Daffey Thoughts
Please don’t insult my intelligence with this idea that Trump has somehow ended the “Party of Lincoln.” If we set aside the leftist puritanism that seeks to drape racism over anyone and everyone who lived more than ten years ago, the idea that the Democrats had some abiding respect for the GOP up until now has got to be one of the biggest stretches of word-drool I’ve ever heard.
What got me interested in politics in the first place was the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. From casual conversation to actual political punditry, the consensus was clear: We were doomed. Reagan, like the GOP and American Conservatives in general, was a warmongering, right wing, Big Brother, corporate junkie who was just itching to nuke the world. In fact, the general opinion among young people was that we better get lucky quick, since because of Reagan our days were numbered.
The fact that America would elect someone so dedicated to nuking the world piqued my interest. I was only in 8th grade, and certainly didn’t mind the idea of indulging myself due to our inevitable doom, but I couldn’t get past this idea that America had made such a horrible mistake. If we were such a great country – and even by 1980, the general consensus still was that we were a great country – how could we do such a thing? How could we let people like Reagan and conservatives, who were universally portrayed as stupid, racists, sexists, bigots, warmongers, military machine advocates and idiots (except for William F. Buckley, Jr.) take control? From there I began my long journey toward an eventual focus on political science.
Through the 80s and beyond, the GOP often was compared to Nazis, the KKK, mocked as morons, dolts, idiots. Sometimes this even happened on the floor of Congress. They were Frank Burns and Archie Bunker. They were general General Sline, prepared to nuke the world for the American way. They were Big Brother, invading our bedrooms and imposing their values and trying to ‘legislate morality’. From sitcoms to movies to SNL to daytime talk shows to pop music to news editorials and magazines to college textbooks, the overwhelming witness was one of a party barely two steps away from parades down the streets of Nuremberg, but without the brains.
From Bork to Quayle, from Bush to Bush, from Limbaugh to FOX, anyone remotely associated with conservatism and the GOP was immediately lumped into the same category. As the legacy of America increasingly became one of genocide, imperialism, racism, bigotry, intolerance, religious zealotry and puritanism, the conservative attempt to hold to the country’s heritage only added fuel to the fire. By the Clinton years, when President Clinton had no problem taking an entire swath of the nation, portraying them as hicks and hayseeds with their confederate flags and shotguns in the truck, it was apparent that we were talking about a movement seen by the Left with all the affection that McCarthy once held for American Communists.
And that was the official takes that we heard from Democrats, political leaders, media personnel, entertainers and academics. I’m not talking about what was said on the street. Before the internet, you didn’t have a chance to hear what someone in Zimbabwe or Kamchatka Krai has to say on an issue as easily as today, but you still heard what people had to say. Especially among the younger generations, Boomers and the subsequent age groups, the attacks on Reagan, Nancy, Bush, Quayle, Gingrich, the GOP, Limbaugh, Conservatives and Conservative Christians (including, as it was assumed, Pope John Paul II), was as bad as anything I’ve heard about Obama.
In 1988 I was in college. Ronald Reagan came to speak at The Ohio State University. Though being a Democrat and liberal agnostic, I was influenced by my WWII generation parents who felt you could disagree with a politician and still respect him. A friend of mine – more liberal than I was – went with me to hear what he had to say. Hardly any security compared to today. We sat to his right, about 150 feet away in the arena. Behind us was a section of young men, probably in their late 20s to early 30s. Fellows who would have been in middle school in the late 60s. The things they said out loud about Reagan – about Nancy Reagan as well – still sends shivers down my spine. Both my friend and I were stunned. The idea that our modern discourse is the result of talk radio or cable news or Facebook is as wrong as you can get. I think it’s generational. It certainly isn’t confined to one side, nor did it suggest that Democrats in government, media or on the street held the GOP and conservatives in the highest regards.
The party that tacitly allowed SNL, Bill Maher, Comedy Central and Wanda Sykes to run down and dirty propaganda for it without getting it own hands dirty, that is acts shocked at Trump’s manners and vulgarity (at least he has the guts to say it himself), now wants to convince me that it is saddened by what Trump has done to the GOP for reasons that I can’t grasp. Ms. Clinton, don’t act as if this is some party that you and the liberal Democrats admired except for a few unfortunate disagreements with which you respectfully disagreed. Acting that way, and suggesting Trump has done damage to this vaunted political party, would be like Jack Chick saying ‘Look what Pope Francis has done to the Body of Christ.’ Nope. Chick at least is consistent and doesn’t pretend like he had regard for Catholicism before Pope Francis. Perhaps Hillary Clinton and the Democratic representatives could learn a few points from Chick when it comes to honesty. If nothing else, at least Chick doesn’t act like I’m too stupid to remember what he said about the Church five years ago. It would be nice if the Democrats and Hillary Clinton could do the same.
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