Why Republicans Attack Children

By George Lakoff, Medium

05 May 18

adical conservatives have found a new target for their anger, scorn, and ridicule: Children. Conservative attack dogs have made a point of specifically berating, harassing and insulting the young victims of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Eloquent young students like Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, whose voices have captivated the nation, draw venomous responses from conservative pundits. Fox News host Laura Ingraham went so far in her attack on Hogg that she’s now lost most of her advertisers and may even lose her show.

Why do conservatives viciously target these young people who have already suffered so much? For one thing, it’s clear that the powerful voices of these young Americans express the truth in a way that resonates with tens of millions of people.

But there’s another reason why conservatives have such a negative response to the voices of young people — a reason deeply ingrained in the conservative political brain. Conservative political thought is governed by a very specific hierarchy, a hierarchy in which children must always be subservient to adults. So, the sight of young people raising their voices to call for change is an existential threat to the conservative moral hierarchy — just as the sight of women, people of color, or LGBTQ people standing up for their rights is always met with fear and derision by conservatives.

This hierarchy (see chart below) explains most Republican political thought. Nearly every piece of conservative legislation is designed to impose this hierarchy on the entire country and to return to some mythical golden past that was great for a few but repressive for the majority of Americans.

Many intelligent people are rushing around trying to figure out why conservatives support Trump, and what ideas unite conservatives as a political force. This was the exact question I set out to answer in the mid-1990s when I wrote a book called Moral Politics. The answer, after years of study, became clear. Conservatives and progressives have two very different concepts of our nation, concepts rooted in very different understandings of morality. And in the conservative system of morality, which I mapped out two decades ago, children are not allowed to speak up to adults.

When conservatives attack students like Emma and David, they aren’t just attacking them because they disagree with their stance on gun massacres. They’re also attacking them because conservatives don’t believe children have a right to raise their voices, period. And their reason for believing this explains nearly every other aspect of conservative thought.

It’s time to stop asking “why” conservatives think the way they do and start figuring out what the American majority can do to make sure their dominance over our political system comes to a swift and final end.

How to Stop Trump

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

04 May 18

hy did working class voters choose a selfish, thin-skinned, petulant, lying, narcissistic, boastful, megalomaniac for president?

With the 2018 midterms around the corner, and prospective Democratic candidates already eyeing the 2020 race, the answer is important because it will influence how Democrats campaign.

One explanation focuses on economic hardship. The working class fell for Trump’s economic populism.

A competing explanation – which got a boost this week from a study published by the National Academy of Sciences – dismisses economic hardship, and blames it on whites’ fear of losing status to blacks and immigrants. They were attracted to Trump’s form of identity politics – bigotry.

If Democrats accept the bigotry explanation, they may be more inclined to foster their own identity politics of women, blacks, and Latinos. And they’ll be less inclined to come up with credible solutions to widening inequality and growing economic insecurity.

Yet the truth isn’t found in one explanation or the other. It’s in the interplay between the two.  

Certainly many white working class men and women were – and still are – receptive to Trump’s bigotry.  

But what made them receptive? Racism and xenophobia aren’t exactly new to American life. Fears of blacks and immigrants have been with us since the founding of the Republic.

What changed was the economy. Since the 1980s the wages and economic prospects of the typical American worker have stagnated. Two-thirds now live paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks have grown less secure.

Good-paying jobs have disappeared from vast stretches of the land. Despite the official low unemployment rate, millions continue to work part-time who want steady jobs or they’re too discouraged to look for work.

When I was Secretary of Labor in the 1990s, I frequently visited the Rust Belt, Midwest, and South, where blue-collar workers told me they were working harder than ever but getting nowhere.

Meanwhile, all the economy’s gains have gone to the richest ten percent, mostly the top 1 percent. Wealthy individuals and big corporations have, in turn, invested some of those gains into politics.

As a result, big money now calls the shots in Washington – obtaining subsidies, tax breaks, tax loopholes (even Trump promised to close the “carried interest” loophole yet it remains), and bailouts.

The near meltdown of Wall Street in 2008 precipitated a recession that cost millions their jobs, homes, and savings. But the Street got bailed out and not a single Wall Street executive went to jail.

The experience traumatized America. In the two years leading up to the 2016 election, I revisited many of the places I had visited when I was labor secretary. People still complained of getting nowhere, but now they also told me the system was “rigged” against them.

A surprising number said they planned to vote for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump – the two anti-establishment candidates who promised to “shake up” Washington.

This whole story might have been different had Democrats done more to remedy wage stagnation and widening inequality when they had the chance.

Instead, Bill Clinton was a pro-growth “New Democrat” who opened trade with China, deregulated Wall Street, and balanced the budget. (I still have some painful scars from that time.)

Obama bailed out the banks but not homeowners. Obamacare, while important to the poor, didn’t alleviate the financial stresses on the working class, particularly in states refused to expand Medicaid.

In the 2016 election Hillary Clinton offered a plethora of small-bore policy proposals – all sensible but none big enough to make a difference.  

Into this expanding void came Trump’s racism and xenophobia – focusing the cumulative economic rage on scapegoats that had nothing to do with its causes. It was hardly the first time in history a demagogue has used this playbook.

If America doesn’t respond to the calamity that’s befallen the working class, we’ll have Trumps as far as the eye can see.

A few Democrats are getting the message – pushing ambitious ideas like government-guaranteed full employment, single-payer health care, industry-wide collective bargaining, and a universal basic income.

But none has yet offered a way to finance these things, such as a progressive tax on wealth.

Nor have they offered a credible way to get big money out of politics. Even if “Citizens United” isn’t overruled, big money’s influence could be limited with generous public financing of elections, full disclosure of the source of all campaign contributions, and a clampdown on the revolving door between business and government.

Trump isn’t the cause of what’s happened to America. He’s the consequence – the product of years of stagnant wages and big money’s corruption of our democracy.

If they really want to stop Trump and prevent future Trumps, Democrats will need to address these causes of Trump’s rise.