Ok, let me start over. Yesterday, I read the story about the Goergia Governor, Nathan Deal (R) who, as the Post reported it, "vetoed a controversial religious liberties bill." One could almost admire his courage, given that he is a governor in a state where the vote of the evangelical right matters. "I do not think," he said, "that we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith-based community in Georgia." I say, "almost admire," in part because he was pressured into the veto by "outrage from Hollywood, sports leagues and corporations for what critics said was its discrimination against gay and transgender people." The NFL suggested it "might pass over Atlanta for future super bowls, and leading Hollywood figures threatened to pull production from the state." If the god of Israel is great, the god of mammon is perhaps greater, and one might think the republican governor sacrificed the former on the alter of the latter.
He is, of course, getting substantial criticism for his "buckling" to the pressure of big money, particularly the "big money" of liberal hollywood. Since moving to Utah and then to Idaho, I have been scratching my head trying to find a "core" to conservatism, but cannot find it. One can read conservative thinkers, like Hayek, and I can agree with most of what he (yes he) says, particularly his justifiable fear of the "comprehensive" doctrines of fascism and communism, and his defense of "liberal" democracy. Were he writing today, I suspect he would find the "comprehensive" doctrines of the fundamentalists, whether muslim or christian, equally threatening. Though I suspect he would agree with writers like Sam Harris, an atheist who has no truck with any theistic religion, but has taken some reflexive flack from the left leaning hollywood types (Ben Affleck) for "racism" for calling out Islam as a particularly pernicious religion. Fundamentalist, literalist religion opens the door to the proto-fascism of theocracy. So long as we maintain a "secular" democracy, we are probably safe against the encroachments of the fundamentalists, but one wonders always just how safe. It's absurdly ludicrous to believe that Obama is implementing sharia law, but its not quite so ludicrous to believe that a fundamentalist christian version of the same, the law of deuteronomy and leviticus, might not find its adherents among the faithful here.
Of course, when I wrote "conservative thinkers, like Hayek, most probably thought I meant Selma, not Frederich, and I suspect that most Americans, including the most conservative, know more about Selma Hayek, then Frederich Hayek. She is, of course, astonishingly beautiful, and the big money hollywood types have no doubt capitalized on that beauty. I don't know her politics, and don't care, but the Post, yesterday, published an article on the current divisiveness within the republican party, what with the donald and all, and I do believe we're seeing the rending of republican garments. The core of the party has been made up of (1) those big money capitalists who want to "conserve" and expand their wealth against the encroachments of redistributive taxes, and (2) the christian evangelicals who want to "conserve" a religious world view and protect it against the encroachments of secularism. I'm not sure who is the more dangerous, but my money (what little I have) is on the latter. The big money capitalists will follow the markets, particularly the emerging markets of the better educated young, and there is sufficient survey data to show the widening misalignment between their attitudes and the evangelical right, particularly the all but obvious issues of race and xenophobia. Still, I'm not sure ...
Beyond that are the "single issues" of guns and abortion. If the issue is a reverence for life, they seem inherently contradictory in themselves. There can be little doubt that guns are a "public health hazard" as significant, if not more significant, than say Zika or salmonella. While the cliche "guns don't kill people, people kill people" might have a grain of truth in it, guns nevertheless make killing is SO much easier, SO much more effective. People have been known to kill people with kitchen knives and hammers, but it's difficult to imagine a deranged fool with a kitchen knife having the same "success" that the killers of Columbine and Sandy Hook have had. Of course, as our middle eastern brethren have demonstrated, there's no end to inventiveness for mass killing, but having a gun handy is hardly a defense against a chemical weapon or an improvised bomb. I'm relatively convinced that fewer guns, particularly those designed to kill people en masse, would be a "public health" benefit. Having said this, guns connect up with the big money capitalists represented by the NRA, and they prey upon the fears of the under-educated who want to "protect themselves" against the criminal mexicans stalking their women and zombie muslim terrorists that lurk behind every bush. Big money is willing to look the other way on this one for the same reasons that they look the other way on the emerging "public health hazard" of pollutant-induced climate change or fracking-induced earthquakes -- real money is involved.
If you are holding firm on the 2nd amendment, and tsk tsk tsk away every mass shooting, then I suspect a "reverence for life" is not the core reason for opposition to abortion. Having guns trumps protecting the public health, and I suspect that the opposition to birth control and abortion is more a rear guard action to contain the liberation and empowerment of women, than a reverence for life proper. I won't rehearse the argument here. The reality of "reproductive" politics has been argued better than I can argue it, but generally speaking the evangelical right seems to have a vision of the "family" stuck in the mid-twentieth century. Women might be "accomplished," and Heidi Cruz is an example of that, but nevertheless "accomplished" in ways that are derived from and subordinate to their husband's ambitions. Hillary's greatest hypocrisy, or so we feel, wasn't "standing by her man" when he proved to be a Lothario, but in not being "devastated" by it. One could argue that her initial accomplishment may have been derived from and subordinate to her husband's ambition, but clearly she has also moved on from there. There's plenty to critique in Hillary, but it is now a critique of her in her own right, no longer a secondary critique of her husband.
If Cruz is a better republican alternative than Trump, it's probably because he, in his person, holds together the interests of the big money capitalists and the evangelical right that have given them the electoral success they have had. It's ultimately an uneasy alliance between the 1% and the under-educated poor, and Cruz himself may be forced, as the governors of the southern states have been forced, to choose. In the meantime, there is Trump, rending the republican garments. There are several reasons for the biblically inclined to rend the garments. One is blasphemy. Trump is, in many ways, the great republican blasphemer. There is a sort of America first strain among the populace that Trump has tapped into, the sort who have seen blue collar jobs disappear into China, who fear and distrust "immigrants" who have taken the jobs that remain. They want the borders closed, in every sense of the word. They want to buy American. The big money capitalists (including Trump) have little regard for international borders. They have more regard for corporate borders, and beginning with Reagan, have pushed free trade deals. They have also pushed for a stronger, deterrent military, within internationalist compacts like NATO, to protect property rights across borders. In his appeals to the red neck nation, that Trump has blasphemed first and foremost against the doctrine of laissez faire capitalism, has the republicans rending their garments. Hillary, despite everything, judging by her record, would be better for the internationalists than Trump, particularly if he tries to make good on his rhetoric.
The second is the apostasy of a family member. Trump is, in many ways, the great republican apostate. Although he spouts the gun-toting, misogynistic, racist, and ethnocentric attitudes of the red neck nation -- much of it supported with a "praise jesus" sort of home grown religion -- no one suspects him of being a "true" evangelical. Mitt Romney's critique helps make the point. The mormon faith, like the big money capitalists, is internationalist. Although they have their own history of racism, to some degree, in making missionary service an obligation of the church and then sending those missionaries literally all over the world, they have transcended their own history. They remain gun-toting and misogynistic -- if you want to see "families" stuck in the mid-twentieth century, spend some time in Salt Lake with anti-depressants and plastic surgery a staple of the middle-class mormon woman. Nothing about Trump shouts reverence for the messiah, or religion. Everything about Trump shouts his own messianic "only I can solve" megalomania. That so many have supported Trump over Cruz has the republicans rending their garments the apostasy of their acolytes.
The third is death. In all of this there is the smell of death. One suspects that (one hopes that) as we go along, the irreconcilable differences between the big money capitalists and the evangelical right will portend the death of an uneasy and cynical alliance.
No comments:
Post a Comment