![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastI'm certain this movie will be made... probably by HBO. I'm only slightly less sure that this movie will be made with a big mistake.
In the answer to this question, "How did Trump become the Republican Nominee?" the least interesting part is Trump, himself. Someone born to wealth, with a high opinion of himself, and very little to him, if anything, that could even acknowledge any truly humbling concept. We've seen this kind of person before, in both fiction and reality. They're depressing to comprehend and amusing to watch, but they're not all that interesting beyond that.
It's the same reason I couldn't get into The Lizzie Borden Chronicles. One horrible person does horrible things and, at best, that person looks slightly less horrible in relation to the more blatantly horrible people doing more blatantly horrible things... maybe.
No, the far more interesting and instructive story is that of the world around them that allows them to do what they do. In this case, that world is the Republican Party.
Without fictionalization, the Republican Party would have to be represented by the leadership and the leading campaigns. But, a political party isn't just its leadership and front runners, it's also its voters and base. I believe that, there, we need some fictionalization for the purpose of representation.
The story, of course, starts with the Civil Rights Act. Lyndon B. Johnson signs in the Civil Rights Act and says that the Democratic Party has lost the South for a generation... underestimating how long that would last.
From this point on, the story is that of the Republican Party. It's important to note that there's never a point where anybody sets out to do evil or thinks of themselves as evil. The worst you get is people who view themselves as doing what they need to in order to keep their jobs, not caring about the impact on others. For the most part, you have people who view themselves as doing what is needed in order to do good.
On the part of the leadership, it's powerful alliance to be had between the Republican Party and the defecting Dixiecrats. The continued fight for segregation lends strength to what the Republicans want to do, conservative measures, things they thought were for the good of the nation.
On the part of the voter base, that fictionalized family starts with a young man. He's early in his career, early in his twenties, just starting a family with a child, and now voting for the Republicans, because they side with him on the matter of segregation and other social issues. With the Supreme Court taking prayer out of schools just two years earlier, it's all the more important to him to make sure that his own concept of Christian goodness takes precedence.
Again, it'll be important not to write this man as a monster. He's human. He's very human. He doesn't want black people to suffer, at least that isn't his primary motivation. He does, however, want to view himself, his concept of his nation, and his ancestors as the good guys of American History. That will involve viewing the fight for segregation as good and the fight for slavery as something that's too long ago to make a difference in the present. He also wants to view his fears as valid and the fears held by the good guys, not the villains. That means believing what it takes to believe so that his fears can be right.
Over time, the leadership will make similar decisions, as they combine the Republicans and the former Dixiecrats. Some of these decisions are short term, so that they can make long term changes. Defending the tobacco industry as completely unrelated to cancer, for instance, will be justified both as a matter of keeping the government out of business and as the needs of donations in order to get into elected offices in order to enact the changes they want.
As the man grows from someone just starting a family to a middle aged man with his son getting ready to vote, himself, two things will happen. Firstly, he'll find the world changing in uncomfortable ways. Where once he could just go ahead and call a... you can guess the word that he thinks and you can guess that he wants to use that word out loud. This will stifle him, make him edit himself in ways he didn't expect to have to edit himself.
The other thing that will happen is that he will be told that these kinds of things aren't because the people who don't want him to use those words are right. They'll be called over-educated eggheads who don't know anything about the real world. Where they do their work will be called an Ivory Tower. For every time the world changes in a way that's not comfortable for him, he will be given a reason why they're not just wrong, but invalid as people for having their positions.
Together, this means that, while he is forced to hide his less-socially-acceptable positions behind euphemisms, like "welfare queens", his son will believe the euphemisms. His son will site the euphemisms and say how they're not racist. His son will do this, in part, to make his father more comfortable. The elder will be able to have a safe social space where he doesn't have those euphemisms challenged.
During the late 80s and early 90s, both first and second generation of this story will learn term for the concept that so stifles them, "political correctness". Like many others, they'll think of this as just something that liberals do, and not as something that's ever been on their side. That will be the phrase for what vexes them both to differing degrees.
Also during the 80s, both generations, as people who view morality as something that exists entirely within the domain of Christianity, Reagan will start a trend towards more and more conspicuous Christian religiosity in conservative politics. This will make it clear, to them, that social conservatism is the realm of goodness. Family values will mean their family and how they think their family should be run and how their family is the model for families, not this wave of divorces and broken families.
Then will come 9/11, which will change everything... but only in degree.
The administration of George W. Bush will see all those reasons given for why ideological opposition isn't just wrong, but deficient magnified and multiplied. Even discussing getting out of Iraq or that it might have been a bad idea is "giving comfort to the enemy". Anything said or done that inhibits the credibility of the Bush administration would, if done, "let the terrorists win". Any language of being able to work with ideological opposition will lip service only. Disagreement is obstruction. Criticism is disloyalty to America and its fighting men and women.
It will be called, in its own time, Orwellian. But, it will also be incredibly comfortable for our two generations, soon to become three. They will be able to live with a language that makes it easier for them to say what they want and harder for anybody who disagrees to even get a word out before being shouted down.
Again, these aren't monsters. They're people who know where they're ideologically comfortable. They're people who seek out that comfort and seek to protect that comfort and see that comfort under assault. They are, at their worst, not unlike the Angry Jack of Innuendo Studios*. And, the worst attacks are yet to come.
Those attacks come in the form of the Obama administration. By this time, both generations of voters in this family have been trained to hate liberals, hate Democrats, hate socialism and communism and atheism and Islam and everything else that Obama has been accused of. By this time, their power in the political systems of the Republican Party is becoming clear in the form of the TEA Party. And, they won't vote for anybody who compromises with the Democrats or Obama.
They're not evil, here. They're convinced that the other side is evil, that there can't be anything worth listening to, there. If there is to be any virtue to be had, the choices are either the Republican Party or the Libertarian Party.
It's a view that will only be reinforced when Obama includes coverage for contraception in the Affordable Care Act. It won't matter how recently contraception became anathema to their faith, it will always have been so... or at least not being involved in contraception in any way will be a right of employers. Then, Obama will lift the restrictions on the openly gay serving in the Military, then he won't defend what they'll call "Traditional Marriage"... which will have been a tradition for as long as the first generation of this family remembers.
Then, and only then, will Trump come into the foreground. Before this point, Trump is a background figure, at most. He's a gaudy millionaire. He's a reality show T.V. star. He's one of the prominent voices of the Birther movement (which the first generation will be all for at this point). It's only now that he's anything of a political mover.
This is where the family feels the discord. Three generations of people paying attention to politics, now.
The first generation will say that Trump has some good ideas, and only become more of a fan. For all the work that his son and the Republican Party have done to make him feel comfortable behind a thin veil of euphemisms, those euphemisms are still uncomfortable. It was just the most comfortable place to be. Trump will be the place to go.
For the second generation, Trump will be the lesser evil after Cruz suspends his campaign. Up until this point, his vote had largely been split among others, so nobody could come out with a clear plurality over Trump. Nobody had the enthusiasm behind them that Trump had. And, without other options, he's ready to go for Trump.
In the third generation, there will be a young voter who grew up in a conservative household, but has grown up in a different world. He can still be a conservative on some issues. But, he'll have grown up in a world that introduces him to people who are African American, Homosexual, Muslim, to all the people that Trump's supporters are proud to punch in the face, provoked only by their presence at a rally.
He may share the views on, say, taxation or what his family calls "Obamacare". But, it's hard to argue that Trump is anything but a racist clown. And, he'll wonder how such a racist clown got the nomination.
The answer will be that, for generations, the Republican Party made the choice to make racists as comfortable as they could within the party, without openly admitting to racism. In a real way, this is what happens after decades of the Republican Party selling its soul. In a real way, the Republican Party carefully cultivated its own demon with which it could trade souls for wins, and the two elder generations of this very family were that demon.
I want to be very clear about something. I don't hate the Republican Party. I don't hate conservative political views as a concept... Well, there are some individual conservative views, but that's on a case-by-case basis. For the most part, it's a conversation that I would love to have... if only there were a conversation to be had.
If I had to sum up the question of how Trump became the Republican Nominee in a single concept, it would be that the Republican Party, for as long as I've been politically aware, has wanted to win without conversation. Labeling dissent from their perspective to be unAmerican or anti-Christian or siding with the enemy. Making conservative political correctness into something more important than an accurate understanding of world events. So, after about five decades of pushing thoughtful conversation out the door, when the human manifestation of self-glorying inability to have an adult conversation runs, is it any wonder that it wins?
I disagree with the Republicans on many things. But, I want to have the thoughtful conversation on those disagreements. I want to risk finding out that I'm wrong. I don't just want to risk being called names and told that I hate America and God and Christianity.
Hopefully the people that the third generation will right that ship. Either they'll take control of the Republican Party or they'll craft a replacement. Either way, the debate that taxes my intellect will be better for America than one that only taxes my patience.
In the answer to this question, "How did Trump become the Republican Nominee?" the least interesting part is Trump, himself. Someone born to wealth, with a high opinion of himself, and very little to him, if anything, that could even acknowledge any truly humbling concept. We've seen this kind of person before, in both fiction and reality. They're depressing to comprehend and amusing to watch, but they're not all that interesting beyond that.
It's the same reason I couldn't get into The Lizzie Borden Chronicles. One horrible person does horrible things and, at best, that person looks slightly less horrible in relation to the more blatantly horrible people doing more blatantly horrible things... maybe.
No, the far more interesting and instructive story is that of the world around them that allows them to do what they do. In this case, that world is the Republican Party.
Without fictionalization, the Republican Party would have to be represented by the leadership and the leading campaigns. But, a political party isn't just its leadership and front runners, it's also its voters and base. I believe that, there, we need some fictionalization for the purpose of representation.
The story, of course, starts with the Civil Rights Act. Lyndon B. Johnson signs in the Civil Rights Act and says that the Democratic Party has lost the South for a generation... underestimating how long that would last.
From this point on, the story is that of the Republican Party. It's important to note that there's never a point where anybody sets out to do evil or thinks of themselves as evil. The worst you get is people who view themselves as doing what they need to in order to keep their jobs, not caring about the impact on others. For the most part, you have people who view themselves as doing what is needed in order to do good.
On the part of the leadership, it's powerful alliance to be had between the Republican Party and the defecting Dixiecrats. The continued fight for segregation lends strength to what the Republicans want to do, conservative measures, things they thought were for the good of the nation.
On the part of the voter base, that fictionalized family starts with a young man. He's early in his career, early in his twenties, just starting a family with a child, and now voting for the Republicans, because they side with him on the matter of segregation and other social issues. With the Supreme Court taking prayer out of schools just two years earlier, it's all the more important to him to make sure that his own concept of Christian goodness takes precedence.
Again, it'll be important not to write this man as a monster. He's human. He's very human. He doesn't want black people to suffer, at least that isn't his primary motivation. He does, however, want to view himself, his concept of his nation, and his ancestors as the good guys of American History. That will involve viewing the fight for segregation as good and the fight for slavery as something that's too long ago to make a difference in the present. He also wants to view his fears as valid and the fears held by the good guys, not the villains. That means believing what it takes to believe so that his fears can be right.
Over time, the leadership will make similar decisions, as they combine the Republicans and the former Dixiecrats. Some of these decisions are short term, so that they can make long term changes. Defending the tobacco industry as completely unrelated to cancer, for instance, will be justified both as a matter of keeping the government out of business and as the needs of donations in order to get into elected offices in order to enact the changes they want.
As the man grows from someone just starting a family to a middle aged man with his son getting ready to vote, himself, two things will happen. Firstly, he'll find the world changing in uncomfortable ways. Where once he could just go ahead and call a... you can guess the word that he thinks and you can guess that he wants to use that word out loud. This will stifle him, make him edit himself in ways he didn't expect to have to edit himself.
The other thing that will happen is that he will be told that these kinds of things aren't because the people who don't want him to use those words are right. They'll be called over-educated eggheads who don't know anything about the real world. Where they do their work will be called an Ivory Tower. For every time the world changes in a way that's not comfortable for him, he will be given a reason why they're not just wrong, but invalid as people for having their positions.
Together, this means that, while he is forced to hide his less-socially-acceptable positions behind euphemisms, like "welfare queens", his son will believe the euphemisms. His son will site the euphemisms and say how they're not racist. His son will do this, in part, to make his father more comfortable. The elder will be able to have a safe social space where he doesn't have those euphemisms challenged.
During the late 80s and early 90s, both first and second generation of this story will learn term for the concept that so stifles them, "political correctness". Like many others, they'll think of this as just something that liberals do, and not as something that's ever been on their side. That will be the phrase for what vexes them both to differing degrees.
Also during the 80s, both generations, as people who view morality as something that exists entirely within the domain of Christianity, Reagan will start a trend towards more and more conspicuous Christian religiosity in conservative politics. This will make it clear, to them, that social conservatism is the realm of goodness. Family values will mean their family and how they think their family should be run and how their family is the model for families, not this wave of divorces and broken families.
Then will come 9/11, which will change everything... but only in degree.
The administration of George W. Bush will see all those reasons given for why ideological opposition isn't just wrong, but deficient magnified and multiplied. Even discussing getting out of Iraq or that it might have been a bad idea is "giving comfort to the enemy". Anything said or done that inhibits the credibility of the Bush administration would, if done, "let the terrorists win". Any language of being able to work with ideological opposition will lip service only. Disagreement is obstruction. Criticism is disloyalty to America and its fighting men and women.
It will be called, in its own time, Orwellian. But, it will also be incredibly comfortable for our two generations, soon to become three. They will be able to live with a language that makes it easier for them to say what they want and harder for anybody who disagrees to even get a word out before being shouted down.
Again, these aren't monsters. They're people who know where they're ideologically comfortable. They're people who seek out that comfort and seek to protect that comfort and see that comfort under assault. They are, at their worst, not unlike the Angry Jack of Innuendo Studios*. And, the worst attacks are yet to come.
Those attacks come in the form of the Obama administration. By this time, both generations of voters in this family have been trained to hate liberals, hate Democrats, hate socialism and communism and atheism and Islam and everything else that Obama has been accused of. By this time, their power in the political systems of the Republican Party is becoming clear in the form of the TEA Party. And, they won't vote for anybody who compromises with the Democrats or Obama.
They're not evil, here. They're convinced that the other side is evil, that there can't be anything worth listening to, there. If there is to be any virtue to be had, the choices are either the Republican Party or the Libertarian Party.
It's a view that will only be reinforced when Obama includes coverage for contraception in the Affordable Care Act. It won't matter how recently contraception became anathema to their faith, it will always have been so... or at least not being involved in contraception in any way will be a right of employers. Then, Obama will lift the restrictions on the openly gay serving in the Military, then he won't defend what they'll call "Traditional Marriage"... which will have been a tradition for as long as the first generation of this family remembers.
Then, and only then, will Trump come into the foreground. Before this point, Trump is a background figure, at most. He's a gaudy millionaire. He's a reality show T.V. star. He's one of the prominent voices of the Birther movement (which the first generation will be all for at this point). It's only now that he's anything of a political mover.
This is where the family feels the discord. Three generations of people paying attention to politics, now.
The first generation will say that Trump has some good ideas, and only become more of a fan. For all the work that his son and the Republican Party have done to make him feel comfortable behind a thin veil of euphemisms, those euphemisms are still uncomfortable. It was just the most comfortable place to be. Trump will be the place to go.
For the second generation, Trump will be the lesser evil after Cruz suspends his campaign. Up until this point, his vote had largely been split among others, so nobody could come out with a clear plurality over Trump. Nobody had the enthusiasm behind them that Trump had. And, without other options, he's ready to go for Trump.
In the third generation, there will be a young voter who grew up in a conservative household, but has grown up in a different world. He can still be a conservative on some issues. But, he'll have grown up in a world that introduces him to people who are African American, Homosexual, Muslim, to all the people that Trump's supporters are proud to punch in the face, provoked only by their presence at a rally.
He may share the views on, say, taxation or what his family calls "Obamacare". But, it's hard to argue that Trump is anything but a racist clown. And, he'll wonder how such a racist clown got the nomination.
The answer will be that, for generations, the Republican Party made the choice to make racists as comfortable as they could within the party, without openly admitting to racism. In a real way, this is what happens after decades of the Republican Party selling its soul. In a real way, the Republican Party carefully cultivated its own demon with which it could trade souls for wins, and the two elder generations of this very family were that demon.
I want to be very clear about something. I don't hate the Republican Party. I don't hate conservative political views as a concept... Well, there are some individual conservative views, but that's on a case-by-case basis. For the most part, it's a conversation that I would love to have... if only there were a conversation to be had.
If I had to sum up the question of how Trump became the Republican Nominee in a single concept, it would be that the Republican Party, for as long as I've been politically aware, has wanted to win without conversation. Labeling dissent from their perspective to be unAmerican or anti-Christian or siding with the enemy. Making conservative political correctness into something more important than an accurate understanding of world events. So, after about five decades of pushing thoughtful conversation out the door, when the human manifestation of self-glorying inability to have an adult conversation runs, is it any wonder that it wins?
I disagree with the Republicans on many things. But, I want to have the thoughtful conversation on those disagreements. I want to risk finding out that I'm wrong. I don't just want to risk being called names and told that I hate America and God and Christianity.
Hopefully the people that the third generation will right that ship. Either they'll take control of the Republican Party or they'll craft a replacement. Either way, the debate that taxes my intellect will be better for America than one that only taxes my patience.
