Harold Meyerson tells us why on Thanksgiving, our "holiday of refugee commemoration," a certain party began to lose the spirit of the day long ago:
In Trump, the Republicans’ Southern Strategy — pioneered by Barry Goldwater and perfected by Ronald Reagan — has hit bottom. Just as the Southern economic elites found they could count on the electoral support of the region’s largely impoverished white working class by steering those workers’ resentment at their lot toward even more impoverished African Americans, so today’s Republicans look at their own (no longer just Southern) white working-class supporters — whose jobs have been offshored and whose paychecks have been shrunk by indifferent financiers and corporate executives — and steer their resentment toward immigrants and minorities.
Trump’s distinctive contribution to this decades-long process has been the rawness of his racism, the thuggish tone of his speech and the huge growth of anti-minority police powers that he has championed. In proposing to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants and their U.S. citizen children, in suggesting that the government monitor mosques , he has positioned the Republican Party much closer to fascism than to the libertarianism toward which some mistakenly believed the GOP was headed. [snip]
It’s all a far cry from the spirit of the holiday we celebrate today. For today’s Republicans — including Trump’s rival candidates afraid to call him out for what he is — celebrating Thanksgiving is an act of high hypocrisy. (our emphasis)Meyerson is right about the historical antecedents, but we don't think there's much hope for the post- truth Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Crazy Party to steer in a different direction. This is a party, ubiquitous right-wing media, and "conservative movement" that has for decades trafficked in lies, racism, sexism, nativism, homophobia, etc. ad nauseam -- in all, presenting a perverted vision of what America means and what it means to be an American. This is part of their DNA, it's been their ticket to power, and it's not going to go away because a candidate or Republican graybeard calls it out today, tomorrow, or the next day.
Even cancelling out "Rump" Trump, you might have in his place a more clever and dangerous demagogue =cough= "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz =cough= or a slick cipher whose views don't stray all that far from Trump's =cough= Marco "Glug Glug" Rubio =cough=. No, steering in a different direction isn't going to happen this election cycle, at the very least.
Elsewhere on the
That faith in government has eroded in recent times, and the United States’ commitment to toleration is being tested by would-be leaders who seem to find it an impediment to their ambitions. But the truth is that our society relies on the kind of gratitude we express today — specifically on a “grateful acknowledgment” of the respect we owe to one another and to the principles of fairness, decent governance and free expression that underlie our good fortune in living here.Happy Thanksgiving.
