The seriousness comes from how conservatism is proceeding and since men cannot really fake relationships, the intentions are clear.
From new legislation in Texas to ban fetal dismemberment as yet another way of affirming fetal personhood over female health, to the attempts to dual code Jewish bankers in anti-Hillary messages, conservatism of a global, hegemonic sort will continue to dominate political discourse. They may even present themselves as the “rational alternative” to Trumpian authoritarianism.
The greatest cynicism will be for the GOP to run against its POTUS candidate with even greater RWNJ campaigns by appearing to be voices of reason but gaining even greater power regardless of tehDonald’s success/failure.
The real beneficiaries will be neoconservatives in their sober enlightenment who will gain from the resulting conflicts. And are there no work-houses...
We are living with the politics of the fake orgasm.
The leaders of the Brexit campaign are obliged to join in with the ecstasies of their followers. They must let out a few polite yelps of satisfaction. But a week on, it is increasingly clear that theirs is a phony consummation. The earth may have moved – but not for them.
As shown by Boris Johnson’s retreat from the prospect of having to actually govern the new kingdom he did so much to create, it was all a performance. It will not be long before those they embraced – the alienated, the dispossessed – realise that they have been had in more ways than one.
Like the followers of Donald Trump in the US, white working-class Brexit voters are experiencing a new kind of political relationship. These movements may look like the reactionary populism we have seen many times before, but they are profoundly different in one crucial respect.
The old reactionary politics is utterly serious: its leaders really intend to do what they say they will do, and they really mean to reshape systems of government to allow them to do it. When they say they are going to cut out the contagion that is corrupting society – the Jews, the Catholics, the blacks, the communists – they really mean to act on their twisted obsessions, and they have every intention of creating the authoritarian systems that will allow it to happen.
Most Americans are working class people without college educations. If their values and interests are not represented or taken seriously in any think tanks or any scholarly journals or any political party factions, they will find someone to represent them eventually, perhaps a reality TV star. In a crude and demagogic way, Trump is representing a constituency that the original neoconservatives, with their modest social backgrounds and ties to organized labor, once represented in a sober and enlightened way.
In another (2004) article, Michael Lind also wrote [40]
Neoconservatism ... originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Henry ('Scoop') Jackson, many of whom preferred to call themselves 'paleoliberals.' [After the end of the Cold War] ... many 'paleoliberals' drifted back to the Democratic center ... Today's neocons are a shrunken remnant of the original broad neocon coalition. Nevertheless, the origins of their ideology on the left are still apparent. The fact that most of the younger neocons were never on the left is irrelevant; they are the intellectual (and, in the case of William Kristol and John Podhoretz, the literal) heirs of older ex-leftists.
The gaffe: On July 2, Trump tweeted out an image featuring Hillary Clinton’s face over a background of cash, with a six-pointed star reading “Most corrupt candidate ever.” Many people immediately recognized this as an anti-Semitic dogwhistle, as the six-pointed Star of David is a symbol of Judaism. Trump deleted the tweet, then resent the same image with the star changed to a circle.
The defense: Trump argues that it was a sheriff’s badge, or perhaps a “basic” six-pointed star. But a sheriff’s badge wouldn’t make any sense in this context. There’s also the small problem that the image appears to have originated in a neo-Nazi-frequented message board, then traveled to an anti-Semitic Twitter account before being picked up by Trump.