The racism and bigotry was always there. But the enlightenment values that inspired the US noted that if we could collectively agree to set aside our xenophobia to form a (relatively) equal, pluralistic society (all that diversity, equity and inclusion stuff) that it would make for a strong nation, featuring stuff we now associate with liberal democracies: an educated, literate public, strong infrastructure, robust artistic culture, a strong science and technology sector, and so on.
And it took us a few steps. Our Constitutional framers believed slavery was wrong, but they didn’t want to free their own slaves, and had to negotiate with the plantation owners. Postbellum reconstruction extended rights and liberties to all men regardless of race, but not to women. Women’s suffrage extended those rights to women, but not to children. In the meantime the Jim Crow era (redemption) black rights slipped and were strengthened during the civil rights movement.
There were a lot of steps towards the decline and fall we’re seeing today:
The industrialists that supported Hoover really resented FDR’s New Deal, and immediately started plotting to reverse the process, to re-instill the fear of socialism in the US. The propaganda machine that became PragerU and FOX News started there.
James Fifield Jr. (The Apostle to Millionaires) invented conservative (pro-wealth) Christianity that informs modern Protestant Evangelism, and the white Christian nationalist movement that dominates ministries today.
The Powell Memorandum was written in response to the postwar policies that built out the middle class in the US, and was an explicit plan to make government anti-regulation and anti-worker so that large corporations could thrive and amass wealth.
Jerry Falwell resented integration and wanted his college to stay white-only, and formed the Moral Majority, a single-issue voting bloc that only cared to restrict or eliminate abortion access. And that helped Reagan’s 1980 landslide victory.
Reagan deregulated, crushed unions and let lobbyists and special interest groups into Washington to gain access to elected officials, and bribery in government became essentially legal. It’s at this point the K-shaped economy began.
Manufacturing moved overseas. The dotcom bubble burst. The subprime mortgage crisis wrecked the economy. By then companies were hiring women not because they were DEI but because women were paid less by default. Young men didn’t get the traditional position of dominance as breadwinner that Greatests and Boomers had. And the older generations failed to acknowledge that shit was more difficult for each succeeding generation.
So by the time Trump took over the Republican party in 2015, there was already an instant army of war boys ready for him in the alt-right. The Republicans had been racist since Nixon, but coached it in dog whistles. Trump gave them permission to be openly racist, to bring their banter from 4Chan/b and /pol out in the open. He’s just saying what we all are thinking. I heard it over and over and over again.
Liberal democracy works only when the public collectively agrees to set aside its predispositions for prejudice and xenophobia. But the wealth and corporate interests captured our government (and our culture and our religion and our courts) a little at a time, using their gains to hedge additional gains until the system didn’t work anymore, and it became easy to just let all the racism fall out in the open.
It doesn’t hurt that since xenophobia distracts the common uneducated masses from the shenanigans of the wealthy, they pump a lot of money into amplifying the racist rhetoric. the MAGA propaganda machine is huge.
The racism and bigotry was always there. But the enlightenment values that inspired the US noted that if we could collectively agree to set aside our xenophobia to form a (relatively) equal, pluralistic society (all that diversity, equity and inclusion stuff) that it would make for a strong nation, featuring stuff we now associate with liberal democracies: an educated, literate public, strong infrastructure, robust artistic culture, a strong science and technology sector, and so on.
And it took us a few steps. Our Constitutional framers believed slavery was wrong, but they didn’t want to free their own slaves, and had to negotiate with the plantation owners. Postbellum reconstruction extended rights and liberties to all men regardless of race, but not to women. Women’s suffrage extended those rights to women, but not to children. In the meantime the Jim Crow era (redemption) black rights slipped and were strengthened during the civil rights movement.
There were a lot of steps towards the decline and fall we’re seeing today:
The industrialists that supported Hoover really resented FDR’s New Deal, and immediately started plotting to reverse the process, to re-instill the fear of socialism in the US. The propaganda machine that became PragerU and FOX News started there.
James Fifield Jr. (The Apostle to Millionaires) invented conservative (pro-wealth) Christianity that informs modern Protestant Evangelism, and the white Christian nationalist movement that dominates ministries today.
The Powell Memorandum was written in response to the postwar policies that built out the middle class in the US, and was an explicit plan to make government anti-regulation and anti-worker so that large corporations could thrive and amass wealth.
Jerry Falwell resented integration and wanted his college to stay white-only, and formed the Moral Majority, a single-issue voting bloc that only cared to restrict or eliminate abortion access. And that helped Reagan’s 1980 landslide victory.
Reagan deregulated, crushed unions and let lobbyists and special interest groups into Washington to gain access to elected officials, and bribery in government became essentially legal. It’s at this point the K-shaped economy began.
Manufacturing moved overseas. The dotcom bubble burst. The subprime mortgage crisis wrecked the economy. By then companies were hiring women not because they were DEI but because women were paid less by default. Young men didn’t get the traditional position of dominance as breadwinner that Greatests and Boomers had. And the older generations failed to acknowledge that shit was more difficult for each succeeding generation.
So by the time Trump took over the Republican party in 2015, there was already an instant army of war boys ready for him in the alt-right. The Republicans had been racist since Nixon, but coached it in dog whistles. Trump gave them permission to be openly racist, to bring their banter from 4Chan/b and /pol out in the open. He’s just saying what we all are thinking. I heard it over and over and over again.
Liberal democracy works only when the public collectively agrees to set aside its predispositions for prejudice and xenophobia. But the wealth and corporate interests captured our government (and our culture and our religion and our courts) a little at a time, using their gains to hedge additional gains until the system didn’t work anymore, and it became easy to just let all the racism fall out in the open.
It doesn’t hurt that since xenophobia distracts the common uneducated masses from the shenanigans of the wealthy, they pump a lot of money into amplifying the racist rhetoric. the MAGA propaganda machine is huge.
This unfortunately, it will take a Herculean effort to combat all of these issues plaguing the country