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Republicans are now running a 1990s-Bill-Clinton analogue for president. To remain even nominally competitive, the Republican party has had to abandon numerous priorities as simply untenable, to the point that the party itself has completely fractured from its base of supporters. It's certainly true that "old patterns break up and are replaced by new ones", and that there will be a viable "Republican Party" for the foreseeable future. They'll be running on democratic policies when they aren't outright endorsing democrats.
It seems to me that this is not, in fact, acceptable, and that it does, in fact, provide a pretty good argument for why the existing social structure should be done away with.
That's possibly the only take on Trump I've seen that argues he's too moderate.
Left-wingers might say he's a fascist or whatever, right-wingers might say he's boorish or distractable or egotistic. I don't think I've heard any of them say he's not extreme enough.
Could you elaborate?
Are you familiar with the idea that "conservatives are liberals driving the speed limit"? This is just an instance of that. Trump's general policies are fairly similar to 1990s-Clinton policies. He makes no pretension of fiscal responsibility, which used to be a core Conservative concern and now has been completely abandoned. He has no interest in legislating morality. He is not a good example of moral character, he does not stand for public morality, and he has no interest on enforcing public morality through law or the bully pulpit. He's "tough on crime", though Clinton did a better job on actually following through. They've both been publicly accused of rape/sexual assault/sexual harassment, though it seems to me that the accusations against Clinton were far more substantial. He passes ineffectual gun control measures, though Clinton's were more lasting. They even both survived an impeachment.
If you want to see the tribes come together, Trump is as good as it's ever going to be, and it's never going to be this good again. This is the closest point of approach. When he fails, Red Tribe will inevitably turn to less conciliatory options.
"Inevitably"? I question this in two ways. First, in the abstract, are we not beings with agency? With free will? If we turn to "less conciliatory options," is that not a choice? Thus, we can choose otherwise. We can choose to turn the other cheek. Choose not to sink to our enemy's level, but let it go, be the "bigger men"; maintain our higher moral standards, our more virtuous conduct — the "more conciliatory options," if you will — so as to persuade with the example we set, to overcome evil with good; to not retaliate in kind, but leave such consequences of our enemies' wickedness for a Higher Power to mete out? Is this not in character with what so many of Red Tribe believe? With how we think of ourselves in contrast with Blue Tribe?
Secondly, I've heard people talk in this manner before, about how if our current means fail to hold the line in this or that matter or incident, we'll surely escalate to harder means. And every time, it failed to happen. Why should this time be any different. We've never "turned to less conciliatory options" before. "This time is different." It's never different. What we've always done is most likely what we always will do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War
And which side of that conflict was the Red Tribe on?
I mean, contra the degree to which Confederate flags have become something of a "Red Tribe" symbol — even here in Alaska — to speak in Albion's Seed terms, wasn't it mainly the Cavaliers who drove secession, while modern Red Tribe seems to descend more from the Borderers, concentrated in Appalachia, and AIUI, many of their counties in the South voted against secession — see most notably West Virginia, along with eastern Tennessee and Kentucky (see also a bit more here.
But also consider which side lost, and the lessons learned therefrom. One might say that "the South will rise again," but it's been how long? And on just what metric have they "risen" in that time?
I am consistently flabbergasted by the extent to which modern American conservatives have managed to convince themselves that they have no continuity with the Confederacy.
Conservatives very often (and justifiably) criticize 21st-century progressives for the way in which they deny that they have anything in common with past figures who believed now-unpopular ideas (eugenics being a major one, as well as deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill) based on progressive premises. In fact progressives have done a spectacular job of convincing themselves that it was actually conservatives who primarily championed those policies! Well, American conservatives have done their darndedest to attempt the same sleight of hand with the Civil War. “It was Democrats who supported slavery! John Wilkes Booth was a Democrat, and he assassinated the great Republican Abe Lincoln because, like all Democrats even today, he was racist against black people and hated America.” This is utterly risible.
This is why it’s so clear that “the Red Tribe” was never anything more than a fictional projection of Scott Siskind’s ultra-bubble. Why anyone would take it seriously, let alone self-identify with it and derive personal validation from it is utterly beyond me. Apparently nobody even within this supposed “tribe” has any idea what actually comprises it, nor where it descends from historically and ancestrally!
The Cavaliers were an elite faction in the South, and certainly their political interests drove secession. But who do you think actually fought and died for the South? Do you think the millions of Southern boys who killed and died for the Confederacy were all direct descendants of the small number of pro-monarchy aristocrats who fled Britain during the English Civil War? No! There simply were not enough of those people to make up an army. The bulk of the Southern army was precisely the Scots-Irish poor whites who make up the majority of the Southern and lower-Midwestern population today.
If you believe that these men were duped into fighting for a Cavalier planter class who looked down on them and saw them as disposable, this is a perfectly respectable position, but if a “tribe” means anything, ancestral descent must necessarily have some bearing on it, and the core Republican constituency today is undeniably descended from the men who fought for the Confederacy.
Of course a substantial segment of modern American conservatism is descended in both cultural and ethnic ways from Dixie, but it’s also true that esoteric urban “blue tribe” conservatism such as that largely discussed on this board doesn’t really have all that much to do with it, descending primary from largely unrelated ideological movements. And to some, albeit a lesser, extent, the same is true for Donald Trump’s own worldview.
Oh absolutely, I agree that the ideology of, say, Curtis Yarvin has no genealogical continuity with Dixie. I’ve spent as much time on this site fighting with and distancing myself from heartland Christian conservatives as I have bashing progressivism.
However, I just think it’s simply untrue to posit some schism between Dixie conservatives and Appalachian conservatives, and especially untrue to suggest that the modern “core Red tribe” is in some sense built on a rejection/repudiation of the Confederacy. No, John Wilkes Booth would not be a Kamala Harris voter today. No, “the Democrats” of 2024 are not “the party of slavery”. No, Trump voter in Georgia, you are not the descendant (ancestrally or ideologically) of noble abolitionists who fought against “racism”.
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The GOP is the socially moderate party for social conservatives, which offers them protection for their way of life. The dems are the socially progressive party for people who want to make social conservatism illegal, which offers them realistically just harassment of social conservatives but it could be state discrimination occasionally, and of course both parties have other interest groups in their coalitions.
Seriously- religious freedom/conscience protections, homeschooling protection, parental rights- these are all major focuses of the GOP and they're areas where the GOP has winning records. They are also very important to social conservatives.
This seems like a system one would be well-advised to extricate oneself from with all possible haste.
Meh. This isn’t the deal I’d prefer but social conservatives don’t have the numbers to control the country. We need to bide our time when we can’t win, and that means supporting our protectors over our enemies.
Here's someone willing to argue the contrary.
But even if you don't buy Mrs. Hoyt's arguments about the actual size of the "silent majority" and the margin of fraud, how big a fraction of the population is needed to "control" a country, anyway? I must point again to the German Peasant's War? What size fraction of the population controlled sixteenth century Central Europe? Or America during and just after the Revolution? What were the numbers a pharaoh needed to control Egypt? How many did the Son of Heaven need to rule all of China?
These people did not need to win popular elections.
Neither do our current elites — I've given my opinion here many times about how voting doesn't matter and "our democracy" is a sham.
And, more importantly, neither do we. Popular democracy (again, mostly a sham) is not a law of nature; it's not even the norm in human history. How did all those aristocratic minorities rule over vastly larger majorities of peasants?
Superior force, that's how. And, as people keep pointing out, which side "owns all the guns"? Which side makes up the rank-and-file fighting men of the military? The beat cops?
Again, history is full of minorities ruling over majorities through greater military capacity. My point is why can't social conservatives just become such a minority, "democracy" be damned?
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