Americans don't like free speech, although they claim to cherish it.
This fact was driven home by all of the cheering that occurred when a Nazi got punched in the face during the inauguration. Apparently, other's right to free speech does not end where your fist begins these days.
To bolster their case supporters of l'affair de sucker punch are using old Captain America comic strips and WWII propaganda posters to support their cause. This is OK but it ignores the fact that a.)Comic books are fantasy and b) the propaganda posters were selling war bonds, which provided the armed forces (the business end of American foreign relations) the ability to knock eight bells out of the Nazis.
These events led me to do some thinking, during which I tweeted out the following:
1. Most Republicans are not Conservative
2. Most Democrats are not Liberal.
3. A vast majority of Americans are authoritarians....PROVIDED the Government shares their values and beliefs.
By dropping the 'conservative' (corporatist/Statist) and 'liberal' (progressive/Statist) tags and viewing politics through an authoritarian spectrum what's happening right now begins to make a lot more sense.
Trump was not elected President by a conservative Republican party. He was elected by a group of people who disagreed with Obama and the Democrats trying to take away rights that they liked. It was less free-market, limited government thought than it was the thought that Trump would shut-down the crowd that they didn't like.
The media, and progressive commentators love to frame this as racism or homophobia, depending on which group is being targeted. And while there is some of that for most people it's more a desire to simply be left alone, to go about their own business and to not have to do business, or interact much, with people with whom they disagree. Their preferred method of dealing with this? Government fiat, which Trump has promised he will do.
What many conservatives really want is for progressive groups to be silenced, banned from the public square and forced to live their lives according to so-called "Judeo-Christian principles" on which they claim the country was founded.
Unfortunately, this tends to make Democrats very smug.
Democrats get that way because they've framed themselves, with ample help from the media, as the party of inclusion. The problem with this argument is that they are even more exclusionary than Republicans. Over and over in the media you see progressive talking-heads crying crocodile tears over the "death of the moderate Republican". This ignores the fact that the Democrats have long-ago shed the moderate Democrat from their party, more successfully and more completely than have the Republicans.
In truth, both parties, and their sycophants, want the same thing, just targeted toward different groups. A huge majority of Americans want the country's laws designed to support their way of life, their preferred belief system to the exclusion of everyone else. Tolerance for everyone except the intolerant is said with a straight face, and not a hint of irony.
The problem with free speech has always been that it tends to be a little messy. True free speech means that neo-Nazis can be interviewed in the public square, that 'hate' groups are free to spew whatever vile message they want, and that around 1 Million people (mostly middle-class, Caucasian women) can gather in cities across the country and chant, scream, and ultimately litter up the place by leaving their signs behind as trash.
People are already calling this the "Left's Tea Party" which is odd because I thought that was why Occupy was supposed to be. But if this is some new-aged progressive tea party then the Republicans should be glad for this, because it was the uncertainty and political naivety of the Tea Party that led Republicans into the political desert for the last eight years. (In part, not in whole)
What the Democrats don't need right now is a political shuffling, a circular firing squad where their most moderate members (which, to be honest, is like having the most curable cancer) get picked off in primaries and are replaced with a group that can't shoot straight. They already suffer from sub-par leadership, imagine them with no leadership at all.
As the year goes on I predict that the cacophony is only going to increase in volume, will become more frequent and will suck up most of the remaining political oxygen in the country.
Because, if history has taught us anything, it's that people react the most violently when they're not exposed to differing opinions, beliefs and ideals, and begin to think that their world-view is not just different, but superior to the opinions, beliefs and ideals of "those people".
I am not optimistic that America in her current state can do much to stop this from happening.
