Why Do Conservatives Hate America?

And yes, they really do.

Today’s post is more of a rant. Much of this I remember, so the March on Washington and Southern sheriffs beating up protesters. I also remember affirmative action beginning to bring African Americans - first all men, to formerly mostly white colleges. I voted for Nixon, remember when Reagan was shot and I wrote an op-ed against the war in Iraq months before the war began.

It is a bit rushed and is more a series of statements. It is not an argument.

The 1963 March on Washington

How did a nation that believed in fair play, that treated even prisoners of war with respect become what we are now? A place where a Supreme Court justice thinks it ok to arrest anyone looking like he or she might be an immigrant (or sounds like an immigrant). He said if they are not an immigrant, well no biggie!

80 years ago, we were nearing the end of a war that involved much of the world. For most of the war, the US was led by Democratic president Franklin Roosevelt. it was a time of high ideals as exemplified by this song from the era (sung by Frank Sinatra). Start at 3:03 and you will see a gang of boys chasing a Jewish boy. Sinatra chides them for their prejudice. For the song itself go to 10:49.

The song presents an idealized America that did not yet exist - thus while the song includes all races, in fact racism was deeply ingrained. Still fair play was also ingrained in popular culture . Civil rights would be the leading topic for the next two decades but that is a large topic outside the scope of this piece.

Southern police beat up demonsttators. John Lewis is in the right forground.

What happened to fairness? Or decency? You know, the way our fictions favors the underdog!

The end of fair play didn’t start with Trump. The social upheaval that came with the Civil Rights movement was felt across the nation but most keenly in the South, where the existing white power structure resisted change with all manner of violence. With the hegemony of the white race threatened, fairness and decency disappeared.

Another image of Southern violence.

A separate thread of hatred for modern America came from Evangelical Christians. Two prominent leaders were Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. But these folks are a significant segment of Protestant Christians; they have social beliefs that are backward and threatening. Women and children must defer to men. Gays are sinners and the Christians who don’t adhere to the words of the Bible as written are not Christians. Good luck to most Christians.

One more example of conservative hate came from Sarah Palin who ran for Vice President and sneered at Obama’s having been a community organizer. She also contrasted the real America (small town, conservative) to urban America.

Of course we can’t forget Nixon who in 1969 or 1970 spoke of the silent majority - the folks who were not part of the youth counter culture - nor were they protesting the Vietnam War. If we can take a guess who Nixon was calling on for support, it was middle class, white homeowners who had jobs, were raising kids and no longer had the ardor of youth. This combined with the so-called Southern Strategy where Republicans redirected the party to look for votes among Southern whites - whose hearts still harbored the fire of racism.

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There have always been reasons to complain about some of what liberals support. Thus in the 1960s many were critical of how a few fashionable left leaning folks would host radical is their homes. Tom Wolfe wrote of this in an essay, “Radical Chic,” where he spoke about a party hosted by Leonard Bernstein and his wife which featured a few black panthers.

An image of Radical Chic as well known liberals embraced such as the Black Panthers.

Another criticism was of “Limousine Liberals.” This phrase may have come out of the mayoral campaign in New York in 1969 where the fashionable and liberal John Lindsay beat 2 conservatives to win a second term as mayor.

These phrases, especially Limousine Liberal remained in active use, most particularly with regard to the busing crisis in Boston where those who created the program were not subject to the busing which operated in Boston and not in the suburbs.

Then we had structural matters.

Thus, right wing radio and TV with the once formidable Rush Limbaugh on radio and Fox News on cable TV. Both became a persistent source of criticism against the standard belief of the center left. So Rush would laugh about Femi-nazis. And Fox would wave the flag.

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Now we have Trump.

It is almost beyond belief that Trump imagines that he has the power to overturn the rule of law in matters as different as immigration and the Federal Reserve.

And then there is the endless pettiness as the president takes an interest in cultural issues like the Kennedy Center or the waysides in National Parks.

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The bottom line is that we are here now and the “here” was not planned by liberal elites in our best universities.

The cultural changes were not created by anyone either. The youth culture of the 1960s was the natural result of demographics and the post war prosperity. So blame television and vinyl records, also the Beatles and Rolling Stones. The sexual revolution and feminism were also the consequence of post war prosperity. Life for middle class women was easier than it was for their mothers - most families had electric washers and dryers and modern kitchens with electric mixers and so forth. The housewives were educated too - and frankly wanted to do more than bake a cake for hubby. So we saw feminism and the birth control pill.

Again, not a liberal conspiracy. Just the consequence natural evolution.

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Conservatives are now fully in power.

So why aren’t they happy? And why are they so angry?

PS:

Many of us despair of the issue of pronouns. We also tire of euphamistic language. An incarcerated person is still a prisoner and a slave is no less human than an enslaved person. The hectoring from language police and social justice warriors is part of what drives men (especially) away from the Democrats.

Gender talk is really problematical. Are we all to memorize a list of terms like cisgender, or remember that one or two women transitioning to male gave birth? Decades ago the condition of wanting to dress as another sex was considered an illness - a delusion. Maybe there is no delusion, just the desire to act girly. It is absurd to pretend that sometimes awkward situations will develop. This a man transitioning to female but still owning his regular plumbing. Should that person go into a woman’s locker room?

Even race.. it should be understood that race is a stand in for history and culture. And if we look just at white people, as a white Catholic kid from NJ, I found southern Ohio weird. We had differences in cuture and religion. There are many cultural differences between blacks and whites - religion is just one. Language is another - at least the vernacular. Not everything whites do is a micro aggression.