Now that his perv pal Joel Greenberg is set to plead guilty to sex trafficking, among other charges, people figure Matt Gaetz is likely deep in the doo doo. Most likely he is, but what piques my curiosity is why the party of Family Values™ still seems fully enamored of him in spite of what is publicly known about his behavior, criminal charges aside. Paying young women to participate in group sex parties fueled by illegal drugs, and showing naked pictures of them to your colleagues on the house floor does not seem entirely consistent with the behavioral norms of the Moral Majority.
I think J.V. Last at The Bulwark has it right. (It's normally paywalled but they're giving this one away.) Republican voters no longer care about policy outcomes or principles of any kind. They only care about presentation, symbolic enactment. Last compares it to branding, using the specific examples of Red Bull and Elon Musk. To wit:
A lot of people have goofed on Matt Gaetz for this statement: “If you aren’t making news, you aren’t governing.” But he’s right. . . . Does it matter to his future political prospects that Matt Gaetz doesn’t advance legislation? Does it matter that Madison Cawthorn staffed up his office with comms people? Does it matter that Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t have committee assignments?
Well, these quirks would matter in a system where legislative accomplishments influenced voter behavior. But Republican voters don’t care whether or not a border wall is built, or who would have (theoretically) paid for it. They don’t care about whether or not the government fails to manage a global pandemic, killing hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens. They don’t care if unemployment is up—or down. They don’t care about stimulus checks. Or the national debt. . . .
Republican voters—a group distinct from Conservatism Inc.—no longer have any concrete outcomes that they want from government. What they have, instead, is a lifestyle brand.
As long as he isn't in jail, Gaetz actually benefits from his situation, because it draws attention to him. He gets to strut around blathering about Cancel Culture and the Deep State, and that's what the people want to hear. Same with their Orange God, who was one of the first to figure this out. Sure, the racism and general cultural resentments are a part of it, but those are also served by purely performative gestures. Well, and voter suppression.
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The underlying problem, which I have pointed out for years, is that R voters have never been consulted on R party policy. In those few times they were actually informed of it, such as repealing ACA (esp. medicare expansion), they were horrified. What they have always been given is various histrionic performances: abortion, gun control, welfare, etc... but little or no actual movement on those issues. Trump secured the 2016 nomination on medicare and the Iraq war, dragging the division between voters and party into the light for all to see. Despite his wholesale adoption of R party policies it will never forgive him for this.
Meanwhile, the R voters are left with literally nothing. Actual policies they would support (e.g. medicare, social security, and jobs) are verboten within the R party. The D party supports some of those things some of the time, but ads a steamer trunk full of unacceptable social policies and a mob of D voters who can't stop scolding them. Being left with nothing else, the R voters have accepted the performance as the only thing they're going to get.
The D party and its faithful, unfortunately, think this is just great and can't stop laughing. That's dangerous and stupid. These people are paranoid, (quite reasonably) angry, heavily armed, and organized around churches and gun clubs. The performances they are cheering advocate for the application of those characteristics and there are not enough cops on earth to put them down. We have a rapidly diminishing window to address this before they decide to settle the matter with beyonets.
Well, the Democratic party has to lug the steamer trunk because for most of its constituents, social equality is a sincerely held belief. At the same time, however, as you would be the first to note, I think, they abandoned working people for many years in the neoliberal era. That doesn't excuse the racial and cultural resentments of Republican voters but it exacerbated them. I'm not laughing however, I'm certainly worried.
The issue, estemado Cervantes, is who shot first. I would say it was the D party without a doubt, abandoning labor to rely on a combination of captive minorities and college educated white professionals. To this day they have completely lost the language of labor; when speaking to working class minorities they address them entirely in the frame of minority status. It's downright creepy to watch.
Anthropologists note that adherence to tribal mores strengthens and hardens during times of existential scarcity. In the US that scarcity began in the mid-70's when wages broke off from productivity. It has worked as a frog boiler, slowly diminishing the living standards and expectations of two generations of workers. In some places it has completely destroyed both individuals and communities. I have observed that the social gains of racial minorities stopped and then reversed themselves during this period while overt racism has been amplified.
Simply put, white america was more willing to share when the pie kept getting bigger. A shrinking pie has had the opposite effect. What amazes and saddens me is the steadfast refusal of Good White Liberals (e.g. the LGM crowd) to admit there might be some relationship between a man's personal economy and his feelings about other men.
I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only person that would like to see more of mojrim's writings. Does he blog or guest blog?
Agreed.
Thank you, gentlemen, but I must disappoint you for now. I have reserved the address "thelastconservative.com" for a couple years now but my writing has been too inconsistent to create an actual blog. Still, I am flattered.
Warning: Book plug.
I just finished "The Securitarian Personality" by John R. Hibbing (Oxford University Press), and for the first time I think I have a pretty good explanation for the Trump phenomenon.
My crude summary of Hibbing's thesis is that there is a personality type that is very comfortable with being a member of a tribe and sees its mores (customs, norms, behaviors) as being key to life being predictable and fairly pleasant. The intelligent thing to do for these folks is to fit in, but also to be aware of anything that could threaten their tribe's cohesiveness. The biggest concern would be a flood of outsiders with different attitudes who would disrupt the way things are meant to go. Second biggest is members of the tribe who get crazy ideas and try to 'fix' things that are already working OK.
These are normal, responsible people with an extended social network of like-minded securitarians, and they are typically well adjusted and satisfied with their lives. The one thing that could really rile them up is any threat to upset the cart carrying such a fine load of apples.
Donald Trump is the first person in politics who truly understands this mindset, so he knows precisely how to push their buttons. The fact that here is someone who finally 'gets it' makes all of his other flaws unimportant.
Its not quite as blatant as "One Land, One Folk, One Blood", but "MAGA" says the same thing to people who are constituted this way. Notice also how immensely popular The Wall is.
Despite what you just read, the book itself is closely reasoned, and it backs its claims up with a lot of science in the Social Psychology mold.
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