This week I’ve been writing about the way the Republican Party is quickly forgetting about January 6 and falling back in line behind Trump. As part of that, I noted that Trump had led the Republican base to a bad place and what’s required is a new leader who can lead them back.
I received the obvious response that the Republican base was awful long before Trump arrived on the scene, and that’s true. But not “storm the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power” awful. Can we at least stipulate to this?
The way I put it is that “Trump recognized all the latent worst tendencies that had been cultivated over the years by the GOP and exploited them.” When I say “all” there, I mean “all.”
Attitudes about race, immigration and policing are foremost, but also basic selfish instincts on foreign aid or greedhead instincts on taxes. Trump ramped up the discomfort many feel about transgendered people and he greatly amplified suspicion and contempt for scientists, experts and reporters.
Some of these things were not particularly latent prior to Trump but most involved some degree of sheepishness or rationalization. On race and immigration in particular, Trump brought new people into the GOP, including former Democrats and many who had not previously been engaged in politics or voting.
I’m reminded of something that struck me back in 2001, in the weeks after the 9/11 and anthrax attacks. At the time, I was working in a corporate job and had known quite a few of my colleagues for several years. In late September and early October of that year, I noticed that a large percentage of the people I worked with had suffered a stress-induced outbreak of sores around the mouth. They had herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1).
I was married at the time, but I still found it unnerving to realize how widespread the virus was, and it really demonstrated how the September 11/anthrax attacks had collectively traumatized the country. I had never seen the latency period of the virus broken before in my colleagues and now the virus had reemerged in so many of them all at once.
This is how I think about how racism and other negative human attitudes work in a political context. It’s always lying there below the surface, but it isn’t always present and it’s seldom contagious. No amount of stress can cause an outbreak of herpes in someone who doesn’t have the virus, but it’s still possible to catch it from someone who does. This is why you don’t want the people exposed to racist leaders and you don’t want leaders who use racial issues to cause stress.
A Republican leader can choose how they want to lead. The choices they make will influence how people feel and how they act. They can cause an outbreak of racism. They can activate latent racist attitudes in people. They can create new racists who will infect their associates. They can also decline to exploit opportunities to do this. John McCain could have run a very racist campaign against Barack Obama, and his contest certainly wasn’t free of racist themes. On the whole, however, McCain himself took a higher road, sometimes even sticking his neck out to tamp down the racism in the base. If nothing else, this prevented things from getting worse.
Trump saw this as weakness. He didn’t understand why McCain, and Romney after him, left tools on the table that might have helped them win. So, he pursued a viral outbreak as the core of his strategy and built a political coalition around it.
As mentioned above, race is only one of several wedges he used, but the point remains consistent with all of them. You can lead people to a bad place. You can make people embrace their worst emotions, feelings and instincts. That is what’s happened to the Republican Party and the Republican base, and it culminated on January 6.
So, yes, the Republican base was always full of deplorables and greedheads, and simply leading them back to where they were before Trump arrived won’t change that. It’s just the minimum that is needed right now.
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I always enjoy your writing, but this one is exceptional. Thank you.
Excellent analysis.
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You have articulated the root cause of the current state of the Republican Party in very understandable terms and relatable comparisons. This is particularly unique since I have yet to read such clarity from any MSM reporter.
As an immigrant, I have had a hard time with the cognitive dissonance. I came to this country motivated by the US Apollo program, the wonderful leadership in science and technology, and the image created by Hollywood movies. This sub-surface virulent strain of racism was not visible from far. In Princeton while walking on Alexander Road in 1980 during the Iran hostage crisis, one time we heard “Go back to Iran” shouted from an open truck… but aside from that Princeton, and later Caltech and Pasadena was bubble for us immigrants…
In 1987 we made the cross-country car trip from Boston to Los Angeles. One stop on the way was a small town in Kansas – Salina. In the morning we went to the only breakfast place in town – and most of the people just stared and stared at us – they probably had not seen Indians before… we shrugged it off…
I have now understood that this virulent strain of racism and joy at Trump’s performative cruelty (and also his merry band of thugs – Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Corey Levandowski, Michael Cohen before he reformed, etc.) – was like the Herpes virus… simply lurking to be activated… it is much worse than any temporary situation we might be going through… it is deeply rooted and entrenched in a large fraction of the polity! And once the genie has been let out, it is NOT going back into the bottle!
In middle school in Princeton during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, there was an Iranian immigrant named Daruch who suffered terribly from taunts and even some mild physical abuse from his peers. My participation in this was very limited, although I know I said something negative to him at some point. I also felt badly for him when he was bullied because he was quite small for his age and it didn’t seem fair. Later on I became friends with him, but that was near the end of high school. I was probably in my mid-twenties when I realized how idiotic we all had been.
He was going to our high school because he’d fled Iran during the revolution, and we were mistreating him because out what the revolutionary government was going. We also didn’t have the slightest clue about the underlying causes of the hostage crisis or why some Iranians might be furious with the American government.
In any case, this incident is one I unhappily remember from time to time. I was a paper boy who delivered the afternoon Trenton Times on my bike. Everyday that newspaper had a graphic on the cover that said what day of the crisis it was. It ended, if I remember correctly, on Day 444.
I was genuinely angry about what Iran was doing, and I think that anger was justified. But there was so much I didn’t understand. And so, even in Princeton, there was a hostile environment for Iranians, and I played a small part in that.
I agree that a substantial number of Americans who have been led to a very bad place and that they need to be led away from that bad place. The alternative is to write them off as people. The typical Trump voter is not evil. They have been lied to by the politicians they trust and the news media they watch. They have been exploited. Conned.
They are still being lied to by their leadership and media, and they are still being exploited and conned. Trumpism is still virulant and dangerous and the Trump grift continues. Democrats can’t lead them from that bad place because we are the enemy and they are not listening to us. More than a few among Republicans would like to lead the party back to Mitt Romney and 2012, but they become RINOs as soon as they deviate from Trumpism. They stay mostly silent, abdicating their responsibility to the base.
Instead the worst among the leadership group are doubling down. Haley or Cruz or Hawley or Cotton or somebody else is going to try to lie, cheat or steal their way back to power in 2024. They are deliberately choosing to stay on the same path. They are apparently willing to turn their backs on democracy in the name of “freedom”. Unlike most of the people they lead, these are bad people. The good news is that I don’t think any of them can successfully ride that tiger. Trump himself can generate the necessary loyalty but he probably will be to busy defending himself in court to run in 2024.
I agree that we have to find away to lead the Trumpeteers away from the darkness, but I do not see how that is possible as long as Trumpism is still a political force. Denazification of Germany was impossible until the Nazis were defeated. We have to do exactly what you say, Martin, but who and how?
The only answer I can see is to beat them like a drum until Trumpism is a spent force. Then, and only then, can we lead these people to a healthier place.
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Someone mentioned to me this morning that there now are diverse sources of news. You pretty much pick what you want to hear. Back in the day news was pretty much defined by the three networks and the newspapers and they carried about the same fare. So everyone pretty much agreed on what they heard and extremist views were not readily accepted. He went on to mention Jan 6 when millions, hell tens of millions, thought the election was stolen….. and still do. Heck Arizona is still looking for the thieves. So what happens when some auditing firm says “yep the election was stolen we got the proof.” Doesn’t matter that it is just bullshit, as millions will believe it. So WTF do we do if that happens?