Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
What you're trying to say is that the shutdown is being driven by rabid conservatives who understand that they have to do things like take hostages and causes crises in order to get their way, because their ideas are not only unpopular generally, but also often within their own party.
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I think you're crediting the GOP's rabid base with more rational thinking than it deserves. The base is more emotional, more lizard brain, than that. Particularly on this issue. It knows the wall is a bullshit policy that infuriates both moderate Rs and Ds. It wants to flex its muscles against both groups.
I just watched
Brexit on HBO. It's highly entertaining and explains a lot of what's happening with the wall. The rabid GOP base wants respect (areas of the country in which it is strongest tend to still have "honor culture"). It wants to be heard and have an ongoing voice. Like the blue collar
Brexit voters (as opposed to the well-off conservative ones which formed the other half of Brexit voters), its chief message is: We're Here, and You'll be Dealing With Us.
I think you're seeing rational thought with a policy goal where the reality is more emotional outburst and demand to be heard and made part of policy negotiation.
ETA: For the last near thirty or so years, if you'd paid attention to the news and data, you could see that the middle and lower classes were increasingly falling behind. Occasionally, it'd lead one to this thought:
Where do these people go? I'd normally answer that internal question with,
Oh, they'll just soak into the economic/social fabric in some way I can't imagine... a bunch of them will die. But apparently, that blase attitude, one I think many of us shared and perhaps still share, was way off. A lot of these people went into a form of hibernation. They survived somehow and social media provided a means to spark them to action. And I think, and the movie highlights this, their chief grievance is having been ignored. The neat takeaway from the Brexit movie, its sole revelatory message, is that these "deplorables" can be neutralized, and all it takes is letting them have a voice. They probably can't and won't win on any policy issues, but if you know who they are, if they feel they have representation, you can better understand, counter, and control them. Ignoring them and thinking they'd go away, OTOH, was a really lazy and foolish approach.
