With the more or less official naming of Trump as the Republican Nominee, we have entered a whole new level in the art of name calling.
I live in a political bubble. A lovely, liberal, northeastern bubble. The majority of my friends and family are Clinton supporters, and the rest favor Bernie. One or two Republicans I’m close to voted for Kasich in the primaries. I’m pretty sure there are a few closet Trump supporters in my life — and on my Facebook friends list — but as long as they stay in the closet, we’re good."Thou shalt think as I think and I demand that you do or at least hide what you think, lest I cast you out of my "lovely liberal bubble". "Diversity" is a word I define, it does not include your views!" Thus saith the author of the column.
The rest of the article is the expected list of comments from some site that are racist. We need not ask if the writer has gone over to the fever swamps of MoveOn, DailyKos or many others to get similarly nasty quotes relative to Christians, conservatives, less educated, gun owners, etc, etc. If you want to read a snippet of the litany, you can go here.
As I said yesterday, Trump pretty much does as a candidate what "The Party", TP-D surrogates in media and entertainment regularly do for TP. The linked column is one of ZILLIONS of examples! NPR was working hard on anti-Trump output today -- Trump takes on the nasty surrogates directly, something no candidate on the left needs to do, and something no previous candidate at least somewhat from the "right" (from anti-establishment outer space?) has ever attempted.
The natural state of man is Tribalism. My tribe calls your tribe names. We are good, you are evil. We hurl nasty looks, words, votes, fists, rocks and eventually bullets at each other to establish our power to be dominant. Right = might. Without a something beyond raw power that is recognized by all as transcendent, some form of power contest is the ONLY way to "settle things". If the transcendence is earthly, then the "Ubermench" is required -- and you hope he is not named Adolph!
TP has been the mostly settled might=right power since FDR. Sure, "Republicans" existed, but they were largely "me too", TP lite. Goldwater was a failed attempt, Reagan was a successful "semi-alternative" (treated much the same way as Trump by the left), Newt was another shock to the TP system -- again, treated as "Lucifer in the flesh" by the left and many "traditional Republicans". As the column author points out -- as long as the R's recognized TP as dominant and shut up when they were told, TP people were willing to keep a few around AS LONG AS THEY WERE QUIET!
W, McCain and Romney were all "TP lite" -- essentially a "bigger tent TP" that allowed Christians and the slightly less government oriented to kid themselves that they still had a voice. No person of Christian / conservative / "classical liberal" (meaning allows diversity of thought) leaning has been able to "live in a bubble" like the columnist since at least the '60s. We KNOW what the "dominant cultural position" is, and we KNOW they we are supposed to SHUT THE F**K UP! ... lest we be cast our from associations with family, friends, community, job (see Curt Schilling), etc.
Religion and agreed transcendent principles once allowed larger groups of humans to operate as super-organisms similar to bees, ants and termites, but with vastly more intelligence. They explored the world, built giant cities, went to the moon -- that was Western civilization that allowed freedom of thought and therefore actual intellectual diversity and therefore actual innovative progress that was more than just farther application of leftward control.
Without transcendence, the only mechanism to hold groups together is POWER. The left has been exiting transcendence since at least the 50's ("God and Man at Yale") is a good marker. BO was their first "no transcendence" president. Trump is the first attempt from the right to have a candidate that operates from the position of no rules beyond power.
What the author of the column feels is a harbinger what many "Christians / classical liberals / conservatives" have been living with for half a century or so. Abortion, BOcare, open borders, gay "marriage", transgender, Black Lives Matter (and NOT others!), 2nd amendment attacks, massive drug/alcohol abuse + suicides, increases in welfare/dependency, and what appears to be a permanent declining economy have brought home to more and more that the ONLY slim remaining hope is to FIGHT! If Trump wins, "the liberals in their bubbles" would get a SMALL taste of what it means to be "on the right" in America, but it would be FAR less, because the dominate culture would still be TP for the foreseeable future. It would have just suffered another tactical defeat in the Reagan tradition -- decades away from a total rout, where the tepid forces of "conservatism" start talking like the linked column writer.
The time when "the remnant" of transcendent thought can "hide out" like the "closet Trump supporters" in the authors circle went past during the BO years. The actions of BO proved that the Constitution that was designed to insure respect for actual diversity of thought has fully failed.
As we increasingly see, "conservative" views are no longer acceptable. There can be no god but TP, and ALL WILL worship TP JOYFULLY! Trump challenges the dominion of TP and therefore, the powers of TP will attack him with their full might and vigor. #nevertrump people are the "radically lukewarm" of the right -- they believe that they can bend enough to TP to stay somehow in the graces of the increasingly dominant and smug TP ... they are willing to continue to "give ground".
As we saw in the '60s, when values are discarded and open warfare ensues, it becomes messy. We see it in BLM now as well as in the anti-Trump forces. In the US, open violence has been the purview of only the left for over half a century. The Trump support is the first small hint of violence from the right --- what the media went berserk over trying to conjure out of the Tea Party movement.
Naturally, the bulk of the people that actually become violent on either side are the less thoughtful and more action oriented. That is always "the wild card". It appears that the left has ignored the unions for long enough that the blue collar masses have realized that they have been had. That is the quarter from which "the bubble liberals" of TP need to fear retribution. If Trump can peel away the "Nixon and Reagan Democrats" -- the "silent majority", they may become a howling answer to BLM, "Occupy Wall Street", "Code Pink", etc.
Then the bubblers of TP actually have something to fear -- rather than just having to disown some Trump supporting friends or family members. One thing about allegiance to TP -- thou shalt have no other gods before TP, for TP is a JEALOUS god!
'via Blog this'
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