It started long ago, in Industrial America.
Back in the beginning, perhaps roughly a 100 years ago, it was hatred for Jews, Italians, Irish and other immigrants who powered much of the economic engine, the Have Nots. These groups were a threat to profits, to the Haves. The political powers of the day fought using brutal tactics, hiring thugs to break the backs of unions, murder union leaders, smash organizations, demonize cultures.
Of course, those of color were considered to be subhuman: red, black, brown, yellow people simply did not exist as full human beings. These groups served a political purpose, to inspire fear and loathing, to create tensions between various ethnic and religious groups to distract from the real issues of ethics and fairness in American economic life. Those in political and economic power ruthlessly and continually abused these groups of people, playing one off against the other, using the Melting Pot as a means to ensure their grip on Wealth.
All pawns in a Master's game.
The fear and loathing of the rich against unions worked hand in hand with what they created with racial and religious bigotry morphed into a massive public irrational fear of communism, borne of ignorance, lies, deceptions about the nature of this political philosophy. Anti-communist hysteria and rank fear of anyone who dares to mention it has become ingrained in the American psyche. I digress. This discussion about communism is a subject for another diary. But it's important to understand that the hysteria about communism leads to the same attitudes going on with socialism.
Anti-Communism, anti-socialism, anti-union sentiment mixed with the jumble of racism and bigotry has 'informed the American character', it has inspired hatred for at least the past 100 years, using lies, distortions and most of all, fear as to motivate the ignorant. Race, religious, ethnic hatred are all part of the mix, to keep power away from the Have Nots.
Today's Republican Party isn't doing anything new: it just expands upon that, using modern conveniences like mass electronic media, and pervasive social networks that have become so common in our modern world. Morphing once again, responding to social trends, preying upon racial fears.
Phrases like 'Welfare Queen', fear inspired by Willie Horton like ads; there is a clear cultural significance of a Presidential campaign that started in Philadelphia Mississippi. It's all part of the same argot, the echoes of past decades, ghosts of thousands lynched, tortured and abused Americans in the name of the power of wealth, in various guises.
This pattern has been updated recently to include hatred and fear of gays, of Arabs and Muslims in addition to the old standbys blacks, Latinos, Jews, communists and socialists. You'll note that atheists have quite neatly replaced Catholics on this list: sarcastically, "can one call this progress?" In the 1960 election, the Republicans tried to use JFK's "allegiance to Rome" to defeat him and almost did it, using anti-Catholic sentiment. We act so horrified at the tactics used against Obama, that he's a "secret Muslim" that he wasn't born in the US. It's just Republicans at work, struggling to find the next target.
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But the relatively new capstone to this legacy of hate is the overarching theme of hatred for government itself. This is 'what's new', what has been 'mainstreamed' in the last 30 years or so. This cynical rejection of government was always lurking in the background: the stated goal of people like Grover Norquist, to 'drown government in a bathtub', clearly the major consistent theme of today's Republican Party. Why? Part of it is because government has been successful: parts of the New Deal and the Great Society have begun to work, proving some aid to those outcast from society. The Haves are angry. They do not want to share in the common wealth, not even one little bit. The tax policies of the last 30 years have helped to weaken and nearly destroy the New Deal and Great Society, the numbers of poor exploding, the very nature of the American Dream has been shut off to 50% or more of the population. Actual repeal SSI and Medicare isn't even needed, the destruction of the safety nets is almost here.
The signature phrase:
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are,
'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'
has become part of the new American Legacy.
Injecting terror, inspiring violence.
Reagan's legacy, come full circle.
It's driven by greed, fear, loathing and is the one true core value of the Republican Party that remains. Listen to these politicians: they want to destroy government, specifically any part that might be a detriment to the Haves. Like the vicious attacks on unionists a hundred years ago, the lynching of blacks who dare demand respect or try to obtain political or economic power, the pattern continues.
So when we ask Republicans to speak out against violence, we must understand that this is impossible. This is not a failure to decry rhetoric: this a deliberate political strategy, adapting the American political process of fear and loathing to the modern world. This is the latest iteration of The DogWhistle, cooked up by people like Kevin Phillips, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove.
Asking Republicans to denounce hateful rhetoric is like asking them to saw off their own arm. They do not believe in fairness, in common wealth, in decency of spirit. They are concerned only with protecting the interests of the Haves.
The pattern of hate and inspiring fear is the one core value of the Republican Party. They simple cannot denounce these tactics, because it is all they've got. The ideas offered by Republicans to deal with an ever increasingly complex world are laughable. "Tax cuts spur economic growth", "unemployment benefits encourage laziness", "wealth trickles down from the top", prime amongst them. All driven by greed, fear, loathing for anyone who is not a Have. They will search for the next available target, to drive wedges between groups of people at every turn. The wild rhetoric of an increasing number of what used to be fringe Republican politicians has been mainstreamed into the political consciousness of an entire nation, after being amplified for decades on corporate mass media, the end result is a national brainwashing, complete with violent imagery and national self-mutilation.
This is what Democrats want to "work across the aisle with", a Political Party that has become wholly Machiavellian in nature, that answers to no ethical, moral truth, or has any honor whatsoever.
Asking them to be 'decent' is a lost effort.
They'll put on a temporary game face, to offer up some weak mea culpas.
Before you know it, it will be back to business as usual.