An NYT piece (linked below) implies Republicans, in polls, are more interested in “law and order” than declaring war on “woke” institutions and corporations.
Is this true? Does it matter?
Is this because of pragmatic concerns?
Is this because Trump is mocking DeSantis, and people are just following the Poohed Piper?
Excerpt:
The term [woke] has become a quick way for candidates to flash their conservative credentials, but battling “woke” may have less political potency than they think. Though conservative voters might be irked at modern liberalism, successive New York Times/Siena College polls of Republican voters nationally and then in Iowa found that candidates were unlikely to win votes by narrowly focusing on rooting out left-wing ideology in schools, media, culture and business.
Instead, Republican voters are showing a “hands off” libertarian streak in economics, and a clear preference for messages about “law and order” in the nation’s cities and at its borders.
I’m wondering if this means little more than that they’ve decided to vote for Trump, and know the candidate who spends the most time on woke is the other guy.
I guess most people are figuring out “woke” means jack shit. Or else that it affects something they actually like such as Chick-fil-t, and don’t have the spine to give up on those chicken burgers. Just like gay marriage is largely a non-issue as most ‘Mericans know have a relative, know someone or ar a “friend of a friend” of someone gay. And these guy folks are not pedaphiles but if you didn’t know they were gay you’d be happy to have a beer or three with. And after a couple of beers, you even kinda sorta forget they are gay or realize it doesn’t fuckin’ matter.
The rage on transfolks is gonna fade just as soon as there is a new boogie man to hate COMBINED WITH the realization must trans folks want to go into a public bathroom, lock the stall, and pee in peace. While avoiding any kind of confrontation with a good ol boy secretly afraid harboring lustings and temptations he can’t control that can only be salved by beating the shit out of someone that isn’t an openly tattooed pure white blood heterosexual.
TFG is still in a huff about Megan Rapinoe refusing to visit the White House in 2019? What a loser.
I’m also having trouble following his logic (yes, I know, exercise in futility) - the US loss in 2023 is unironically the fault of Biden and these ‘woke’ players but these same ‘woke’ players won in 2019 so… what, that was emblematic of what was happening under crooked TFG? We can just ignore their ‘wokeness’ and the fact that they spit in TFG’s face in 2019 when it’s convenient?
It’s hard to stay incandescently furious about the same thing for very long. I haven’t heard any Red Sox fans complaining about “Bucky Fucking Dent” in ages.
Fortunately (depending on your point of view) the right wing has an army of commentators trying to find the next new thing their viewers have always been mad about.
The Republican party in the US is the party of heterosexual white supremacy. Their policy positions fundamentally and consistently boil down to “we don’t want those people having any kind of control over us.” They oppose racial progressivism like affirmative action and similar policies because they won’t accept “the coloreds” telling them how they can talk and behave. They oppose sexual and alternative-gender progressivism because they equally won’t accept “the queers” making rules they need to follow. Ditto for environmentalism and everything else, on down the line. “Those people don’t get to tell us what to do.” That’s all it is and that’s all it will ever be.
The code word for this is what they get bored with, and is what changes. Used to be commies and socialists. Then it was liberals. Trump got a lot of mileage out of “make America great again” which just means “go back to a time when those people knew their place.” The current code phrase is “woke,” which rolls all the same old stuff into a package with a new brand name. As long as it’s working to stem the tide of “those people” having influence, they’ll stick with it. But when the opposition figures out it’s the usual bullshit and develops a counter and it stops working, they’ll dump it and come up with a new euphemism. But it will be the same basic pseudo-ideology.
(I say “pseudo” ideology because there aren’t really any ideas to it, beyond the basic “fuck off, you don’t tell me what to do.” Conservatism is basically tribal everywhere, but the US has raised and refined it to a rare degree with the whole “land of the free” thing, where a nebulous concept of liberty has been elevated to the status of religion. Honestly, from the outside, the US looks like a cargo cult, where instead of building runways and towers and hoping for food to fall from the sky, there’s a belief that waving the flag and singing the anthem and repeatedly shouting “freedom” is all that’s needed to create a functional country. But I’m digressing.)
So, yeah. The Republicans will never tire of their war on wokeness. They’ll just call it something else in a few years, and then something else again a few years after that.
I think there’s a lot of truth to this. They will continue to cultivate incandescent fury as long as this is a good political strategy, but after a while they have to find the next thing. When people discover that trans folks just aren’t affecting them in any real way, they may maintain their animus, but the white-hot rage not so much.
Every election cycle, the oligarchs role out the new line of bigotry for the GOP mob to rave about instead of paying attention to how crappy their lives are. It’s been gay marriage, trans rights, immigrants, etc.
Whenever those wear out their welcome, they just back to hating on black folks. It’s like Lynyrd Skynyrd ending the show with Free Bird.
The propaganda machine will keep spewing because the incandescent rage is very valuable to them. It sells books, merch, causes massive donations, and above all keeps the rabbles’ enthusiasm up so they’ll actually vote. And in their heavily incited lynch mob mentality, approve of whatever skullduggery goes on.
So in no sense are Republicans tiring of the War on Something Icky. They and their fuhrers live for that shit.
Also agree with other folks upthread that this poll question amounts to a very thinly veiled “Do you prefer Trump or DeSantis?” With the predictable outcome.
I know and, am friends with gay people. They are fine and now not locked into something that they are not. It allows them to be a person in society, and not hide their identity.
I know of one Trans person. A cop. Fine. Don’t care. They are doing their job. Great.
Immigrants do jobs that no one else wants to do. Do these idiot WANT to pay $10 for a head of lettuce?
I just do not understand the bigotry and out right hate these people have.
What in the hell are they afraid of? A society where everyone can get along?
Difference is a good thing, not a bad one. The planet is getting smaller every day. They are not “Those People” they are your people. Your neighbors.