David Corn offers a summary of his forthcoming book American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy. I'll share an introductory paragraph:
Both Pelosi and Biden have bolstered the notion that the current GOP, with its cultlike embrace of Trump and his Big Lie, and its acceptance of the fringiest players, is a break from the past. But was the GOP’s complete surrender to Trumpism an aberration? Or was the party long sliding toward this point? About a year ago, I set out to explore the history of the Republican Party, with this question in mind. What I found was not an exception, but a pattern. Since the 1950s, the GOP has repeatedly mined fear, resentment, prejudice, and grievance and played to extremist forces so the party could win elections. Trump assembling white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Christian nationalists, QAnoners, and others who formed a violent terrorist mob on January 6 is only the most flagrant manifestation of the tried-and-true GOP tactic to court kooks and bigots. It’s an ugly and shameful history that has led the Party of Lincoln, founded in 1854 to oppose the extension of slavery, to the Party of Trump, which capitalizes on racism and assaults democracy.
We find ourselves in a bind, however, because the corporate media maintains that telling the truth about this profoundly dangerous situation is "divisive," and the people about whom Corn is telling the truth call the truth "hatred and vitriol." As a matter of fact I believe that white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Christian nationalist, and QAnon nutcases are deplorable, and Hillary Clinton was 100% right to say so. And they have taken over the Republican party. That is just a fact, an objective truth. Obviously they don't like me saying they're deplorable but that doesn't mean I'm wrong to say it.
1 comment:
Corn's argument is persuasive, and as for the basket of deplorables, the reason many people object to the label is because they just don't see themselves that way. In addition, Hillary was pilloried :-) for telling the truth because she's a woman. And many of those deplorables are also misogynistic. Again, many don't see themselves that way.
Projection is just an enormous problem right now for America and the world. I think f people could be instantaneously shown their true selves, they'd be rendered not just speechless but everything-less.
Can we sprinkle a worldwide reality-check bomb on the globe's humans? That would, I think, solve a lot of problems. For one, all the homosexual-baiters would instantly shut up when their own sexuality is revealed to them. The racists would be speechless ... the haters would be confronted with their own hatred.
Not a bad idea ...
Post a Comment