*term from Yale prof. Timothy Snyder.
Step 1: Create a crisis where brown people live.
Step 2: When migrants come north to escape crisis, stoke anger against “invaders.
Step 3: Enact policies that cause pain among constituents: Take away health care; give tax cuts to rich corporations to create more income inequality, encourage global warming, etc.
(For maximum efficiency, Step 3 is best done concurrently with Step 1)
Step 4: When constituents are hurting (just think of all the pain that comes from denying health care), blame the “invaders”; stoke anger and nurture grievances against “enemies.”
Step 5: Flex muscles, be a strongman, promise the constituents to fight against the “enemies.”
Step 6: Enact policies that are cruel to migrants and other “enemies” to earn the undying gratitude and devotion from constituents.
Another word for this: Pure evil. What else do you call the bombing of hospitals?
For more on how this works, see Timothy Snyder’s talk on Sadopopulism.
Dear Republican Leadership: See where your policy of “win at all costs” brought you?
You know how this all started, right?
After Brown v. Board of Education, Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movement, when all of those cultural changes had you alarmed and terrified, you felt that “unseen satanic forces” were trying to destroy America.
You felt that America was largely being taken away from you.
You felt “determined to repossess it and prevent the final act of subversion.” Quotations from Hofstadter, who describes that feeling of panic you have.
Hofstadter calls it the “paranoid style in politics.”
Hofstadter explains that panic causes people to adopt extreme measures.
It was Newt Gingrich who channelled all that far-right wing paranoia when he urged Republicans to win by any means necessary.
He urged Republicans not to compromise.
The problem is that democracy requires compromise.
What is that “final act of subversion” the Republicans are so desperate to prevent? Multiculturalism. The loss of white [mostly Christian] male dominance.
Giving that up is scary. It feels like losing America.
“Win by any means” now means continuing to support Trump.
Earlier, I tweeted this:
People responded by suggesting that Sen Lindsay Graham is cowardly or compromised.
People are complicated and do things for multiple reasons.
Possibly Graham and his pals are cowards or compromised.
There is another possibility: Graham & pals support Trump because truly believe they are Making America Great Again.
They are True Believers.
The problem of course is that they are outnumbered, and they know it.
They are acting from desperation.
