Haven't read the book but the interview with Amanda Marcotte about her new book is intriguing.
Here are some excerpts from the interview that make a great deal of sense to me. She makes the point that ideology on the right whether of the Burkean social conservative sort or the libertarian small government sort have all collapsed and been replaced by feelings of hate and bigotry directed principally at liberals, women and people of color. She says that the collapse of ideology is not simply a phenomena of the Trump administration but rather the product of long term trends in the right's cultural and media environment.
That’s an important point. You say early on that even if American conservatives were enabling and empowering racism, sexism and other forms of bigotry, they wanted to present themselves as the guardians of order and decency.
Yeah, and the traditional family and business friendliness. To be clear, I’m not denying that those aspects don’t exist in the Republican Party or their policies. Absolutely. But I think that arguably, as a political ideology that has collapsed as an argument. Rallying voters around those sorts of arguments has failed, so what they have is this brewing culture of resentment and hatred towards liberals, and also other cultural resentments.
Right. It seems to me like two different strains of the conservative movement have collapsed. One goes all the way back to Edmund Burke or whatever, the idea that you’re going to return to the old order. You’re going to restore some decency and order in society that has been lost -- the traditional family, the virtuous life and so on. And the other one is the libertarian economic argument: Everything’s going to be great if we can just get rid of all these taxes and regulations. Both of those currents have essentially collapsed.
Yeah, and both have collapsed into what people, I guess, call Trumpism now. But I really want to emphasize that Donald Trump, I think, is an opportunist who saw himself in what conservatism has become. Because interestingly, as a person -- I don’t get into this too deeply in the book because I want it to be about the voters and not just Trump himself. But as a person, decades ago, he wasn’t somebody who saw himself as a Republican. What changed? Well, he’s a bully and an asshole, and that the party came to him.
It is her last comment in the article that resonates the most. She is responding to a question about how to engage with the concerns of Trump supporters. The suggestion is that there are economic concerns that may be driving support for Trump. No doubt economic concerns are real for many people and shouldn't be neglected. But she says in reply:
Here are some excerpts from the interview that make a great deal of sense to me. She makes the point that ideology on the right whether of the Burkean social conservative sort or the libertarian small government sort have all collapsed and been replaced by feelings of hate and bigotry directed principally at liberals, women and people of color. She says that the collapse of ideology is not simply a phenomena of the Trump administration but rather the product of long term trends in the right's cultural and media environment.
That’s an important point. You say early on that even if American conservatives were enabling and empowering racism, sexism and other forms of bigotry, they wanted to present themselves as the guardians of order and decency.
Yeah, and the traditional family and business friendliness. To be clear, I’m not denying that those aspects don’t exist in the Republican Party or their policies. Absolutely. But I think that arguably, as a political ideology that has collapsed as an argument. Rallying voters around those sorts of arguments has failed, so what they have is this brewing culture of resentment and hatred towards liberals, and also other cultural resentments.
Right. It seems to me like two different strains of the conservative movement have collapsed. One goes all the way back to Edmund Burke or whatever, the idea that you’re going to return to the old order. You’re going to restore some decency and order in society that has been lost -- the traditional family, the virtuous life and so on. And the other one is the libertarian economic argument: Everything’s going to be great if we can just get rid of all these taxes and regulations. Both of those currents have essentially collapsed.
Yeah, and both have collapsed into what people, I guess, call Trumpism now. But I really want to emphasize that Donald Trump, I think, is an opportunist who saw himself in what conservatism has become. Because interestingly, as a person -- I don’t get into this too deeply in the book because I want it to be about the voters and not just Trump himself. But as a person, decades ago, he wasn’t somebody who saw himself as a Republican. What changed? Well, he’s a bully and an asshole, and that the party came to him.
I think a lot of people who make these economic arguments are underestimating how important culture is to people -- how much self-esteem men get from male dominance or white people get from white dominance. We go, “That’s not real,” not in the way that money is real or health care is real. But actually, people feel it’s very real to them. I think we would be in error if we didn’t think about that and take that seriously.
I think this point is really important because Trump so clearly embodies and personifies the concern of people who are hungry for status. But what good is status? Marcotte misses the mark a bit when she suggests it is "self-esteem"...that is way too new-agey and fails to capture the underlying perversity that is at work. Better to look at Trump himself to clarify what is desired. High status commands those below to be submissive and permits those above to dominate. As Trump said "And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." The essence of our emerging troll nation is a perverse craving for decadence and revelry in the ability to inflict misery on others.
