Ten Republican Wars of 2016 By Daniel Rigney
Republicans are often inclined to romanticize guns and warfare, but not all Republican wars entail the dropping of literal bombs. Some Republican wars are symbolic and metaphorical. In each instance, they call for acts of rhetorical and political aggression against a host of enemies both foreign and domestic, both real and imagined.
Lately the Republican Party and its presidential candidates (and debate audiences!) have been firing their missiles at a broad array of ideological targets. Here are ten fronts on which the party seems to be waging its ongoing war against the future. The War on Science. In their opposition to the cosmology of the big bang, the evolution of life, and the acknowledgement of anthropogenic climate change, religious fundamentalists in particular continue to resist the weight of current scientific thinking, especially as it challenges literal understandings of ancient worldviews. Among Republican debaters, only Jon Huntsman has had the moral courage to stand up to the religious right in his respect for modern science.
The War on Renewable Energy and Environmentalism. The Republican war on renewable energy and the environment comes less from religious conservatives than from the carbon industry, most of whose ad campaigns now project a deeply-felt concern for the creation of a sustainable future. My personal favorite is the ad from ConocoPhillips, featuring cute ducks swimming in a pond in the shadow of an Oklahoma refinery. Meanwhile, the carbon industry’s richly-funded lobbying and political campaigns tell a rather different story about what oil companies are actually doing to what’s left of the natural world.
The War on Family Planning. Large segments of the conservative coalition (and especially the Catholic magisterium) oppose not just abortion in most or all circumstances, but also artificial birth control and even breast cancer screenings if they are performed or referred by conservatively-incorrect organizations such as Planned Parenthood.
More broadly, this and other campaigns related to sex and reproduction have had the aim of rolling back several decades of gains by the women’s and gender equality movements, including efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. The campaign against family (planning) in particular is, in considerable measure, a War on Feminism and its achievements.
The War on Labor. Organized capital continues to erode the hard-won gains of the organized labor movement over the past century, preferring to negotiate with disorganized, individualized labor. The real effect has been to suppress wages and reduce benefits for workers in the interests of owners and corporate executives. MSNBC’s Ed Schultz recently called this campaign the “right to work for less” movement.
The War on Intellect. Willard Romney’s recent dig at President Obama for having friends in the faculty lounge at the University of Chicago is just the latest attempt to disparage what George Wallace used to call “pointy-headed intellectuals.” Oh, did I mention that Romney has graduate degrees from both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School? God forbid that anyone in the White House should have a capacity for abstract thought, or what psychologists call “intelligence.” The War on Islam. It is no more fair to blame Islam as a whole for the atrocities of its worst practitioners than to blame Christianity for the Ku Klux Klan. Yet some in the Republican party still seek to inflame anger toward Muslims in general and to call for holy warfare against the infidel. George W. Bush should be given due credit for not whipping up this fervor during his administration, using it to launch a holy war against Islam per se. If he had done so, there’s no telling how many foreign wars President Obama would now be trying to extricate us from.
The War on Immigrants. Republicans have never fully received the notion that the United States has always been and continues to be a nation of immigrants trying to make better lives for themselves. Why start now?
The War on the Non-Rich, as it has been waged in Republican class warfare campaigns since Reagan, is a persistent attempt to rig our laws, and especially our tax laws, in ways that benefit the richest of the richest. If you want to know who’s won the class war since 1980, consult the last thirty years of American economic statistics. The American class war has had a clear winner. The jury is in on this question. The Republicans won. Big time.
The War on Voting. The Republican voter suppression movement sweeping the Midwest and other regions of the country in recent months sounds deeply principled on the surface. It’s all about making sure that voters really deserve to vote. A millimeter below the surface, the movement is actually and obviously an attempt by Republicans to make legitimate voting difficult or impossible for any constituency that might vote the wrong way. Has there ever been a more cynical campaign waged in the name of “integrity”?
The War on Social Responsibility. Those in the economically libertarian wing of the Republican Party, with deep emotional roots in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (read: Social Darwinism, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Ayn Rand, Ron Paul), are still living in the ideological fantasy world of mom-and-pop capitalism. In the real world of unrestrained corporate capitalism, it’s everyone for himself, and the omniscient, infallible Market God (and his lobbyists) have the power to decide who shall dominate.
The opposing idea that we are all profoundly connected to each other, and that we rise and fall together, is utterly foreign to this way of thinking, and to this battle plan.
The Republican party is fighting a cultural, political and economic war on at least ten fronts. Its growing addiction to unlimited and secret campaign financing (via the Citizens United case) may be enough to make the party competitive in 2012. But the Republican war against the twenty-first century is just beginning, and history bats last.
Republicans are often inclined to romanticize guns and warfare, but not all Republican wars entail the dropping of literal bombs. Some Republican wars are symbolic and metaphorical. In each instance, they call for acts of rhetorical and political aggression against a host of enemies both foreign and domestic, both real and imagined.
Lately the Republican Party and its presidential candidates (and debate audiences!) have been firing their missiles at a broad array of ideological targets. Here are ten fronts on which the party seems to be waging its ongoing war against the future. The War on Science. In their opposition to the cosmology of the big bang, the evolution of life, and the acknowledgement of anthropogenic climate change, religious fundamentalists in particular continue to resist the weight of current scientific thinking, especially as it challenges literal understandings of ancient worldviews. Among Republican debaters, only Jon Huntsman has had the moral courage to stand up to the religious right in his respect for modern science.
The War on Renewable Energy and Environmentalism. The Republican war on renewable energy and the environment comes less from religious conservatives than from the carbon industry, most of whose ad campaigns now project a deeply-felt concern for the creation of a sustainable future. My personal favorite is the ad from ConocoPhillips, featuring cute ducks swimming in a pond in the shadow of an Oklahoma refinery. Meanwhile, the carbon industry’s richly-funded lobbying and political campaigns tell a rather different story about what oil companies are actually doing to what’s left of the natural world.
The War on Family Planning. Large segments of the conservative coalition (and especially the Catholic magisterium) oppose not just abortion in most or all circumstances, but also artificial birth control and even breast cancer screenings if they are performed or referred by conservatively-incorrect organizations such as Planned Parenthood.
More broadly, this and other campaigns related to sex and reproduction have had the aim of rolling back several decades of gains by the women’s and gender equality movements, including efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. The campaign against family (planning) in particular is, in considerable measure, a War on Feminism and its achievements.
The War on Labor. Organized capital continues to erode the hard-won gains of the organized labor movement over the past century, preferring to negotiate with disorganized, individualized labor. The real effect has been to suppress wages and reduce benefits for workers in the interests of owners and corporate executives. MSNBC’s Ed Schultz recently called this campaign the “right to work for less” movement.
The War on Intellect. Willard Romney’s recent dig at President Obama for having friends in the faculty lounge at the University of Chicago is just the latest attempt to disparage what George Wallace used to call “pointy-headed intellectuals.” Oh, did I mention that Romney has graduate degrees from both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School? God forbid that anyone in the White House should have a capacity for abstract thought, or what psychologists call “intelligence.” The War on Islam. It is no more fair to blame Islam as a whole for the atrocities of its worst practitioners than to blame Christianity for the Ku Klux Klan. Yet some in the Republican party still seek to inflame anger toward Muslims in general and to call for holy warfare against the infidel. George W. Bush should be given due credit for not whipping up this fervor during his administration, using it to launch a holy war against Islam per se. If he had done so, there’s no telling how many foreign wars President Obama would now be trying to extricate us from.
The War on Immigrants. Republicans have never fully received the notion that the United States has always been and continues to be a nation of immigrants trying to make better lives for themselves. Why start now?
The War on the Non-Rich, as it has been waged in Republican class warfare campaigns since Reagan, is a persistent attempt to rig our laws, and especially our tax laws, in ways that benefit the richest of the richest. If you want to know who’s won the class war since 1980, consult the last thirty years of American economic statistics. The American class war has had a clear winner. The jury is in on this question. The Republicans won. Big time.
The War on Voting. The Republican voter suppression movement sweeping the Midwest and other regions of the country in recent months sounds deeply principled on the surface. It’s all about making sure that voters really deserve to vote. A millimeter below the surface, the movement is actually and obviously an attempt by Republicans to make legitimate voting difficult or impossible for any constituency that might vote the wrong way. Has there ever been a more cynical campaign waged in the name of “integrity”?
The War on Social Responsibility. Those in the economically libertarian wing of the Republican Party, with deep emotional roots in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (read: Social Darwinism, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Ayn Rand, Ron Paul), are still living in the ideological fantasy world of mom-and-pop capitalism. In the real world of unrestrained corporate capitalism, it’s everyone for himself, and the omniscient, infallible Market God (and his lobbyists) have the power to decide who shall dominate.
The opposing idea that we are all profoundly connected to each other, and that we rise and fall together, is utterly foreign to this way of thinking, and to this battle plan.
The Republican party is fighting a cultural, political and economic war on at least ten fronts. Its growing addiction to unlimited and secret campaign financing (via the Citizens United case) may be enough to make the party competitive in 2012. But the Republican war against the twenty-first century is just beginning, and history bats last.
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