A reader asks the impossible question about those Americans who’ve forgotten what America is all about:
I totally agree with you. What’s wrong with people?
There’s a hard question, not least because there may be a multitude of answers.
But, sure, I’ll bite. Let’s start with this: Why do certain philosophies endure, while others fall by the wayside? Because they bring a measure of contentment to their adherents. Let’s be clear here – contentment is a variable in this equation, not a constant. My definition of contentment, which includes making a comfortable living that lets me pursue my interests with little interference from work, is a far different thing that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, driven to dominate the consumer software market, and virtually creating the world we now inhabit. I mention this because the ideal Christian’s definition of contentment – helping the poor and desolate, doing God’s work – is far different from whatever is Trump’s contentment, which I suspect includes a bathtub full of $1000 bills.
But for the Republicans in question, I think they’ve lost the contentment they treasure. They’re not willing to consider themselves at fault – few people are willing to go there – so they search around for other problems. At this point, it’s not hard to point at the fear-mongers of the conservative base, those who shout about the lawless hordes of immigrants (actually, immigrants appear to be more law-abiding, on average, than us native-born types), the horrors of defying the Bible, their abhorrence of the gay community (until they discover their own kid is gay, then things change in a hurry), etc.
They feel their society is changing beyond their control. And it is. It’s no longer a static society.
For them, the past was much better than today. Think of Roy Moore’s proclamation that the United States was so much better off just prior to the Civil War. But in that statement lies the seeds damning their position, because that stability and prosperity they imagine existed back then were carried on the backs of those treated poorly by society: the minorities. The African-Americans, mostly, as the American Indians were mostly separate from white American society. But in successive ways, the Irish, the Polish, the Scandinavians, the Italians. Each wave was victimized.
Back to the thesis, a conservative who sees society spinning out of control, rather than moving towards justice (as I do), cannot blame his religion for those changes, nor herself for any failures of their personal fortunes. Ah, but government – after all, the liberals are taking it over. Ol’ Rush tells them that over and over. It makes them be nice to people of the wrong color or wrong sexual orientation.
There’s the failure. For them. Some folks can’t handle that change. And so the very principles of our governmental system come under attack, because those abstract principles are the easiest to dismiss.
Or not. That’s just my guess. Your mileage may vary.
