I still encounter people who imagine that social dysfunction is mainly a problem involving nonwhite residents of big cities. But that picture is decades out of date. The social problems that have festered in 21st-century America — notably large numbers of prime-age males not working and widespread “deaths of despair” from drugs, suicide and alcohol — have if anything fallen most heavily on rural and small-town whites, especially in parts of the heartland that have been left behind as a knowledge-centered economy increasingly favors high-education metropolitan areas.
But look, none of this is a mystery. Republicans are following an old playbook, one that would have been completely familiar to, say, czarist-era instigators of pogroms. When the people are suffering, you don’t try to solve their problems; instead, you distract them by giving them someone to hate.
And history tells us that this tactic often works.
What I do know is that the G.O.P. as a whole has turned to hate-based politics. And if you aren’t afraid, you aren’t paying attention.
That’s what their leaders are doing.
The fear that they seem to have is “that Democratic Party Social Policies” will benefit people of colour more than themselves. So, the inverse, I’ll hurt, but you will hurt more, seems to be the order of the day.
That sort of twisted logic does not come naturally, it takes decades of programming.
I might have been an expat for 25 years, but what the Republicans have been selling has not changed, just that it has reached disgusting new lows. When you have nothing to offer, propagate fear and loathing.
The Republican mantra seems to be:
- Anyone that tries to help you is taking your freedom away.
- Freedom to suffer miserably [that is the first paragraph I copied].
How similar to Nazi Germany can you get?
Oh I know, throw in a bunch of conspiracies.
Some still say how could the Germans have fallen for this, hundreds of millions are still falling for this spiel, re Putin’s Russia, France, America, UK etc etc etc.
Democracy will/could fall in a flood of lies and corruption.
I, for one, will miss it.
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