Eveything Old is New Ag...wait, what?

I didn't watch the last State of the Union speech.

Nothing personal. These things are effectively worthless as actual politics, being more or less a sort of brag-session for the current Chief Executive. 

(Given his psychotic level of internal delusion Trump's were, unsurprisingly, appalling, but I had little or no interest in hearing his predecessors chest-thumping, either.)

So I missed, unfortunately, the nightclub-comic slapdown of Empty G and her public lies that her party hasn't had a hard-on for impoverishing old people since FDR got Social Security through Congress.

I mean...c'mon!

I get that the federal government is "an insurance company with an army". I get that a crap-ton of federal money goes to paying old people not to eat cat food and die in a ditch, and that irks the shit out of Republicans because if old people weren't meant not to eat cat food or die in ditches they'd have been born rich like God intended.

But you'd have to be pretty goddamn stupid not to know by now that if the GQP can, it will roll back U.S. society to 1929 or, better, 1899. The GQP has been the party of the Gilded Age as long as I've been alive. Their robber baron donors would stand for nothing less.

Which brings me to my friend Labrys, who writes "What the hell do these people want?"

And, yes, it seems genuinely weird and inexplicable that a fairly large chunk of the American public seems to be pining for...well, a bizarre congeries of generally unpleasant (for most sentient Americans) things that we've spent most of the 20th Century getting shut of because, frankly, they sucked for most people. 

Poverty in old age. Filthy air and water. Dangerous workplaces. Assholes with assault rifles.

I think one of the problems is that the answer is difficult. The answer is "Well...it depends..." because the divisions in these people are legion and they don't all want the same things. 

They're just willing to put up with the others' nonsense to get what they want.

But here's the general outline:

The Plutocrats: The beating (black and shriveled) heart of the GOP has always been the rich.

The fatcats were the rulers of both parties from the emergence of parties until the Nineteen Thirties, when FDR's actions to prevent a red or brown revolution meant nicking a tiny slice of their lucre and they more-or-less permanently moved to the Right. 

And from there to the GOP when the Democrats lost a real "right" in the form of the Dixiecrats.

Oh, sure; if they have no choice they'll buy what Democrats they can - and given the insanely expensive cost of our "republic" it's not all THAT hard to find someone notionally blue who's desperate for cash - but their natural instincts and fundamental worldview sits better with the red side of the aisle.

These malefactors of great wealth want what they've always wanted, wanted ever since they were armed predators lurking in fortifications across Europe and Asia; more money, more power, more fear (or respect, but they'll take fear), and the political influence to gain and maintain them.

Their primary concern in the United States is federal taxation and regulations.

They want the proles' grubby hands off their wallets - i.e. "low taxes", and

They want to freedom to do whatever the fuck they want to get and stay rich - i.e. no "burdensome regulations". 

Work you to death. Dump their shit in your air and water. Cheat you.

They want all that, and because of it any self-respecting 15th Century Raubritter would recognize the DeVoses and the Kochs and their ilk.

They don't give two shits about what the scum do to themselves or each other, so they could care less whether Cletus uses his AR-15 to shoot up his ex-wife and the daycare where she works, and they could care less whether some transgender gal gets murdered, and they could care less who has to hide their pregnancy to prevent the Baptist Taliban from turning them in for aborting the sprog.

Money. Power. That's it.

But...since we're still nominally a republic, their problem is that there's not enough of these bloated hyenas to win elections. 

That's why they need the others. Who are...

The Religious Nuts: of which there's 31 flavors but all of them are what my mother used to call "good haters". Right-wing God-pesterers come in Christian (both the ultramontaine Catholic and fundie Prot variety), Ultraorthodox Jewish, and possibly even some weirdo Muslim, Jain, Sikh...who the fuck can tell with these people.

Their basic problem is with the post-Griswold U.S. there are all these...other people...out there doing...other stuff...that these people don't like and they haaaaate that and those other people.

It's often sex - since there's all sorts of people with peculiar hangups about sex - or just ways of thinking that run counter to the ways these people want other people to think. 

So if you're squicky about men kissing men or girls getting naked with girls or people with genitals who don't think of themselves as that kind of person or - and since religions are strict hierarchies with God on top and everything descending from that - not acting like the God-pesterers think God (or, more specifically, THEY think God) wants those people to act then you want the power to make those fuckers behave.

So these people want the power of law to bind the people they hate - the homosexuals, the gender-fluid, the atheists - and they'll side with anyone who will give them that.

What helps is that very many of these sorts of religious nuts ignore or elide the parts of their religions that insist on squishy stuff like loving neighbors and giving away all your wealth to serve the poor and sick. So they're fine with the robber barons hoarding loot provided the robbers let the God-pesterers hate and kill some homos and women who like to fuck.

So you got fatcats + bible-bangers. Who else?

The Fascists: and by this I mean "people who want "law and order" meaning they want jackboots on the necks of "those people" and they'll vote for thems what'll give that".

This takes in a whole bunch of people.  

Ammosexuals want all the guns, and want the jackboots on the necks of the softies who are sick of mass murder. 

There's also the racists who want the jackboots on the necks of those dusky upstarts who think they should get a piece of the American pie. 

And what I still think of as the hardhats; the mostly-white guys who just reflexively hate the smelly hippies and their "peace and love" and weird clothes and sex and want the jackboots on those hippie necks.

Lots of cops fall in here, too. Plus all the standard freikorps; Threepers, Proud Boys, groypers...all the usual shitbirds.

These people, too, don't care whether the plutocrats are looting the public purse. They just want the liberty to fear-up those people they hate and strut around saying racial and sexual slurs without getting the hairy eyeball.

Notice something?

Yep. Everyone but the country club set is largely driven by stuff they hate.

That's why the richie-riches are using all this "culture war" shit to herd the others. Only the oligarchs have an actual positive goal in wanting money and power to ensure their comfort and influence (sure, it's disgusting, but at least it's moving towards something...).

These others?

They just want to be the boss of the people and things they hate. They all just want to be king shits of their own little Turd Hills.

That they're just soylent green for the oligarchs?

They don't care. 

Provided they don't have to see pictures of men kissing or know that some woman is out there having sex without remorse or that some black kid is getting food without having to beg for it, they will happily be the kapos of the American camps.

Their "freedom" is the freedom to dictate the lives of those they despise.

Like I said; any mook with a sword and a taste for mayhem could tell you about that.

So "what do they want", Labrys? 

They want to be the boss of you. 

They want you to sit down and shut up and (since you're a woman) be whatever some man wants you to be.

And if you won't?

They want you silent. 

Or dead.

These people are damn near 40% of the American public.

And I haven't the slightest fucking idea how you change that.