Tea party type protests have blossomed in several states. Photos depict angry men and a few women, some armed, most dressed in jeans and camouflage carrying signs with slogans like “Don’t Tread On Me.” Here and there one can spot a confederate flag. They purport to be the voice of the common ‘man’ claiming the supremacy of hard working American individualists demanding that the government stay out of their lives.
We’ve seen it before in the early Obama years, and did not handle it well. Obviously they don’t represent whatever is meant by the common ‘man,’ but they’re playing off a popular myth of the American frontier about independent people making it on their own who don’t need governmental help, interference or oversight. Obviously they’re not making it on their own without government help. They’ve benefitted from it from the day they were born. Government isn’t an alien creature imposed on an unwilling public. It’s the system we’ve set up for ourselves to guarantee freedoms and provide services we have deemed are needed and defined in law. What some reactively deride as socialism has provided them with land, transportation, water, energy, legal protections, safe food and medicines, education, and a great deal more.
Libertarian disrespect for government, and associated fear of anything that can be labeled socialist, has often been a cover for retaining rights and privileges not freely and equally available to others. Despite the high ideals and aspirations of the American dream, our nation has had difficulty assuring that all people have equal, or at least equitable, access to rights and privileges that are supposed to be unrestricted. Attempts by elected representatives to create a more level playing field for all Americans have been labeled unfair, forced redistribution of wealth, or taking rights away from one group and giving them to undeserving others. In subtle and not so subtle ways, the driving forces behind these movement have been forms of white fear that they will lose their place of dominance and predominance in American society.
News reports about the current version of tea party protests provoke dismay at the selfish ignorance they represent. It’s the response their organizers hoped for because it inspires the crowd’s anger toward educated liberal elitists who look down on ordinary people, igniting yet one more engagement in the culture wars, and that’s what they want. Aid and comfort is offered to protesters by right wing commentators, white nationalists, white supremacists, and a variety of conspiracy enthusiasts who thrive on wedges deepening our political polarization, and assure the disfunction of Congress. They helped elect Trump once, and may do it again.
What do the protesters hope to gain? For some it’s a vaguely understood attempt to maintain white hegemony. For some it’s genuine fear that their tenuous hold on a barely decent life will be lost if others are given the same advantages they have. As an aside, some claim they’ve never had any advantages; the world was always been a hard place for them. Compared to others who look more or less like them, they’re right. For many it’s a preference for authoritarian leadership unfettered by legislative meanderings. In the wings are plutocrats and would be plutocrats who very much prefer a more fascist style of government in which their desire for a laissez-faire economy might be realized. It’s far easier and a lot cheaper to “buy” a president than an entire congress. It seems hard to believe, but a Pinochet type government for the USA has popular appeal among some of the wealthy and powerful. It turns out they put their money on the wrong person, but that’s a story for another time.
The point is, it all heads toward authoritarianism, ironically with ordinary libertarian men and women willingly surrendering the rights and freedoms they cherish.
What are liberals and traditional conservatives to do? We have a presidential election coming up, and the outcome is uncertain.
I suggest our collective public response to the right wing, and those who have been seduced by it, focus on the following, leaving sarcasm and moral outrage to private conversation and Twitter tweets.
Celebrate America’s moral values. Actively promote the ideal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Take joy in new ways to continue forming a more perfect union. Take ownership of what government of the people, by the people and for the people means. Proclaim generosity over selfishness, citizenship as commitment to community, and authentic individualism’s recognition of interdependency. To put it another way, don’t let these values fall into the hands of tea partiers and their backers.
Protest parades that include displays of confederate flags, guns, and aggressive slogans are intended to intimidate others into giving way. Claims of being true patriots are intended to deprive others of their own right to claim patriotism. It can’t work when progressives define what genuine patriotism is, and make a point of celebrating it. Consider how it was done during WWII. It was a long time ago, and we’re not in a war like that, but the methods used pulled the rug out from under the America First movement that favored Hitlerism, and we are in a struggle to keep our representative form of democracy, and the freedoms it guarantees.
Advocate for the American Dream to include greater opportunity for more people, and economic policies that favor the lower and middle classes. Remind all that the American Dream is not possible if it doesn’t include respect for ordinary Americans of every race and creed.
It should be clear by now that the American Dream requires some form of universal health care not dependent on employment. Ideological commitment to one way or another is self defeating. Stick with the concept, universal health care not dependent on employment. Like Social Security, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, the REA, and SBA loans, it’s an essential element of the American Dream.
In the wake of C-19, remind the voting public about who is included among essential workers, and be advocates for better pay, benefits and respect. Raise them up at every opportunity.
Right wing provocateurs and media hucksters will be turning up the volume. Do what Woodward and Bernstein did. Follow the money. It will almost always come back to an informal and loosely coordinated cadre of wealthy people who would prefer a less democratic, more authoritarian government they can more easily control. They’re fully aware they need the support of those whom they consider to be the lower classes. Having successfully seduced a good many, the fact remains that they care nothing for them. They’re simply useful political tools and necessary but expendable cogs in the machinery of wealth generation for themselves.
Making that known, and keeping it known, is a truly conservative, pro American, patriotic thing to do. Claim it.
Thoughtful as usual. I’m troubled by the close ties between America First and white nationalism.
Very well expressed. Thank you. Don