There’s a lot of ignorant white men of my generation that react to any progress on the left with an almost Pavlovian response of ‘liberals are bad’.
Any perceived progress by Democrats is seen as a loss for their team whether they understand the benefits or not.
They’ve been reduced to boorish fans in team jerseys, booing the opposing kicker just cause they can.
I’ve seen these kind of dudes my whole life. I went to high school with them in the late 80’s.
When the effects of Reaganism were already rusting the core of their families middle class, suburban dream from within.
Back then they repeated the cheery platitudes of ‘Morning in America’ or launched into anti-union screeds that they had probably heard from their fathers around the kitchen table in modest split-level ranch houses.
They also spewed the darker vitriol passed down and promulgated by racist uncles and right-wing radio.
Often these rants were given a personal slant that included a story from a relative who was a ‘cop in the city’.
Racism usually followed - an anecdotal dehumanization of a people that the political structure and media apparatus of the time was only too happy to promote as well.
The way teenage black men, basically children, were treated by this country, particularly in the late 80’s and early 90’s, deserves further examination from a cultural standpoint.
Many Americans are still laboring under the perceptions created during that time - the suburban white community were particularly shaped by that messaging whether they are consciously aware of it or not.
For my generation (I was 18 when I graduated high chool in 1989), those years are formative; I can sense in my peers some deeply ingrained misperceptions and prejudices that persist to this day.
It makes it doubly hard to change hearts and minds that have been calcified over the last few decades.
Men like DeSantis, a history major at Yale, are well aware of this vein still laced through the foundation of modern American life and are all too happy to exploit it today.
I fear to some even greater effect.
I remember wondering back then how these people could so easily vote against their own self-interests and fall for the obvious scam of ‘trickle down economics’.
The grift was disguised and laundered through the racism.
Reagan was about cutting taxes for the rich.
The wealthiest Americans went from paying a 70% tax rate to the paltry percentages most pay today - if and when they even pay at all given the Byzantine restructuring of tax laws at the hands of the GOP over the last 40 years.
Reagan’s tax cuts went into effect in 1981, with another giant overhaul in 1986; cuts paid for by taxing Social Security and unemployment benefits.
A reverse Robin Hood effect, stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.
Putting the burden on the working and middle class voters that were constantly voting against their own economic security.
The poor got even shorter-shrift and increasingly brutal treatment under ‘Reaganomics’ but this of course was one of the elements of titillation used to entice the Reagan voter.
‘Cruelty is the Point’ was a dynamic in conservative politics long before Trump and the modern GOP.
Think Nelson Rockefeller’s brutal crackdown on the prison uprising at New York’s Attica State Penitentiary to benefit Richard Nixon and his Republican persona as a ‘law and order’ President.
The vicious massacre of the mostly minority prisoners by white state troopers and National Guardsmen played well with the same suburban white voters that would cheer on MAGA fifty years later.
The underlying ‘not-so-secret’ sauce in this Republican formula is the systematic racism and meting out of ‘justice’ on African-Americans.
Racism is fundamentally born of deep shame and insecurity in the hearts of those who perpetrate it.
A man who truly understands his own worth and place in the firmament of the universe finds himself constitutionally incapable of mistreating and subjugating his fellow man. He can only view them through the eyes of truth - which always land on the correct view that all men are created equal. For the enlightened mind there is no other landscape.
A society that does not recognize its true worth can only pass itself off as sophisticated, or belonging to any illusion of a ‘first world’.
Reality portends a much darker picture of exploitation and violence.
Carried out by men who should know better on behalf of men who most certainly do but allow it because it makes their hold on power and profits easier to secure.
Echoes of this dynamic echo through the centuries - they most certainly permeate the fabric of the ‘Land of the Free’.
The modern GOP is about protecting the status quo - and systematic institutionalized racism that has built an aristocracy of mediocrity when it comes to a certain demographic of entitled white men (and the women who love them).
No other proof of the durability of this framework is needed than the sight of Donald Trump campaigning this weekend in New Hampshire. The original home of ‘Live Free or Die’ jingoism and one of the least racially diverse places in America.
Stopping off at a fast food restaurant surrounded by working class white folks asking for selfies was the twice-impeached former POTUS who attempted to overthrow a US election.
And walked free, to run again.
Black and Latino Americans suffer abuse at the hands of law enforcement daily in the United States.
Many do not walk away from their interactions with police as we all witnessed so gut-wrenchingly this weekend.
2020 was a record year for police killings with the most ever recorded in America.
Local police departments having gone quasi-military after 9/11 with a surplus of equipment designed for the battlefield being reapportioned for use on civilians, the advent of aggressive policing and the deployment of tactical squads designed to ‘stop crime before it happens’.
The SCORPION Unit was a direct descendant of the sort of policing made popular by disgraced men like Rudy Giuliani and Bernie Kerik, both also active participants in the January 6th insurrection - where ironically law enforcement itself fell under attack.
They’re still beloved figures to many in law enforcement, whose ranks are swelling with white supremacists, along with our branches of the military. Efforts by the FBI and Pentagon to stop this trend were hampered significantly during the Trump Administration.
Trump was also rather adroit at speaking the same language of the ignorant white American suburbanite.
He was a hero to these same folks when I was a teenager back in the 80’s.
The ‘law and order’ narrative helped turned New York State even redder this past midterm election - sending folks like Elise Stefanik and her little protege in dark money, George Santos, along with her to Congress.
This was accomplished by a giant influx of cash that hammered the message of crime and fear into the hearts andminds of suburban voters.
In the obviously aberrant case of Santos, it shows how little Republicans actually care about the rule of law.
They just want to be able to control the narrative enough to be the ones get to say who the criminals are…through racism and xenophobia.
Talking points that always play well in the bars and mechanic’s shops and hunting stores.
Men who erroneously view guns and pickup trucks as symbols of freedom while their healthcare, education and Social Security are being gutted to appease and benefit people who are wealthier than they could ever even dream of becoming.
They hold onto their illusion of power like they hold onto their beer bottles and the glory days they spent on the high school football field.
Their power and sense of virility now derives mostly from the people who wield it on their behalf. And those powers that be use it like a cudgel - except it’s their own dreams and futures they are bludgeoning as well.
Many just lack the awareness and personal growth to see it.
There are some very powerful forces arrayed to make sure they never see the truth. Because if they did they would be weeping along with the rest of us this weekend.
And demanding change.
Thank you for this very insightful piece Noel. You are a breath of fresh air both in your podcasts and here. It would be so easy to just marinate in despair right now but now more than ever we left leaning people need to feed off each other to know we are not alone. I am hoping more people wake up to see what is happening to our country at the hands of people who do not put our country first.
Please write about solutions to these horrid issues. Your so darn smart, that I would love to hear your thoughts on what we can do better or differently.