Performative Culture War Takes A Village

Go ahead and tell me what an American small-c conservative stands for nowadays. Better yet, tell me one concrete policy that is a Republican Party priority.

You can’t. There is no idea or ideology there anymore. In the long ago, when politics was fun and made a modicum of sense, you could say that Republicans and conservatives were for a strong military, low taxes, minimizing public spending, and generally limiting the scope of public involvement in the economy.

Then came the 90s and Newt Gingrich. The internet. Drudge. Lewinski. Bush. 9/11. War in Iraq. Katrina. 2008 financial crisis. Obama.

Gingrich was a demagogue who lay the foundation for today’s excuse for conservatism. Bush weakened America through his ill-advised adventurism in Iraq. He showed that a poorly managed government generates poor results with Katrina. The 2008 crisis really underscored how it seemed as if Republican governance exists for the sole purpose of ruining the economy and leaving it to Democrats to repair. Hence, the Keynesian responses to that 2008 meltdown.

Obama broke a lot of right-wing brains and led to idiocy like the birther debacle, which led ultimately to the election of an ignorant empty-vessel culture warrior in 2016, Donald Trump. Trump is now the leader of a cult that still idolizes him as the anti-Obama who unironically called his ideology “America First” as he further weakened and divided America. Every accusation is a confession – from “snowflake” on down.

Covid came along and, ultimately it became Republican dogma to reject vaccination, reject masks, and reject pretty much even the gentlest public health measures that were put in place to mandate that people give a shit about each other, since there is clearly no way in hell that such a thing would happen in this country voluntarily. It’s why professional assholes like Ben Carlisle don’t think people should have a choice to wear a mask to protect themselves from disease – he thinks those people should be mocked.

Now, the Republican Party doesn’t even have a platform anymore, really. It was supposed to have dominated the midterms, but didn’t. Its biggest and brightest stars are walking, talking culture war memes who rail against Ukraine, masks, Covid, vaccines, etc. ad infinitum.

It is this descent into neofascist anti-democratic hero-worship of Trump that results in people such as “Mayor Deb” in Williamsville. She isn’t the first weird right-winger to run for office in the town of Amherst, but boy did she make a splash by drawing attention to herself and her town with things that really were beside the point of running a village.

The thing that people tend to forget is that while these culture war people who, e.g., get upset that M&Ms aren’t sexually attractive enough for them anymore and whose existence and political ethos can be summed up as “owning the libs” make up a small percentage of self-identified Republicans. No matter what happens, this country will continue for the foreseeable future to have about 30 – 35% of its population in the thrall of a right-wing populist like Trump. Now, I happen to think that right-wing populism is a bad thing and objectively so.

Mayor Deb shows what the vast majority of regular people – “normies” think of her idiocy. When no one was paying attention, she won election. When people paid attention, she lost in a landslide. Like her buddy, Ben.

These culture warriors may win the occasional cancellation of M&Ms characters and the firings of hospital administrators over their Facebook posts, but luckily America isn’t quite stupid enough to keep them around elected office.