GOP- A Tale of Extremism, Greed, and Irrationality
Donald J Trump was finally sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. The joylessness of the inauguration surpassed the anticipations of even the most pessimistic amongst us. Those seduced by hate and prejudice may well be energized by the President’s message, but for the rest, this was a speech grim in content, delivery, and implication- an affront to our democratic sensibilities.
It would be deeply disingenuous to ascribe Trump’s passage to the White House merely as an unexpected conjuring from the heart of the rust belt. His victory was the perfect storm that had been aligning, and ignored, for a generation. How did we get here? At its heart lies the uneasy relationship of the GOP with American conservatism.
On July 30, 1956 a small law was passed that changed the official motto of the United States of America from ‘Out of Many, One’ to ‘In God We Trust’. This heralded a small but significant step towards inculcating religion into the fabric of American governance. More pertinently, it sealed the union of economic liberalism and traditional conservatism in the Republican Party.
Ever since, the GOP has been pushing boundaries of normality towards the extreme- both socially and economically. Coupled with racist elements of southern conservatism, the GOP as a political entity has gradually but irrefutably dragged the country backwards through regressive social politics transforming America into a nation infested by greed, consumerism, and irrationality. The grassroots of the Republican Party is a hotbed of intolerance and irrationality. Trump has been a long time coming.
Greed
To preserve the sanctity of American identity, anti-communist rhetoric has dominated our recent historical landscape. Neoliberalism, the diametric ideological anti-thesis of communism, has been the prevailing ethos guiding America- economically and metaphysically. Politically, the doctrine of neoliberal economics has been largely unchallenged and consequently has become more extreme and fundamental. Republicans have aggressively and belligerently labelled anyone in the public domain with social consciousness as communists or socialist, regardless of their commitment to capitalist endeavour as the best form of economic progress. Commitment to this ideology has become so absolute that, amongst many conservatives, capitalism is now binary, neoliberal or nothing.
By its very definition, fundamentalism puts ideology before people. When Milton Friedman told us markets would bring systemic efficiency unattainable by government, America jumped headfirst without considering the impact of such a system on society and individuals. Subsequently, the pre-eminence of markets has overwhelmingly eclipsed all other ideologies and the GOP arrogated itself as custodians of neoliberalism. Hence the Republican Party began a new era of fundamentalism- attempting to crowbar their beloved ideology into every facet of life.
Overtime, the American dream of individualism has steadily been usurped by the nebulous nightmare of corporate America’s rampaging greed. This is not capitalism- this is a swindle that has largely been accepted as the norm. Throughout the GOP has been centre-stage — peddling economic mythologies under the pretenses of market freedom. A curious variant of individualism has instead emerged- a deluded class of wealth driven self-perceived Randian heroes. In reality, most individuals are drained of agency, freewill, and critical thinking, and graft on behalf of unaccountable corporations. Interminable erosion of freethinking by marketing, propaganda, and preaching has morphed us into consumers and customers rather than citizens.
Meanwhile our selfish Randian hero, upon achieving success, conveniently forgets that their achievements are built on the foundations of great societies, well functioning systems, and almost never in isolation. That inevitably comes as part of the libertarian construct. Psychologically we all overcome the odds to achieve greatness and no one ever concedes privilege, it serves to dilute the grandeur of personal narrative. Yet, in the western world, a well-oiled society is the ultimate unsung hero delivering us privilege of opportunity. That we expect social structure and take it for granted, undermines and trivialises its importance in individual success.
Frequently, Republicans rollout a self-made billionaire reminding us that government regulation harms progress. Peddling misinformation with their flashy cars, flashy suits, but flaky memories, forgetting the undeniable contribution that federal funding has had in their success. Apple, Google, and numerous other technological innovations highlight the importance of our collaborative system, especially when it comes to seed innovations that launch new platforms. Historically, the Second World War and NASA both exemplify the virtues and productivity of government spending in technological innovation.
Republicans have continued to push for smaller government, smaller taxes, smaller welfare state, and smaller society. An unrelenting inertia towards zero taxation, zero regulation, and zero compassion. Let’s not forget the last time we experimented with unregulated markets. Sadly, Friedman did not survive to see the dystopian culmination of his social experiment, the banking crisis of 2008. Like most rigid ideologies, Friedman’s too had failed to construct a framework that incorporated the unpredictability of humans emotions- love, compassion, hate, prejudice, greed, and recklessness.
Even in the face of the most devastating financial crisis since the great depression, the GOP continued to lobby for less regulation and less taxation. GOP’s ideological obstructionism during the entire Obama presidency has peddled the idea of economic stagnation despite all the evidence to the contrary. Business has grown, unemployment has shrunk, and our beloved markets have flourished. Facts, however, seem increasingly elusive to our growing partisan narratives.
The real ‘Amercian Carnage’ is pushing for lower taxation for the rich despite federal revenues as a percentage of GDP being at an all time low. But that’s not all; corporate tax on profits is also at an all time low. Corporate profits, however, have never been higher. Yet, we are led to believe that solutions to our problems lie in cutting further corporate taxation. Eventually, even Libertarians have to ask, whom does America work for? Trump’s rhetoric is just that, rhetoric. The infestation of Trump’s cabinet with Tillerson and his cabal of Goldman Sachs executives is a clear indication that corporate America has never been closer to taking complete control of the reins of America.
If left to their own devices, Republicans would put everything up for sale- health, education, morality, spirituality, personal agency, human connection, love, and justice. This is the basis for Trump’s faux economic revolution. Soon we may finally come to witness the orgasmic culmination of the GOP wet dream- America run as a business and with Trump as a capricious CEO, stripping American idealism and selling it for its parts.
Rampant Consumerism
Another contributing factor to the rise of Trump has been our unchecked subservience to rampant consumerism. In pursuit of happiness, credit cards seem to serve as the only meaningful compass. For too long, consumerism and material superficiality has encroached on human values. The inevitable and burgeoning fracas of black Friday sales serve as a useful metaphor for trampling over of our collective spirituality.
America has become the land where 50 million people follow Kim Kardashian on Twitter. This is not a critique of Kardashian as an individual, nor is she to blame. In fact I know very little about her but that may be the point. Aside from her reality TV show, the exact reason for her fame seems difficult to locate, her talents maybe even more so. Until Trump, she was the very embodiment of American capitalism and consumerism.
It is symptomatic of an era where mass culture is constantly vying and wrestling for the lowest common denominator, that we have Trump a blustering narcissist as president. His permanent tan and trophy wife all confirm the primacy of garish style over substance. Certainly, given his complete aversion to discuss policy in depth, one must wonder whether many voted for him applying the same whimsical thinking and rigor that they do for a reality TV contestant.
How else does one reconcile 62 million people voting for a man lacking the temperament, experience, and the requisite expertise for the job at hand? Frequently, his honesty has been sighted as the deciding factor amongst his supporters. This more than anything substantiates that argument that Republicans have lost the faculties of free will and critical thinking. They have succumbed to propaganda and have done so for decades. 48 hours into the presidency he is already the clear front-runner in America’s most dishonest President- a reality TV show in the making.
When expectations demand that we have everything instantly, and gratification has an abiding tryst with restlessness, very little in life that requires mettle attracts. This is the predicament of our current capitalist plight. Everyone seems busy sucking on the opium pipe of consumerism- peddled by relentless adverts masquerading as shows that in turn masquerade as real life. Reality and reality TV have become blurred. Seemingly, fact and fiction have become indistinguishable. Suddenly, the thought of reality TV cameras in the White House seems no more outlandish than Trump our first reality TV president.
Irrationality
Since the 1970s, Republican’s have been pandering to the religious right, ironically a movement that is neither religious nor right. Inherently, their blanket intolerance and prejudice against people based on religion, color, sex, or sexual orientation is fundamentally un-American. The bilious hatred espousing from the religious right has sought control of our lives through propagating sexism, misogyny, homophobia, racism, and a brand of moral corruption that has rendered the movement unfit for purpose in any century, let alone our own.
The temerity of the GOP, a largely male political party, driving the agenda on abortion and planned parenting in the name of God is outrageously regressive. The biggest perceived threat according to these bigoted men is from the growing secularism in America. They are wrong, the GOP is wrong, Trump is wrong. Draconian pandering to irrationality poses the greatest threat to America. Just ask those women in Texas, who have the highest maternal death rates in the western world, just ask children who are born in poverty in broken homes due to unwanted pregnancies because they have been denied birth control, just ask those young adults whose sexual orientation leaves them feeling ashamed and isolated from their communities. Like neoliberalism, here too, humanity has been abandoned in pursuit of ideology.
Furthermore, by pandering to ideas that ignore evolution, climate change, and scientific facts, the GOP has embraced irrationality, and legitimized its supremacy over facts in mainstream politics. A message that has become engrained in large swathes of the GOP grassroots. Trump, of course galvanised the grassroots to jump-start his movement. Those still enchanted by this movement must now only constitute the heart of GOP’s support- fervently tribal and prodigiously uninformed.
Over the last 50 years the GOP have consciously bonded neo-conservatism to American Nationalism. Undoubtedly, this has created the fertile breeding ground for fascism to rise. The systematic debasing of expertise has played straight in to Trump’s diminutive hands. Given his personal lack of expertise in government it seems unlikely that this trend will be reversed. In fact, early evidence suggests that he is going to continue to spread lies, fuel irrationality, and promote prejudice.
Along with the Constitution- science, knowledge, and reason have been the greatest contributions of America to humanity. Safeguarding these principles from the vested interests of those that are undermined by its existence is imperative for Americans and beyond. ‘A more perfect union’ is a constitutional mandate to evolve with the needs of the time and the people. Cessation of change and abandoning humanity for fixed-firm ideologies will only lead to division and suffering. Unsurprisingly, today we stand broken and we are suffering.
We Will Resist, We Will Survive
The right wing media by perennially praising, and left and centre media by normalizing extreme right wing views have facilitated America to vacate the centre ground of rational thinking and reason. Pence, Parry, Cruz, and countless others that seem welded to their ideologies are in the process of destroying politics and society. The malignancy of their divisive and partisan politics is why we have Trump. That the KKK and the neo-Nazi party of America both endorse Trump and identify with his politics has ceased to surprise. That they now are in unison with the party of Lincoln devastates and beggars belief.
It has taken fascistic levels of lying, collusion, propaganda, and “alternative-facts” for the media to wake up. It seems absurdly surreal that in this great nation of liberty and transparency, pathological liars have hijacked democracy and the White House. All the while the Republican grandees, harbingers of moral certitude, are conspicuous by the virtue of their complicity.
The blind partisanship of the GOP means that they will rejoice in Trump’s victory. Soon, however, he will strip the party of its ideology because he only answers to himself. Hopefully, what emerges from the rubble of the GOP, after Trump and Bannon have had their turn, is the conservative movement that America needs. A modern, compassionate movement that is inclusive, humane, and truly becomes the party that fights for the individual.
Until such time the battle ahead is clear. We resist on behalf of reason, we resist on behalf of facts, we resist on behalf science, we resist for our planet, we resist for compassion, we resist for togetherness, and we resist hatred. Trump offers greed and prejudice- we must spread togetherness and humanity. We resist for a time when neo-Nazi’s and white supremacists are no longer in the daily national conversation. We resist so that when this is over, we can tell our children that we weren’t passive and we weren’t complicit.
In the face of it all, I am hopeful because despite partisanship and neo-conservatism the American dream lives on. Moreover it has evolved, taking with it some of the most tolerant, intelligent, and creative people that are together striving to make the world better, for all. This gives me hope. It gives me hope that most people in America did not vote for Trump. The women’s march has further restored my pride in America. It is reassuring to know that the spirit of Jefferson and Paine, that of dissent and participation, continues to live strong. I am hopeful that eventually love will trump hate.
E Pluribus Unum
@progdoctalk
Originally published at www.dailykos.com on January 24, 2017.
