All politics are identity politics. Republicans have long mocked this notion, treating the very concept of “identity politics” as a left-wing fixation. In reality, the GOP’s success is entirely due to the cheapest form of identity politics: For decades, but especially now, they have worked to distract voters from the party’s ruinous policies with appeals to their identity as white, provincial and, most importantly, Christian. This campaign has been enormously successful. White evangelicals have been the backbone of the GOP for decades not because they love tax cuts for the rich and environmental degradation, but because they have been told, repeatedly, that Democrats are demonic and there is no such thing as a liberal Christian.
This is why there’s a growing panic in the Republican ranks over the campaign of James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Texas, and it’s not just fear that he could beat Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general. Win or lose, Talarico — a seminary student-turned-politician — embodies an existential threat to the right’s long-standing myth that to be Christian must necessarily mean voting Republican.
Prior to the Great Depression three Republicans repeatedly cut taxes for the wealthy, reduced government regulation, and made corporations a driving force in the government. (Sound familiar?) When the Depression hit it took 20 years for another Republican to be elected and almost 50 years if you exclude Eisenhower.
IMO Trump is going to cause another depression and for many Americans that depression has already begun. Maybe people will remember this, but who am I kidding?
I’m Gen X, and I remember hearing older generations from the working class - and the very poor part of it, no less - bitching about FDR, comparing him to a dictator, saying he was a Communist, etc…and these motherfuckers almost surely had their lives improved by FDR.
My parents were boomers and would overhear this kind of thing (usually with lots of colorful language not really meant for kids) and when I was asking what they were talking about, they would just shake their heads and I could tell they were quite pissed about all of the stupidity they had to wade through daily. We lived in the rust belt and in a very red area.
And that’s all pre-hate radio, pre-Faux News. And wayyyyy before shit platforms like Xitter and Facebook and Nextdoor…somehow, I doubt these types will learn much of anything.
Nextdoor drives me nuts. I see people posting ChatGPT-generated menu poster things with not-food images in them and some folks just slurping it up despite things like when there’s 5 sides listed, and because 2 of them are potato it ends up scrambling them into one gross object (raw/boiled fry-shaped potato sprinkled with paprika, mashing up ‘potato salad’ and ‘french fries’).
Or ‘chicken’ that is Ribbed For Your Pleasure, or chicken where every hair pore is toasted so that it looks simultaneously burnt and raw.