"It might have to do with the color of our skin."
Gloria Johnson (White), Tennessee House Representative, who joined two other representatives (Black) in a House floor gun reform protest. The GOP-dominated House expelled only the Black representatives.
The red state culture war, led by rightwing extremist Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, is increasingly unable to hide White Christian nationalism under what they hoped would be a generic and not well-defined word – woke – suggesting weak liberalism. When ex-President Donald Trump began accepting and even complimenting racist militants, appointing Supreme Court Justices who openly espoused restricting voting laws and women’s rights, the idea of White Christian nationalism became a socially justifiable movement. “Fine people on both sides” and “stand back and stand by.”
DeSantis’ culture war, which has expanded into red states across the land, censors public school lessons and library books that discuss any gender differences vis-à-vis LGBTQ+ or references to racial, ethnic or religious discrimination that might make White students uncomfortable (so-called “critical race theory” or CRT), whether in our historical past (relating to slavery, the Jim Crow era) or even into the present day. Effectively, under the newly-minted notion of “parents’ rights to control what their children are taught,” it often takes just one parent or one student to object to a subject area that may have been taught for many years past, to get that subject (or book) banned or censored. So, if that parent is a White Christian nationalist…
Legislation that intruded into the medical profession’s care of patients – whether over pregnancy, disease inoculation and health restrictions or treatment for gender issues – clearly pushed religious values into law, even though most Americans opposed such intrusion. But heavily gerrymandered red states found liberal and secular resistance very easy to overcome. Despite dozens of recent school shootings, mostly involving the once-banned assault guns, red states have marched in virtual lockstep to make access to firearms easier, and to allow permitless concealed guns to be the new normal.
Indeed, the recent school shooting in Tennessee’s state capital, Nashville, that killed six people (including three 9-year-olds) produced a state House floor protest by three Democrats (see the above quote) against the lack of any possible meaningful gun control bills, legislation uniformly opposed by the GOP majority (more than three times the number of Democrats in that House).
Cases pending before a severely rightwing 6-3 Supreme Court (based on religious and voting rights issues before the court, accepting affirmative action review, approving Christian prayer for sports teams, the reversal of Roe v Wade as demanded by fundamentalist Christian groups, etc.) suggest that the long-treasured litany of evangelical and White traditionalist wishes, effectively to turn the entire American legal system as a reflection of those values at the expense of minorities, is easily within reach. Until 2008, the notion of a ubiquitous right to gun ownership was merely an NRA wish but not the law of the land. The country had lived through hundreds of years, even an unchallenged assault weapon ban (1994-2004), without such an interpretation. However, a very badly reasoned 2008 Supreme Court ruling (Heller vs DC) led to our being only nation on earth, not at war, having a virtually unfettered flow of weapons as legally sold. PS - the below-the-border cartels are grateful.
As I watch North Carolina, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats based on statewide votes (governor or US president), wind up with a legislature that is 2/3 Republican purely by reason of an unabashed partisan gerrymander, I no longer believe that this nation is remotely a democracy. With over 70% of voters polled, by many nationally accepted pollsters, showing a negative reaction to the reversal of Roe v Wade, I watch red state after red state criminalize every aspect of women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
When economies shift, when large segments of any nation feel marginalized, there is often a notion of being abandoned, left behind if you will, by governments and an assault by easily identifiable members of the community. They may be described as “murderers and rapists,” “they’re taking up spaces in our universities that they do not deserve,” “they’re the dark money behind the deep state, like George Soros,” “they’re all pedophiles,” “they’re blaming us for the past, and we weren’t there,” etc. In order: Mexicans, students of color, Jews and Democrats and Democrats. In order also: Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, MAGA leaders, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ron DeSantis.
So if you have a large body of voters who feel left behind, unscrupulous politicians almost always fall back on identifying culprits. Hitler had Jews. Stalin had his bourgeois. Joe McCarthy had communists. Trump had everybody except his adoring fans. The blame is never deserved, but naming people, individually or in groups, and attaching horrific labels to their existence – blame on steroids – while touting your candidacy or platform as the only solution is standard procedure. Many resort to prayer to a God who will reverse their misfortune, as savvy politicians know.
Under the MAGA movement, which has moved well beyond Donald Trump to envelop virtually the entire body of elected Republicans today (certainly in red states and national politics), their leadership needs an “us” versus “them” hateful and perhaps violent polarization to harness a sizeable minority of US-based White Christian nationalists, enraged and well-armed, to take on an American majority that does not want a fight. They have virtually no bread and butter benefits for the masses… but they know that passion over a culture war may work instead.
Donald Trump harnessed a once silent but seething minority of White voters who felt left behind, particularly as Democrats seem to focus on the very globalism that sucked blue collar jobs out of our economy. He agilely pushed the notion of “them” scapegoating, which became both legitimized and the new normal within his based (roughly a third of American voters). But there a very, very big catch: such values cannot be imposed on a majority for long. Either the outside world will rise to crush such movements or brutal autocracy will rise to crush opponents, unless… Russia and China are counting on our unraveling, as their mass media shows every day. We have met the enemy, and it is us! Even the FBI tells us that the greatest risk we face as a nation now is domestic terrorism.
I’m Peter, Dekom, and if ever our democracy were threatened in this nation, it is now!
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