Donald Trump: We Didn't Get Here Overnight

When Barry Goldwater pioneered the Southern Strategy in 1964, and Lewis Powell released the Powell Memo in 1971, a marriage of sorts occurred: right wing business interests, knowing that they could not win elections in and of themselves, joined forces with the conservative social values voters and somehow fused them.  The result was a slow but steady gain in power, a state here, a Ronald Reagan there.  Over two generations, with talk radio and then Fox News, the takeover progressed. Many liberals, or progressives, or whatever the hell we want to call ourselves, have managed (outside of California and Massachusetts) to do little more than stop the bleeding.

There are many, many writers who have chronicled this phenomenon with far more skill than I can. Some that immediately come to mind are Thomas Frank (What's the Matter with Kansas?), the writer (his name escapes me) of Nixonland, Jane Mayer with Dark Money.  If you are interested in how we got here, these books (and many others) are invaluable.  

I write tonight, however, only to say the following: that the marriage of conservative social values, brewed with right wing business interests led inexorably (but not inevitably) to the crisis (and crisis is the only word for it) of a Donald Trump presidency.

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They depended on each other. Well, that's not exactly true. Big business depended on the social conservatives far more than the social conservatives depended on big business.  It needed their votes. At first it was a big con, a huge con.  Big Business Republicans pretended that they really cared about the abortion battles. (Democrats, for their part, never understood how important this was for people. But more about them another day).  So they said, "Sure, we hate abortion, too. Elect us and we'll take care of it."  

Except they didn't.  They cut taxes and built the military (not to mention the national debt) and deregulated.  Deregulation was the big one. Reagan understood, building the military fostered patriotism (which was really nationalism), which made the people feel like he really did love America.  But deregulation was the big one.

Talk radio proceeded, a direct result of deregulation.  It's nearly impossible for someone my age to imagine, but before Reagan, if a radio station gave 3 hours to a Rush Limbaugh, it then had to give three hours to an Al Franken.  Deregulation also brought about serious media consolidation, so now Limbaugh was on lots and lots of stations.  Business said they were winning the war of ideas, and maybe they were, but only because corporate radio stations weren't about to put shows on the air which advocated fighting against the power of said corporation.  It's easy to win a war of ideas when only one idea is being forcefully advocated.  

Talk radio, too, found a receptive audience.  Think about it: who actually can listen to talk radio during the day?  Not the wage earner, not the school teacher, not the immigrant cutting up chickens. It's the people who run their own business.  Try it once.  Stay home from work for a day and watch, say, MLB Network.  You know what ad runs OVER and OVER and OVER again?   Vistaprint, a company that prints business cards.  You know who doesn't need business cards? Wage earners, people locked into a schedule from eight to five.

As the Limbaugh's and Hannity's and Ingraham's worked their magic, the business owners and the retired and disabled listened, and they wove their tale: Society would only work if and when the "job creators" (read: big businessmen) were "unleashed" (read: taxed less and deregulated even further). And this was the magic: Not only would society thrive economically when these (mostly) (white) men were even further empowered than they already were.  They would also take care of society's moral ills, primarily abortion but as the decades wore on, the attack on Christianity, the gays, and the guns.

 

At first, in the 70's and 80's and even into the 90's, the Republicans assured the social conservatives they were on their side, and more often they not, they'd get elected.  And then, in office, they'd largely ignore abortion, realizing (correctly) that Roe v. Wade was kind of in the way, and quite probably, in many cases, not really caring.  Their business was, well, business. Taxes. Deregulation. Welfare "reform". Entitlement "reform".  Campaigns would come and go, and they'd talk a good game, but what were the social conservatives going to do? Vote for the Democrat?

To be continued.

So I'm not a genius. So be it.

"We had long talks where I would still her forebodings by telling her that men of genius conceived their best projects when drunk; that the most majestic constructions of philosophic thought were so derived."

The name that kept coming up was Ernest Hemingway.  I thought of him, of course. Hemingway drank like a fish.  He was a genius. The Sun Also Rises, great fucking book.  The Short, Happy Life of Someone or Another.

Hunter S. Thompson, his name came up.  Don't know him. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?

Jack Keruac. He wrote On the Road in 10 frenzied days. Or something like that.

The  point is, if you're a genius, you don't need to work. Right?

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We generally agreed that for many of us that genius--true genius--did not involve hard work.  Also, that geniuses didn't go small. They went big and hit it out of the park.  And they did it with a bottle of whiskey.

On the other hand, we also generally agreed, if you really liked something, you shouldn't go after it, 'cause it wasn't really possible anyway.  Do something realistic.  Sports or music or writing, don't go after them.  Nobody gets those except the geniuses.

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Silly, silly thoughts.  It's only the last few years, as I look back on life, as I really pay attention to the fields of writing, sports, music, and you see how much bullshit that all is.

The best writers don't sit around and wait for genius to hit them, much less while constantly downing whiskey.  The pound away at their keyboards, they revise and change and dispose and start all over. Stephen King has literally published tens (hundreds?) of thousands of pages in a long, lucrative career.  He didn't get there by waiting for inspiration.  He hacked away eight hours a day.  And those elites who says Stephen King "isn't a real writer"--fuck that.  How many people have read YOUR books?

The Eagles. Again, many people look down on the Eagles.  They for sure weren't the most talented music group in history.  But they worked their asses off.  I heard one time where Glenn Frey spent three days working on the "t" in "city", as in "City girls just seem to find out early...how to open doors with just a smile...".  And guess what? "Lyin' Eyes" is a great fucking song.  No "Stairway to Heaven", maybe, but really, what is "Stairway to Heaven" except "Stairway to Heaven"?  Should all musicians spend their whole fucking life trying to dosomething as good as "Stairway to Heaven"?  Or should they work, and plug away, and produce some nice music.

Y'all know I'm a Cubs fan. Last summer, I was listening to Pat Hughes and Ron Kumer, and they mentioned how for 20 minutes, every day, Addison Russell and Javier Baez worked on the 6-4 or 4-6 turn at second base.  Precision.  Just like the "t" in "City girls". Sure, they have talent.  But they also work their asses off.

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I am, professionally, a teacher.  I like sports and follow them, I like older music and pretend it's still relevant.  But I sort of, kind of, consider myself a writer.  I've been told, here and there, that I'm kind of good at it.  I've wasted a lot of good years writing only when I'm absolutely sure it's gonna come out to a certain standard, in essence, waiting for that moment of genius.  And yes, a lot of those years I would be counting on whiskey to help with that, because, after all, "men of genius conceived their best projects when drunk; that the most majestic constructions of philosophic thought were so derived."

But no more.  I pledge to write more frequently, though perhaps less powerfully.  I will put time into it, and not wait for genius to strike.  Moreover, I will (at least try) not to worry about how many people are reading these blog posts.  I'll write; if people want to read, that's their business, not mine. For, unlike Stephen King, I don't pay the bills with my writing.

Even more importantly, I will teach like the Eagles rehearsed.  I will put all I have into it. The Eagles had a lot of duds, but the 1975 Their Greatest Hits was the best selling album of the 20th century.  My goal is to teach, going for the "t" in "City Girls", and I'll probably miss a lot, but at least I'll be out there, I'll be contributing, I'll be helping, I may even do one or two things that really help people.

Every morning I will ask God to let me know His/Her/Their will for me that day, and to give the strength, courage and self-discpline to carry that out.

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P.S.: Hunter S. Thompson OD'd.  Hemingway shot himself in the mouth with a shotgun.  Jack Kerouak drank himself to death by the age of forty.  John Bonham of Led Zeppelin choked on his own vomit after a drinking binge.

Talented, they certainly were.  But I'd much rather be a productive average Joe than a dead genius.