I commend to your attention Henry Farrell's review and his personal take on Hacker and Pierson's Let Them Eat Tweets. I actually don't have much to add to this, you should read it, but I'll pull quote the gist.
Hacker and Pierson draw their description of the “Conservative Dilemma” from Daniel Ziblatt’s work on nineteenth century conservative parties, generalizing and extending his basic idea. The conservative dilemma is straightforward: conservatism is not likely to be a politically popular cause in a democracy. Conservatism is the political movement that represents the interests of those who have against those who have not. When a country democratizes, conservatism reflects the interests of the old propertied class – the landed gentry and its allies in the United Kingdom; the Junker aristocracy in Prussia. So why should a majority ever vote for a party that represents the interests of the propertied minority? . . . .
Hacker and Pierson argue that modern US conservatives as represented by the Republican Party face their own version of this dilemma – how to attract mass support for an agenda of cutting taxes for rich people? Furthermore, the dilemma has gotten ever more vexing as US economic inequality has increased, so that the interests of the Republican party’s clients and ordinary voters clash ever more. This, then is the engine that they argue has driven US Republicans ever further to the extremes. If they want to get their agenda through, they need popular support, and the best way to generate that support is through fostering division and extremism, amplifying the beliefs of a sufficient number of voters that their way of life is under threat from un-American, irreligious people who want to destroy their traditions. Plutocratic populism – the key phenomenon that they set out to analyze – is precisely a welding of a plutocratic agenda with populist rhetoric.
I haven't read the book, alas, but if I do have a critique of Farrell's review, at least, it's that it pays insufficient attention to racism, and just plain disinformation. The focus is on the NRA, right wing "Christians," and Faux News, all of which are certainly important in the strategy. But the party is just as much about white racism and anti-intellectualism, redefining "elites" as people with a college education who believe in science. We're oppressing the masses, don't you see, because we made up the climate change hoax and the Covid-19 hoax, and evolution, and the harmful effects of pollution. The only waay out of this is to utterly destroy the Republican party. Root it out, reduce it to a pitiful remnant. Take power back for the people.
PS: If you vote Republican because you believe in "fiscal responsibility" you are the sorriest dupe who ever lived.
4 comments:
How come you didn't know this? This is your field!
https://apnews.com/212ccd87924b6906053703a00514647f
New York’s coronavirus death toll in nursing homes, already among the highest in the nation, could actually be a significant undercount.
Unlike every other state with major outbreaks, New York only counts residents who died on nursing home property and not those who were transported to hospitals and died there.
…
How big a difference could it make? Since May, federal regulators have required nursing homes to submit data on coronavirus deaths each week, whether or not residents died in the facility or at a hospital. Because the requirement came after the height of New York’s outbreak, the available data is relatively small. According to the federal data, roughly a fifth of the state’s homes reported resident deaths from early June to mid July — a tally of 323 dead, 65 percent higher than the state’s count of 195 during that time period.
Of course I knew that. In fact I would have been the first person to tell you so. What is your point? Also, do you think for some reason that I'm a big fan of Andrew Cuomo? I am not.
What the data reporting gap has to do with the eventual public health response in NY is a mystery to me. These are entirely separate issues.
Does it seem strange to anyone else besides me that the job of president of the U.S. has no meaningful requirements?
Okay, you must be at least 35 years old and born in the U.S.
That's it? Are you fucking kidding me? How many assholes and psychopaths fit those qualifications? To piggyback on CP's comment, don't we demand at least minimal proven competency from our haircutters, taxi drivers, bartenders, and school teachers?
Yet to become "president," there are no meaningful qualifications. You don't have to be honest, financially transparent, or kind. You don't have to show your taxes. You don't have to be free of multiple allegations of sexual assault. You can be a known scofflaw, cheat, and con man.
Aren't we practically BEGGING for sociopathic assholes to apply for this job? Who in their right mind--in education, business, the arts, law, medicine, or other fields, would hire someone with no qualifications except that they're 35 and were born in the U.S.?
The founders MUST have set it up this way on purpose, no?
How about a constitutional amendment that requires presidents--at a minimum--to be as emotionally, financially, and intellectually stable as possible, with no allegations of fraud, molestation, sexual assault? And how about they have to get screened by multiple psychologists and psychiatrists for mental illness?
I could go on, but I can see why there have been so many fucking assholes as president, ending up with the biggest fucking asshole possible that we have now.
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