Why the shift to the right?

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Tennessee new law July 1 2022 making it a felony to sleep or camp in public areas so basically being homeless is a felony

 

There seems to be a lot of sudden shifts happening


As my thought drift into —-
driving in a car stick shift jerking all over the place ....trying to look cool and like a smooth ride while everyone just looks in amazement of how you don’t have whip lash yet

 

Dang what are they hoping a homeless person will get run over on the road, or the on or off ramp as a lesser charge of misdemeanor rather camp on a property making that greater charge of felony …that really sounds Mr.Meaner

 

Can they not camp on the White House lawn ???

 

The rise of the neo fascists is scary

 

sure they can camp on the roof of the white house as well ...they can camp wherever they fancy

 

I gotta say, the quality of the discussion on this thread, on a scale of 1 to 10, is about a 15 or 20. I hope I don't spoil it by getting us lost in the weeds, but I'm trying to get a real idea of why the right turn in this country and what if anything can be done about it? I see change and backlash as the main mechanisms driving the process. Eggheads may detect a Hegelian dialectic, in which social change (thesis) triggers reaction (antithesis) leading (hopefully) to synthesis--but not necessarily in our lifetimes. I take the situation in the early 1950s to be the basis point for judging directional changes in our politics. Political sociologist S.M. Lipset in his classic study Political Man (1960)attributed the remarkable political stability of the U.S. to our willingness to abide by the rules of peaceful transfer of power by free and fair elections; and he attributed that to the fact (at the time) that we were relatively free of class and ideological divisions, so that temporary loss of power would not mean ruin. That period was not necessarily a "normal" state of affairs for the U.S. We, of course, fought a bloody Civil War a century earlier, and the term "radical right" entered the vocabulary of political sociologists in the 1950s because of McCarthyism and the John Birch Society. (Since profs were writing about it, it must have been a real thing even way back then). School desegregation led to violence to which President Eisenhower responded by calling out the National Guard. But relatively speaking, immediate postwar era was probably a high water mark in American political stability-- the fifties celebrated in sitcoms like Happy Days, Leave It to Beaver, and Ozzie and Harriet: bland, conformist, but relatively peaceful. There was a large consensus on the American Dream and the importance of defending our way of life against "Godless Communism."

Within half a decade, things changed dramatically. We got (gasp) hippies, and yippies and Black Panthers, demonstrations in the streets--and of course the backlash that followed. I think we have to look at the extent to which structural factors beyond anyone's control might be involved. Rodney King once asked the question: "can't we all just get along?" I'd like to say yes, but we would be struggling against powerful forces pulling in the opposite direction.

Some contributing factors that come to mind are: (1) wars, hot and cold (especially the Cold War and its aftermath; (2) Communism, Soviet threat & replacement by Putinism; (3) the breakdown of the New Deal coalition and the decline of organized labor;(4) the promotion of multinational trade agreements like NAFTA and WYO, pressuring U.S blue collar workers; (5) advancement of minorities and women,and affirmative action, leading to backlash ; (6) increased emphasis on identity politics (Black Power, the Women's Movement, and Gay Rights, leading to right wing political reactions; (7) the environmental movement regulating industry and public lands, and triggering reactions from corporations and groups whose interests were adversely affected; (8) the rise of the New Left and a "woke" intelligentsia in Academia, minority circles and and urban centers, culminating in Safe Zones, Antifa and Black Lives Matter; (9) the emergence of greater class divisions; (10) the shift to "post-industrial" society; (11) the advent of "post-modernism"; (12) changes in Immigration patterns and policies; (13) the rise of the religious right around the abortion issue; (14) "advances" in communication technology and the mass media and social media; (15) the publication of paranoid books with apocalyptic themes like Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth or insurrectionist racist themes like W.L.Pierce's The Turner Diaries; (16) the erosion of norms of civility and compromise (e.g., pork barrel politics, logrolling); the emergence of professional political consultants; (17) appearance of armed paramilitary groups;(18) the transformation of the NRA into a militant promoter of unregulated gun ownership; (19) the change of judicial interpretation of the Second Amendment to recognized the constitutional right of individuals to own guns. (20) multi-billionaires with an interest in shifting the focus of politics away from class; (21) the election of Barrack Obama as our first African-American President--leading to backlash from the right; and racists. Last, but not least, we can't leave out (22) Donald J.Trump, who has benefited from all these factors, but has also helped to shape and guide them. Big changes like this are always threatening to some folks who feel their wealth, status and/or power are at stake. And this creates the opportunity for political strategists, operatives and predatory elites to sow dissension and make hay.

This is quite a list, I know. (Did I leave anything out?) It includes the items I mentioned in my earlier post #12 & then some. But to satisfy my OCD needs, I hope (some day) to explain in future posts how each one contributed to the rise of the Radical Right--unless I get tired or realize nobody else is reading , which is possible. Stay tuned. Comments and criticisms welcome. And feel free to pick up the torch if I drop it before reaching the end.

 

To avoid confusion it's important to keep our directions and wings straight. Many of the explanations out on the web simply add to the confusion. Basically, the term "Rght" derives from the seating arrangement in the French national assembly under the monarchy where supporters of the king, aristocracy and clergy sat on the right and supporters of the commoners sat on the left. In others words, Right had to do with hierarchy and privilege.. Right wingers favored hierarchy, order, and tradition, while Left wingers favored equality and social justice.

Much of the confusion about the terms comes with trying to transport them to the modern United States and relate them to positions and slogans of American political parties. We're not just talking about "conservatives" here. but rather reactionaries and right wing radicals. . A conservative wants to preserve the status quo. But taken literally that would mean keeping all the changes of the past half century, including abortion rights for women, affirmative action, and gay rights. Most conservatives don't want that and the radical right certainly doesn't. They are reactionaries: folks who don't want the status quo, but instead favor a return to the status quo ante--the way things were in the "good old days. Think Archie Bunker at the piano: "Songs that old Glenn Miller played, songs, that the hat made the Hit Parade. Guys like me, we had it made. Those were the daayys." Radical refers to efforts to get to the root of things, and favors fundamental change. But that can be Right or Left. The radical Right favors fundamental change back to the ways of the past--traditions that used to be. At least that's how I'm using the terms.

On the internet, things often get confused. One site tells us, for example, that the Right favors liberty and individual rights, while he Left favors big government.That's really misleading! In the present political context, the Left is more in favor of using government to effect changes that increase equality and regulate the economy and the environment. But the Right wants government out of our pockets and into our bedrooms to regulate morals, censor what we read, and even how and with whom we have intimate relations. Guns are a special case. The Left favors regulating them in the interest of public safety. The Right favors not regulating them in the interest of individual rights. So regulation of a woman's control over her body is okay, as fr as the Right is concerned. But regulation of a person's right to own an assault rifle is not okay to the Right wingers. And people of either position are capable of favoring authoritarian government : communist on the left, fascist on the right. That may not be the way you're used to using the terms, but it's how I'll be using them here. I'd be happy to discuss my usage with you.

 

There is no right turn, it's just they've been getting louder and more radical. 65% of the voting population is moderate or liberal. The right crazies all got pulpits to shout from and a lot of red hat "disenfranchised" sheeple to follow along. Disenfranchised kind of rhymes with "I want now what others have worked hard for for a long time" or "I feel like I am entitled to everything, just because I can't get my way" or "I just can't contribute positively to society, so society must be wrong" or "I don't feel that needy people need anything more than I deserve for nothing"........

And then there's the guy who decided to make a spectacle of himself praising AOC as his favorite kind of "big Latino ass" on the steps of the whitehouse...real right wing class. Could possibly imagine if a liberal got up and made fun of a republican congresswoman's ass in public? There would be riot.

 

Divide and rule/conquer.....?





Mzzls

Ps. it is not about left/right(opinions)........just how extreme we get about it(polarization)

 

FWIW the radicals, and hippies, of the 60s found out that their ideology didn't work in the 70s, so they sold out.
BTW, I disagree that 65% of the population if moderate, or left leaning. I think that number is somewhere in the 55% range.