Following up on yesterday's post about how rich yet unequal we are, it's very important to debunk the common idea that Republican voters are somehow responding to "economic anxiety" or the relative decline in income of people with limited formal education. In the first place, the median income of Republican voters is higher than the average median income. They are mostly skilled tradespeople, small business owners, and even very affluent people who work in financial services or technology industries. Yes, there is an urban/rural divide, but most of these voters aren't people living in shacks down in the hollow, they're more likely to live in suburban or exurban communities.
In fact, Ronald T. Dump did promise to stop immigration, but only from relatively low income and predominantly Muslim countries; and to impose tariffs on Chinese goods. He did those things but that obviously did nothing to improve the economic prospects of his voters. On the contrary, all he did was give a huge tax cut to very wealthy people and put justices on the Supreme Court who have ended the right to abortion, allowed public school teachers to lead students in Christian prayer on school property (but just wait till a non-Christian teacher tries it), limited the rights of criminal defendants, and restricted access to the ballot. The Republican party doesn't have any economic agenda to help middle income people. None whatsoever. They want to drive gay people back into the closet, rewrite history to eliminate discussion of slavery and racism, and end democracy.
That last statement is obviously objectively correct. Their candidate lost the 2020 election by almost 8 million votes but in order to be a member of the party in good standing you have to lie and say that isn't so, and support an attempted coup to overthrow the duly elected government. And it also requires unwavering fealty to a malignant narcissist, sadistic sociopath, pathological liar, ignorant idiot, vulgar, rapist and bully. None of this has anything to do with economic anxiety, it is nothing but depravity, bigotry, and ignorance. They don't actually want anything for themselves from public policy, they just want to hurt the people they don't like.
2 comments:
Unfortunately, this reads as a pretty accurate description of what it means to be a Republican in the United States government today.
As a sort of empirical corroboration of this, I actually do call Republican senators' offices to talk to their staff. But it's not possible to reach Mitch McConnell or his staff by phone. He simply simply doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks. Kind of like the six fanatical assholes on the Supreme Court. Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It seems to me that there is one thing that was left out from today's post: A primary motivation for today's congressional Republicans is to take all money that is earmarked for Americans, in terms of Social Security, Medicare, or other benefits, and to funnel it into the pockets of their donors.
I think a lot of the people whom I know that are still identifying themselves as Republicans just don't believe that such a thing is possible, and yet they are basically opening their wallets and bank accounts for their elected representatives to fleeced them. This is where the bigotry, racism, misogyny and hatred come in. It's a way for elected Republicans to give their constituents someone else to look down on while they rob them.
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