Low D wrote:NewJerseyRich wrote:You might argue that, but above I'm talking about the reasons for the resurgence in the mind set over the last year and this year in particular
Ok, but i would still make the same argument. What was a widespread, if not quite "mass movement" level of fear & paranoia on the left AND right in the 70s/80s is not the same as a faction of one part of the political spectrum: ie: those who want to "run to the hills" 'cause of Obama represent one slice of the right-wing of America (who - to be fair - have a slice of their spectrum who have run-to-the-hillitus at pretty much all times).
So, say, in the 70s we had the left and liberals who were in fear of nuclear holocaust AND the right and conservatives who were in fear of communist invasion (and possibly nuclear holocaust). Here in the 10s, we have basically the far right in fear of ... what, exactly? A Black president? Paying more tax? Whatever, it's not the same cross-demographic paranoia going on.
It's not that they're afraid of a Black president, it's not even - for most of them, at least - a racial thing at all, though the Fear has certainly raised up some nastiness long hoped buried. But a Black president represents to them a society which has grown and changed beyond their powers of recognition or imagination. They never believed they would see one in their lifetimes, nor did they believe that homosexuality, for example, would become normalised to the point that these people are openly getting married to each other. Equally, they never thought they would have cause to question America's role in the world in terms of economic, political or cultural power. But the world has moved on without them, and will move on without America too. When even their most "moderate" would-be leader [Romney, in his S. Carolina concession speech] feels the need to reassure them that America
will lead the world again, you'd better believe
he knows these people are scared witless.
The catacylsmic event that triggered all this was the 2008 crash, when even Bush's response marshalled identifiably
socialist financial models to bail out the market, and when the 1980s consensus towards unregulated predatory capitalism had demonstrably collapsed, what was their own response, or at least the David Koch response they were content to echo? Ah yes, I remember now. The 2008 crash happened because there was not
enough capitalism, not
enough deregulation! And at a time when Americans are paying the least tax they've paid since the 1940s, it simply
must be true that the problem is they're paying too much tax to that big old Federal government. The Commies have been chased away, Al Quaeda substantially weakened, but America has always needed a foe and, what better foe, at a time the rich are avidly consolidating their preeminence before the barriers go up, what more appropriate foe could there be than a Big Old Federal Gubment lead by an Outsider, a manifestation of Otherness?
