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The issues and stated ideologies that brought movements like the Tea Party and Evangelical Christianity to the political fore started back in the early 1980s. The Reagan revolution, for example, was sometimes discussed as a stool resting on 3 legs: fiscal conservativism, traditional Christian values, and a strong military and foreign presence. Take any of those 3 legs away, and the stool would not be stable.
But today's Republican party under Trump, it seems, has completely taken away the first two legs, and is convincingly sawing away on the third one.
For example, all those Tea Party conservatives who were livid with outrage at Obama over the deficits, and warning us that Obama was going to drive the nation off the fiscal cliff: what happened to them? The deficit is growing faster now than it did with Obama. Where is all their outrage and doom and gloom now? After the stimulus spending to get us out of the deepest recession in our nation's history, Obama was actually the smallest government spender since Eisenhower. But that didn't keep them from losing their lunch with outrage and warnings about deficits. But now, the deficit is growing faster than ever before in its history. Where is the outrage? It's all crickets. Why?
And traditional Christian values: what happened to them. Evangelical Christians were all about morality and the Bible. They were outraged when Bill Clinton had an affair while in the whitehouse. And yet Donald Trump is probably the most open philanderer in US history. He puts Clinton to shame, and the likes of Billy Graham and Pat Robertson just can't stop fawning over him. And this is what it says in the Bible: do these Christians have no shame to read this stuff and still push for policies that are their exact antithesis?
But now, poverty is dismissed as a moral failure?
About treatment of children:
Now, they are cheering the aggressive and shameless violation of human rights among the children.
______________________
What do we learn from such hypocrisy?
That it was never about morality, nor about Christianity, nor about fiscal responsibility. This is about cultural anxiety of Christian whites in this country. This is, and always has since the 1980s, been about a sort of provincialism and tribalism, of feeling besieged by modernity. All these issues of fiscal and moral conservatism were just fronts for this underlying anxiety.
I think until Democrats understand the real issues behind the Republican base's bizarre behavior and rhetoric and seeming shocking level of hypocrisy and contradiction, they will never be able to address it. And as long as it is not addressed, everyone from Donald Trump, to the Koch brothers, to Vladimir Putin, will use these primitive anxieties and ignorance to advance their own self interests and agendas, often on the backs of these folks.
But today's Republican party under Trump, it seems, has completely taken away the first two legs, and is convincingly sawing away on the third one.
For example, all those Tea Party conservatives who were livid with outrage at Obama over the deficits, and warning us that Obama was going to drive the nation off the fiscal cliff: what happened to them? The deficit is growing faster now than it did with Obama. Where is all their outrage and doom and gloom now? After the stimulus spending to get us out of the deepest recession in our nation's history, Obama was actually the smallest government spender since Eisenhower. But that didn't keep them from losing their lunch with outrage and warnings about deficits. But now, the deficit is growing faster than ever before in its history. Where is the outrage? It's all crickets. Why?
And traditional Christian values: what happened to them. Evangelical Christians were all about morality and the Bible. They were outraged when Bill Clinton had an affair while in the whitehouse. And yet Donald Trump is probably the most open philanderer in US history. He puts Clinton to shame, and the likes of Billy Graham and Pat Robertson just can't stop fawning over him. And this is what it says in the Bible: do these Christians have no shame to read this stuff and still push for policies that are their exact antithesis?
But now, poverty is dismissed as a moral failure?
About treatment of children:
Now, they are cheering the aggressive and shameless violation of human rights among the children.
______________________
What do we learn from such hypocrisy?
That it was never about morality, nor about Christianity, nor about fiscal responsibility. This is about cultural anxiety of Christian whites in this country. This is, and always has since the 1980s, been about a sort of provincialism and tribalism, of feeling besieged by modernity. All these issues of fiscal and moral conservatism were just fronts for this underlying anxiety.
I think until Democrats understand the real issues behind the Republican base's bizarre behavior and rhetoric and seeming shocking level of hypocrisy and contradiction, they will never be able to address it. And as long as it is not addressed, everyone from Donald Trump, to the Koch brothers, to Vladimir Putin, will use these primitive anxieties and ignorance to advance their own self interests and agendas, often on the backs of these folks.
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