Time is up for the racist know-nothingism of the GOP

[Nevilledog]

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Tom Nichols
@RadioFreeTom
"Time has been ticking for the political dominance of resentful, mostly rural and mostly male Whites." - @JRubinBlogger

Yep.

Opinion | Time is up for the racist know-nothingism of the GOP
A party is going down in smoke.
washingtonpost.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/28/time-is-up-racist-know-nothingism-gop/

Time has been ticking for the political dominance of resentful, mostly rural and mostly male Whites. Before the Clinton era, these voters — once the Dixiecrats of the Jim Crow era — enjoyed a strange alliance with Big Business (joined in common antagonism toward the federal government) and anti-communists (who celebrated military valor pitted against godless communism). That coalition fell apart with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the growth of income inequality, in which the interests of corporations and the rich diverged from the struggling working class.

The Republican Party could have met those challenges in one of several ways. It could have adopted a genuinely pro-family, populist economic message with a patriotic bent that elevated the “dignity of work” with child tax credits, subsidized child care, a minimum wage tied to a realistic cost-of-living escalator and national service. But that would have brought the wrath of the GOP’s donor class, Wall Street interests and anti-government libertarians (who never attracted much of a following outside right-wing think tanks and lobbyists).

So instead, the right incubated a hodgepodge of know-nothingism (e.g., climate change denial and screwball economic protectionism), racism, xenophobia, misogyny and victimhood (legions were emotionally wounded by hearing “Happy holidays!”) to whip up the less-educated White vote. It did so with the help of two factors: First, a range of voter-suppression tactics helped sustain White political dominance despite demographic decline. Second, a greedy, right-wing media machine fed a steady diet of stories to its audience suggesting Christians were the most persecuted faction in the United States, immigrants were criminals and expertise-wielding elites were out to get them.

Could President Trump have risen to power without his racist birtherism conspiracy fanned by talk radio and Fox News? Unlikely. Could Republicans have maintained their lock in increasingly diverse states without voter suppression? Almost certainly not. Without white supremacy and right-wing media supporting each other, the runt Republican Party would have been vulnerable.

*snip*

[Mme. Defarge]

1. Amoral or immoral?

In my opinion, opinion writers and other pundits should be describing Trump’s behavior as immoral as opposed to amoral.

Amoral vs. immoral
The adjective immoral means contrary to established moral principles. Immoral actions are corrupt, unethical, sinful, or just wrong. Amoral means (1) neither moral nor immoral, or (2) lacking moral sensibility. So while immoral and amoral might share a little common ground, there is a clear distinction: immoral things are bad, and amoral things are either neutral from a moral perspective or simply removed from moral considerations.

https://grammarist.com/usage/amoral-immoral/

[brush]

2. And there's a consciouness in immorality.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. Fascist Oligarch eXtremists brought us to this point

Adelson, Kochs, Murdoch and many more.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america