Arrogant Coastal Elites Have Lost Their Power To Define The “Mainstream”

New: by rejecting consequences for Trump for the #CapitolRiots & welcoming #MarjorieTaylorGreene into their caucus Congressional Rs are crystalizing an ominous question: Has the extremist wing of the GOP coalition grown too big for the party to confront?https://t.co/JyATDSSXsc

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) February 14, 2021

“Ah, my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic Coast, but the hardy pioneers who have braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose – the pioneers away out there (pointing to the west), who rear their children near to Nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds, out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their young, churches where they praise their Creator, and cemeteries where rest the ashes of their dead – these people, we say, are as deserving of the consideration of our party as any people in this country.

It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came.

We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!”

William Jennings Bryan, “Cross of Gold” Speech, 1896

America’s two major political parties occasionally go through realignments. New grand issues arise, dead issues are laid to rest, old coalitions break down and new governing philosophies emerge to replace defunct ones as the electorate resorts until it reaches a new equilibrium. It is a cyclical process that tends to happen about every fifty years or so. We’re just at the end of the Reagan era.

CNN:

“While “there were numerous opportunities over the last four years for historically mainstream Republicans to throw the switch and find an exit ramp,” he adds, the attitudes Trump has solidified in the GOP base now make that much harder. “Trump and Trumpism is now a runaway train that is not going to be easily derailed within the Republican Party,” he says. …

The new American Enterprise Institute study underlines his conclusion, according to previously unpublished data provided to CNN. In that survey, a striking three-fourths of Republicans agreed with the statement that discrimination against Whites is now as great a problem in the US as discrimination against Blacks and other minorities. Social scientists view agreement with that question as a measure of denial of the existence of systemic racism in American society.

The big majority of Republicans who consider discrimination against Whites as great a problem as discrimination against minorities were far more likely than those who disagree to endorse anti-democratic ideas. More than three-fifths of those worried about discrimination against Whites agreed that “we may have to use force” to save “the traditional American way of life.” Among the Republicans who believe minorities face more discrimination than Whites, nearly three-fourths disagreed with that statement. Nearly half of the Republicans who see widespread bias against Whites say Americans must consider violent action; almost four-fifths of the other Republicans reject that idea.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the American Enterprise Institute survey also found that anti-democratic and extremist attitudes had penetrated most deeply in the portions of the GOP coalition that have provided the most die-hard support for Trump, including Republican voters without college degrees and White Christian evangelicals. Nearly three-fifths of White evangelical Christian Republicans said Antifa was mostly responsible for the attack on the Capitol, Cox found. …”

We’ve come full circle.

Fifty years of neoliberalism has returned us to the Gilded Age.

Look at it this way: we’re going back to populism vs. progressivism, nationalism vs. imperialism, republicanism vs. technocracy, traditionalism vs. modernism, workers vs. plutocracy.

The age of the television and print newspaper was the age of the Boomer. Some people got a little too accustomed to talking down to the masses in the late 20th century. They don’t like it that much that the masses can now talk to each and back to them … if necessary in encrypted apps.