What's left?
Well, pro-Life (but not the rest of Christian-character matters stuff). After that? Not much. Even the deficit or debt is no longer an issue (Trump says "I won't be here for the problems" and, hey, all these guys are okay with it. Paul Ryan, faced with ending-spending decided his Ayn-Rand-Bro persona was really pretty much a front and bent the knee).
No--what remains is, actually, a conspiracy theory--a vile one: The Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory. This is what passes today for Republican ideology.
The Great Replacement Theory
The idea is to create and exploit fear that "reverse colonization" is going to replace you. It can be taking away your culture (and replacing it with someone else's) or filling up the schools with kids who don't look like your kids--or whatever. The idea is a kind of mathematical racism where the wrong being done to you is happening through immigration, birth rates, and so on.
You then take a deeper layer of Blaming The Jews (TM) and show, for example, a Star of David on the side of a truck in the Mexico immigration and claim that Jews (Soros) are secretly funding these immigrants in order to replace you.
You can throw in a dash of the White-Genocide conspiracy theory that ties in "Diversity In The Workplace" (Damore) and Women's Rights (which, in turn, suppress Men's Rights and create more competition for men)--and you've got an all purpose toxic brew of nationalism (gotta defend the borders), race (it's just our White Culture, maaaan! WEST IS BEST), and incel-appeal (Juan took muh wimmin--except for the feminazis who hate me!).
It's a good recruiting tool for horrible people--and, well, The Olds (who can be recruited by the first layer).
If you want to see this in action, it's easy.
- Watch Tucker Carlson
- Check and see if illegal immigrants are referred to as Invaders
- See if someone is, say, tweeting about birth-rates or showing pictures of primary schools with brown faces
If you go looking? You'll find plenty in the GOP and surrounding. Right at the top, even.
Easy Peasy.
It's Doctrine
The Great Replacement Theory is, alas, what passes for actual ideological doctrine in Republican circles now. It's on Fox & Friends (see them saying "yeah--those Mexicans are invaders"). It's on POTUS's Facebook ads for 2020. It's, well, it's everywhere. They're not hiding it.
What that means, though, is that when someone shoots up a bunch of innocents in the name of The Great Replacement you have to do some Spin Room damage control. How does that look? Like this:
The Dayton Shooter Was Antifa: This is important. The El Paso shooter had a manifesto, a clear set of targets, and a motivation that links directly to the GOP. The Dayton shooter didn't have any of that--but he'd made lefty-posts so you need to balance the scales.
That's real important: ordinary Republican voters can't think they've wound up on the side with a deranged murderer. You gotta pile some shit on the other side of the scales.
The El Paso Shooter Was Left, Actually: This one is actually sad. They claim that he was set off by Democrats who want to give health care to illegals. He's not actually hating Hispanics--he's just fiscally responsible or something. Also, uh, environmental? Sure--why not.
The Press Is Against Us: Evergreen. Claim that the MSM is downplaying one and overplaying the other--maybe that'll work. If it can muddy the waters it may make suburban Republican voters feel better about harboring some uncertainty about all them brown-skinned guys--even if they don't want them shot.
That's the idea anyway.
The Problem: It's Doctrine
The problem here is that Great Replacement isn't subtext--it's actually text. This is why when confronted with someone saying at a Trump rally that illegal immigrants should be shot, Trump had to laugh it off. He can't actually scold the person--or speak from the heart about how that's bad.
That's because, it's actually his strategy--not the shooting--but the embrace of the theory--of the fear.
So where does this all end up? Neal Stephenson has an interesting take in his new novel _Fall_ (which he unfortunately only gives cursory examination to as it's prelude to the larger brain-in-the-cloud and Turtles All The Way Down musings). IN this take, in a post-Internet world America has split into "blue" and "Ameristan" enclaves, and people have "editors" who dictate what you see in your feed. We're more than halfway to the editor idea - where unfortunately the "editors" that the Fox crowd relies on are Hannity, Carlson, Limbaugh, etc. So is "Ameristan" that far behind?
ReplyDeleteI don't know, to be honest. I hope the end-game is the twilight of the boomers (and with it, the return of people recognizing satire as satire instead of news) as well as a sound defeat for racism.
DeleteBut I don't know.
-The Omnivore
It's interesting that I've seen a number of peers in the past year or so embracing the Trump spiel. Three from the millennial generation that I personally know (small sample), but it does give me pause that perhaps this problem is going to outlive the boomers. :(
ReplyDeleteA question for the Omnivore - thoughts on how we get out of this cycle of youtube radicalization? There is the generational argument (folks who subscribe will die off), but given the youtube/younger demo component, I wonder if there is a different angle to this, an economic one - youtube radicalization correlated to lower earning power/economic prospects (cause or effect prolly too complicated to determine - education? etc.) but leading to ... ok forget that, leading to where we are today, with disenfranchized radicalized voters living near each other in middle and south of country, reinforcing their beliefs... ok, so Ameristan here we come. :/
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