopers who hid out in the jungle.
And the thing is that I've been involved in "talking" to the real hardccore gun cultists and there's always something. You mention background checks and there's always a hardcore that tells you it's a slippery slope to confiscation. It's all paranoia about "confiscation" all the way down, no matter how reasonable you start. The notion that any and every jamoke can tote a semiautomatic assault rifle knockoff isn't really a good idea can't even get through the door because if so, confiscation is next.
I'm not sure these people are gettable. I'd like to think so and I think it makes sense to try and have a sensible discussion of "what is a reasonable well-regulated firearms policy". But given my experience when I've tried?
I'm not super hopeful.
The Social Conservatives.
I'm calling these the "gays-are-icky" group. They're not the American Taliban-type religious nuts from above that think anything but penis-in-vagina sex is a Sin and that God Hates Fags, but the "I-think-we-should-all-dress-and-act-normal-like-me" people who have been convinced that electing "liberals" mean every kindergartner will be forced to have Drag Queen Story Hour every friday after naptime.
Here's the thing about them.
They can't have what they want.
They can force the trans kid into a certain potty. They can force the gays or lesbians back into the closet, and by that I mean in any way. They need to accept that other people's behavior (that doesn't involve physical or political danger to others) is neither their business nor their problem.
If they can be willing to buy into that? Fine.
But if "talking" to them includes throwing all those non-cis-het-"normie" people under the bus?
No. That's not okay.
So there's "talking"...but the "talk" has bounds, and if they're not willing to accept those, the talk probably won't convince them of much.
The Rest.
This is where I lump the generic "conservative"; not a wannabe Roeckfeller, not fanatically religious, not a conspiracy theorist, not a crazed Trumpkin, not a lunatic gun-humper. These people are as close to what used to be called "Rockefeller Republicans" as 2021 can come. The groups above probably call these people "RINOs". They accept the fundamental tenets of the New Deal - that unrestrained "capitalism" is dangerously punitive and you need to balance it with intelligent regulations and some sort of "safety net" to help the people run over by corporate power.
It's pretty much what the Master Chief was until Newt Gingrich's Contract on America drove him out of the GOP because he could see through the transparent bullshit.
Can we talk to these folks? Sure. They're not going to agree on everything - they'll want more guns and less butter, for one thing - but they'll agree on enough of the basics that we can at least agree to disagree.
But...how much of the GOP is left for them?
It's pretty obvious that the real nutjobs - the cultists of whatever sort - are by far the dominant force in the GOP right now. I'd say that something like half of the GOP are MAGAts, QANuts, Christopaths, or some version of the gun-nut/sovereign citizen/Klansman type. Another half of the remaining half are plutocrats.
That leaves only about a quarter - so something like 7-8% of the US public - as the sane conservatives we can talk to.
Which is why I keep coming back to how utterly fucked we are.
If a third of the public doesn't care even though they've lived through the GOP's malfeasance killing hundreds of thousands during a pandemic disease.
And three-quarters of the remaining third are too far gone to even get to the table, much less to some sort of accomodation.
How the hell do you have a "We, the People" left out of the remaining third-and-change?
I truly, honestly, frustratingly don't know.
I know you have to for a functional democratic republic.
But if you don't...if you can't?
That's what really worries me.
7 comments:
Rather than putting Republicans into pre-defined segments, writing them off and then throwing up your hands because it is hopeless, I suggest you really talk to people by first listening to them. Honestly listen to them and not interrupt them and tell them how wrong and stupid they are and how you have the Right Answer.
As the great Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha says you have to go and talk to people who nobody else is talking to, listen to their concerns and then respond to them in terms that they can relate to. That is how he got 50% of latinos in the machine state of Nevada to support Bernie Sanders (and despite Harry Reid's opposition!). This includes an absolute majority of members of the Culinary Workers Union.
I don't really expect the Democrats to do anything because listening to people might mean responding to their needs. Instead, all the corporate Dems offer is talking points and communication plans. It is purely top-down from the oligarchs and the professional-managerial class to the plebs.
It also leaves large segments of the population vulnerable to grifters and those who want to give a large middle finger to the established polity. And America does love their grifting loud mouthed schnooks.
If you didn't like Donny Tiny Hands, just think of what his inevitable successors will bring.
And yet, there is hope, Florida did vote to raise the minimum wage to $15 by more than 60%.
"Honestly listen to them and not interrupt them and tell them how wrong and stupid they are and how you have the Right Answer."
You keep saying this. I'm not sure why.
Are you trying to insist that these groups aren't huge in the GOP base? And the main point is...what are these groups saying that we should listen to? Plutocracy? Racism? QANuttery? Are you saying the if we listen to them we'll see how right they are?
We DO have the "right answer" in reply to the plutocrats. They're simply wrong; they were in 1929 and they still are today. Not stupid. But "wrong" for most of the country.
We're right and the racists ARE wrong. Wrong AND stupid. Are you trying to say they aren't? You sure you wnt to go there?
We're...Jesus, I won't even bother to try and "right and wrong" the QANuts and Pizzagaters.
We've given the gun-nuts everything they've asked for and they're STILL mad we won't let them walk into a courtroom with their hoglegs.
The Christopaths are wrong.
The sovereign citizens are wrong.
And my point of this post is that the bulk of 30-odd percent of the country that votes Republican is made up of these people.
The US government is set up to allow a hard irredentist minority to choke off most legislation. If there's a hard-core group that is gonna give you the finger no matter whether you "listen" to them or not(because they don't want you to "listen"; they want you to bend the fucking knee) your hope of making positive progressive change isn't going to happen. Period.
But the reality is that if these people were really worried about their "needs" as in actual "needs" - offshoring, deindustrialization, unaffordable medicine, unfair predatory capitalism - instead of things like white pride and owning the libs WE ARE LISTENING, which I'll go into in the next part.
(con't)
(con't)
Let's take just for example the first proposed legislation of the Biden Adminstration, the COVID relief package. Here's some of the major points:
- federal minimum wage of $15, with an end to tipped minimums and subminimums for disabled workers,
- push to provide better compensation to frontline essential workers, including retroactive hazard pay,
- extension through September of unemployment and continuation of the weekly supplement (raised from December's $300 to $400, though not as much as last spring's $600) for those whose benefits are running out (some 5 million workers) and those gig workers and independent contractors who didn't use to be eligible (8 million), and full funding for state work sharing programs that help small businesses stay afloat and economically vulnerable workers make ends meet by enabling workers to stay on the job at reduced hours, while making up the difference in pay
- extension through September of eviction and foreclosure moratoriums with an additional $25 billion in rental assistance and $5 billion in assistance with utility bills, and $5 billion in emergency assistance in housing the homeless extension through September of the 15% increase in SNAP benefits, $3 billion additional for WIC, short-term federal coverage of the state share of hunger and nutrition programs, extra food assistance to Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Marianas, and the wonderfully creative FEMA Empowering Essential Deliveries (FEED) Act coopting the restaurant industry to get food to families who need it, and help get laid-off restaurant workers across the country back on the job
$25 billion emergency stabilization fund for childcare providers, $15 billion in direct assistance to parents paying for childcare plus tax credits covering up to 50% of childcare costs for families making up to $125,000
- expansion of the Child Tax Credit to $3000 ($3600 for children under six) and raise in the maximum Earned Income Tax Credit for childless adults from roughly $530 to close to $1,500, raise in the income limit for the credit from about $16,000 to about $21,000, and expansion of the age range that is eligible by eliminating the age cap for older workers and expanding eligibility for younger ones
- continued coverage of COBRA payments for those who have lost their employer insurance along with jobs and additional premium subsidies for those in the individual health insurance market, guaranteeing coverage for somewhere between ten million and 30 million workers, $4 billion for mental health and substance abuse programs and $20 billion for veterans' health.
And this is just a relief bill, an emergency measure that any sane government would have passed and renewed nine months ago when I was ranting about WW2.
And this isn't JUST emergency relief. A bunch of this stuff is designed to remain in place (the minimum wage, the hazard pay, the bringing of the restaurant industry into food assistance, the unemployment insurance for the self-employed, the enormous move against child poverty, and the big improvements in ACA health coverage)...
But you're gonna tell me that "we're not listening" because it isn't M4A, right?
Again, the point of this post was to point out that your (and other leftier-than-thou commentors) insisting that the problem is that we're just not "listening" to these poor economically anxious Republican Trump voters is, well, bullshit.
We've listened. What we hear is "own the libs" and "MAGA" and "build the wall" and "lock them up".
And, of course, "Communist!" and "Race traitor!" and "ANTIFA!!!!"
And "Truuuuuuump!"
So I say again; look up the page. Look at the actual proposals on that list. Look at the ACA as it was proposed. Tell me that isn't TRYING to talk to these people.
Now.
I SHOULD be doing more. We should be hammering the shit out of the banksters and capital flight and offshoring and deindustrialization and figuring out ways to help people do better. If we do we MIGHT get some of the mushy middle off their dead asses.
BUT.
We're never going to get these people, these MAGAts and racists and plutocrats.
And to even try to do all those good things like locking up the banksters we're going to have to go THROUGH them...because, in case you haven't noticed, they could have flocked to Bernie and voted him in and got those things.
And they went for Trump, instead.
I just don't know why that seems to hard for you to accept; that this third of the US public are just going to call everything to the left of full-on nationalist white supremacy "communism" and hate it.
Maybe because it means that there IS no "talking" to them, any more than we could talk to the Nazis?
One final note here.
You've used the South African example to tout the idea of a "truth and reconciliation commission". Quinta Jurecic offed a similar idea in this piece at The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/how-to-not-bury-the-past/617723/) and then immediately pointed out why it won't work the way it did in the RSA:
"The exact conditions that led to and sustained the Trump era—white grievance, a polluted media ecosystem, and political polarization—are the same conditions that will likely prevent a truth commission from succeeding.
These problems are already apparent. Right-wing commentators have compared suggestions for a truth commission to threats of “totalitarianism” and “the guillotine.” It’s all too easy to imagine how Fox News and Newsmax would turn Trump supporters against even the most painstakingly fair commission—and how former administration officials could use this fury as a cover for refusing to testify, denying commissioners the participation they would need from perpetrators in order to succeed. A truth commission may be needed now in America to reestablish what Ignatieff calls “the range of permissible lies” about the country’s history, but how it would work is hard to see, precisely because so many liars have stopped asking for permission."
I don't want my country to be broken. But it is, and it was broken by the same people I'm now trying to get the hell out of the way so it can be fixed.
Hey Hero...
Have ever stopped and think you might be the problem?
We don't need a nanny state, we just need to get folks back to work. Instead of dishing money we don't have why open up and let people earn their living? The less depended on our government the better! Everyone seems to know that, but for some strange reason your party wants to spend more and more of our money and have our citizens more dependent on it, that is only going to create more and bigger needs in the future. It's truly easy to spend money when it's not yours. Our political system gets rich off lobbyist and foreign companies and governments yet it's funny they take no pay cuts or give money to fund these adventures. (i.e. Biden's Family China deals) oh, Trump gave his checks back to the government agencies. hummm.
As far as the news goes, I guess all those "Peaceful Protests" last year was great in bringing about a more unified America... Oddly enough the party that started the KKK now has Socialist Black Panther militant Org marching to keep up divided. We have lawmakers letting criminals back on the streets within 24hrs after being arrested to cause more commotion. (ie Harris) Your news outlets spoon feed you and you enjoy! If you trust any of it from either side, then your not a true thinker, your merely a believer!
The party that has been in charge of the majority of major cities like Detroit, New York, New Jersey, LA pretty much the entire west coast and so on for decades, look how bad they have been managed. Crime, no jobs, high cost of living for the poor, horrible union school systems, drugs, homeless corruption to the core... And now you want the rest of the US to suffer the same fate, sad!
Those kids in the city whose loved ones was gunned done, were not shot by law abiding citizens hell most of the cities have banned weapons and look what that leads to. Those kids who should have a family unit is either self parenting or being watched by someone who doesn't give a damn about them one way or the other, the father most of the time in jail or dead themselves due to stiff drug penalties which Biden voted for in the senate. Harris was the AG in California and send them up the river like a logger.
Dems do a great job of tearing down the very fabric that made us once so strong. In your mind your for everyone to think the same way, AS You. But thats not reality Because in the US you think whatever you want without fear from your elected officials.
(Whom by the way is of the will and vote of the citizen, chosen by the people to be for the people) I took an oath as you did to protect that right. We don't have to agree about anything politically but we have the right to voice our opinions, thats true freedom of speech! So while you may hate the 30% you outlined above, realize you must give them the same freedoms you enjoy. This reprogram shit is right out of China's, Russia's, and every third world dictator's handbook to rid their country of those who don't toe the line. I got news for you, above you mentioned the Nazis thats as close it gets... from your Democrat party.
Its all about Money and power with the dems...The media simply feeds the narrative. The Money you speak of with banker, pro sports, TV & Movie industry, and internet and computer geeks, and Billionaires seem all to be Dems... Yet I don't see them dishing out money to pay for the rent and food for those inner city poor nor those who are about to lose their house. I don't see these "do I say, not as I do" politicans (Lightfoot, Pelosi, Newsom, Cuomo, De Blasio etc...) paying or letting their people go back to work in order to pay their bills. They can do all the things they tell their controlled constituents not to do. Crazy huh! Ironically the same people who have placed them (Their populations) into so much poverty and dismay get re-elected over and over or they voted along the same party lines. Thats textbook insanity!
I normally don't publish anonymous comments. Because if you want to join the conversation simple politeness suggests you identify yourself. Hiding behind the mask of anonymity is exactly the way the sort of comment above ends up becoming a thing.
But I made an exception in this case simply because it does such a terrific job of bringing the whole wingnut fantasy world out into the daylight. This is EXACTLY why I've tried to make the point that it's pointless to try and "talk" to these people.
You'll note that there's no actual "discussion" or "argument" here, simply a recitation of wingnut talking points. Let's start with just the very first one
"We don't need a nanny state, we just need to get folks back to work."
No shit, Sherlock. And your solution for how we do that in the middle of a raging pandemic?
"Biden's Family China deals"
Oh. Yeah. Okay. Sure.
And on and on it goes. You'll notice that there's 1) nothing there except whining and bitching about the Damned Liberals, and 2) lies, lies, and more lies
(and this is my favorite: "So while you may hate the 30% you outlined above, realize you must give them the same freedoms you enjoy. This reprogram shit is right out of China's, Russia's, and every third world dictator's handbook to rid their country of those who don't toe the line. I got news for you, above you mentioned the Nazis thats as close it gets... from your Democrat party.")
It's all there, baby; over and above the simple shit like the spelling, the fucking obvious nitwittery of calling blabbering bullshit and lies "freedom of speech" and trying to wrap that shit in First Amendment protection.
My point wasn't to try and reprogram the idiot meatbags. FOX is the tool for that, and I don't have the key.
My point was, and is, that you can't TALK to people whose idea of "freedom of speech" is to blabber unrefuted lies and bullshit. Reprogram? How do you talk sense to that level of nonsense? That's utterly useless as human material.
Fuck, you can't even use them for decent road base, they're too soft and squishy.
So I deleted the second half of our hero's screed because it was just more Trumpkin nonsense. But I went ahead and left this one up just to make my point; these people are lost. They're as useless to a modern industrial democracy as pithecanthropus fucking erectus and twice as troublesome in public.
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