Today, the Republican Party is haunted by the specter of White dispossession and ethno-politics. This is what the Trump phenomenon is really about, and this why Trump is loathed by establishment conservatives (FOX, the GOP, the “conservative movement,” et al.) and why he appeals—on an instinctive, unconscious level—to White Americans. White Americans recognize (again, in an instinctive, unarticulated way) that taxes and budgets are meaningless in the face of White dispossession. It’s only issues of immigration and demographics that really matter. Boehner is generally weak on the immigration question. Thus, he’s lost his base of power.Cantor's defeat, other electoral close calls for GOP establishment candidates, the amazing rise of Trump and the other non-politician presidential candidates, the appearance of the Tea Party a while back – these are harbingers of the new right.That said, I’m not particularly impressed with the putatively more “conservative” Republicans who are in position to take Boehner’s place. Indeed, they seem just as much products of the past as the current Speaker.
In the end, politics is a lagging indicator of social change. And the Right of the future is just now taking shape.[1]
But it won't matter. The resolution of our obvious unbridgeable national political and cultural divide will not occur in the short term. Economic crisis, if not collapse, will hasten this resolution but there will be a resolution in any event. Predictions are slippery things, especially about the future, but this nonsense is coming to an end.
The elevation of McCarthy to the speakership would be yet another indication of the failure of professional politicians, especially Republican ones, to just get a grip. Possibly unbeknownst to them, the world is in chaos because of U.S. policies (not of strictly recent vintage) and America has slipped into an oligarchic, interfering, moralistic, unrepresentative, unconstitutional, pathetic joke of its former self.
When there is another Great Awakening -- as there will be -- all the treasonous, destructive policies of the left over the last 85 years will be swept away. There aren't 5,000 people in the U.S. today who can give a good account of what the First American Republic was all about so it's a vain hope that we will return to the purity of the Original Scheme.
Notes
[1] "Boehner Killers." By Richard B. Spencer, Radix, 9/26/15.
[2] Diplomatic personnel excepted.
Sometimes, I wonder if we are not seeing a repeat of the fall of the Roman Republic. When it fell apart, the Republic was as corrupt as power-mongering as it could possibly be. The Caesars (at least the Five Good Emperors) were, despite occasional depravity and ruthless tyranny, somewhat of an improvement for the overall civilization.
ReplyDeleteWe may be seeing a return to this kind of thinking. Donald Trump, for good or for ill, certainly has the makings of a Julius Caesar.
Caesar came right at the point that Rome changed from a republic to a dictatorship if memory serves. Augustus made a show of getting the approval of the senate for his rule or his actions but eventually dispenses with that.
ReplyDeleteI think we're far past any kind of an initial watershed. The holding of periodic elections is a ritualized obtaining of the approval of the voters but without much substance.
That doesn't address your point about the nature of that particular man. I don't see any impulse to rule imperiously. I think we're far from any point where he could dispense with elections or take some other such bold step. I see him as like any other politician (except Obama). For many reasons he's the right man to tear the facade off of the decaying edifice but that doesn't make him an authoritarian.
One this is certain and that is that the Constitution is of little protection in limiting the metasticization of the federal government. Any president steps onto a federal machine that presents many opportunities for destruction.
Let us pray that Trump (or one like him so very independent) can make a dent in the growth of the Leviathan.
ReplyDeleteIt would be amazing if Trump were to do so. I fear that there is zero interest in rolling back the size of the federal government. The state bar associations and supreme courts don't care. What they obsess about is minority representation in the bar and bar associations, pro bono work, and civility. The odd tweak to a state rule of civil procedure elevates their blood pressure by a fraction. That's about it. The federal government is an obvious monstrosity but the citizenry care much more about football rankings.
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