I honestly think Alex would be a Libertarian Republican - fiscal conservative and social progressive. Maybe even a player in the Libertarian Party.
The first term? hell yeah. I work with a lot of educated intelligent people, and half or more of them voted trump in 2016. Now would Alex have voted for him the second time? A few of my coworkers did not.
Sage_Rat’s absurd suggestion was that conservatives or red-state people faced nonstop mockery and denigrating portrayals every time they turned on the TV. Although Designing Women isn’t conservative, they’re definitely southern women who are portrayed in a positive and sophisticated light, as you’ve pointed out.
And this gets to what I claim is the real problem conservatives have with the media: they want and expect the media to propagandize their beliefs to the exclusion of all others. They want their culture prioritized above all others. They can tolerate very small amounts of ribbing if it’s coming from other whites. But they get their hackles up when nonwhites are portrayed as equal (or even better) than whites in any context.
MAGA is reacting to the fact that Black and gay people can be portrayed in TV in a positive light, and it can’t be stopped. They’re not going to admit this outright, so instead they make up a bunch of bullshit about how they’re constantly attacked and smeared and persecuted and live under constant siege. It’s all hogwash.
I have noticed that the “similar” threads that pop when you’re creating a new thread are far less precise/accurate than ideal. And hey, I only noticed it because I was certain I had answered it before, which I had! It’s been over 4 years since the last one, so I think that’s a worthy chunk of time to forget.
Plus, a lot of posters have been making credible points that what Alex P. Keaton may have supported in 2016 and 2020, could be quite different in 2024!
That is a possibility – ending up outside “formal” Republican alignment while still insisting he remained for “real” politico-economic market freedom and deregulation. (And it would give him a great platform from where to claim how much smarter he is for realizing this is the right way to do that, even if it means hardly anyone’s listening.)
These are the people that complain that “Hispanic Heritage Night” or “LGBTQ Pride night” at baseball games are somehow hurting them. “When is white straight people’s night?”, they ask. Uh, that would literally be every other night.
And they think having gay couple or mixed race couples on commercials is “cramming your lifestyle down our throats*” never realizing that having straignt white couples is doing the same to us with their lifestyles. We are forced to suffer through your godddam christian holidays all the damn time.
*I find it really freudian how they use terms like “ramming down our throats” when confronting gay sex. “How long have you been thinking about ramming things in your throat? Tell me about your father.”
The Libertarian party are a bunch of unprincipled weirdos, and “Libertarian Republicans” are just Trump voters who say “my opposition to abortion and gay rights is purely fiscal, a small government can’t afford to pay for so many rights, and we’re going to make the government extremely small.”
So yeah, Alex might actually play that latter game. If he doesn’t get brain-cooked on Twitter then he’ll be doing some mental yoga.
Another possibility is that he labels himself a liberal, or a “no labels” guy. He’s breaking the rules, he’s neither right nor left, but a mysterious other thing. He’s quote-unquote, “politically homeless”. He tut-tuts mildly at Trump while firehosing non-stop criticisms of the left in order to “make them better anti-Trump opponents.” Maybe he writes for The Atlantic, someone like Tom Nichols who loves doing exculpatory narrative for the right, explaining that they’re not the ones who did anything wrong, while lecturing to the left about How You Got Trump.
Maybe he’s next in line to take over Bill Maher’s show, flattering MAGA’s knee-jerk preferences while pretending not to be one of them.
I see Keaton as a Mitt Romney Republican. His conservatism was always underpinned by his voracious desire to get rich (I recall that “money” was his first word).
He’d have delighted in “corporations are people, my friend” and hedge fund managers deferring their income into capital gains for the tax benefits.
But he came from a liberal family, and he had a soft heart (I recall the existential crisis when a friend died in a car accident. Or consider his kindness towards Skippy. And his begrudging acceptance of Nick). So I also think he would have maintained a belief in decency and decorum, and I think he would have done like Romney and turned away from Trumpism.
(And if Keaton had, like Michael J Fox, been afflicted with Parkinson’s, then I have no doubts he would be disgusted by Trump)
I don’t about this last statement. I have known people with disabilities who somehow manage to ignore the vast amount of public assistance they receive. I live in Texas and our own governor is in a wheelchair due to an accident he experienced as a young man. Nevertheless, he champions tort reform (while cashing million-dollar settlement checks from his own misfortune), and opposes DEI initiatives while enjoying the ramps and other accommodations that have made his legal and political careers viable.
My own father-in-law was visually impaired and mobility impaired. He staunchly supported Republicans at every turn even though, especially in the end, were quite clear that they would simply let him die than offer him the public assistance that he received since he was a young man. His mobility issue was caused by a spinal surgical malpractice incident. He was surprised when his settlement was capped by statute. Abbott’s liability settlement was not capped. My FIL also received substantial assistance from local, state, and Federal levels of government.
Never underestimate a person’s ability to overlook the assistance they themselves receive while decrying the assistance provided to others.
My father received accommodations for a disability (hearing impaired) for 31 years under federal and state laws. He was adamantly opposed to the Americans with Disabilities Act, because accommodating “cripples” is a step too far. He also hated disabled parking spots. Ironically, he developed Parkinson’s and cannot walk now. But he finds the angry reaction to Trump mocking a disabled person to be “precious” and “contrived”.
Even more disappointing to me, is that after railing for 60 years “I’m deaf, not stupid!” and resenting British racism in India and Pakistan in colonial and post-colonial days, he holds the most prejudiced views imaginable about non white people, including South Asians.
Ironically, 40 years ago my parents were very progressive (for their generation). But they got more and more religious as they aged, became obsessed with abortion and since the late 1990s have ironically jumped on-side with the Right on every issue, even being willing to break with their precious Catholic Church (particularly the previous Pope).
I have learned to never expect any consistency from any “victim” group in terms of their support for even the most closely situated other victims, never mind people marginalized on entirely different dimensions.