Its Not the Economy, Its the Culture!
By: Mackenzie Andersen
Tags: America, Trumpism, Politics, Society, Culture

I was a Republican, until the 2016 convention when a petition gathered enough signatures to let delegates vote their conscience, and was promptly dismissed by a voice vote.

That was when I first became aware that the Republican party was afraid, intimidated and dominated by the Trump base. I felt the party took the traditional base of the party, which included myself, for granted, as if we were party players, guaranteed to support the party, unquestionably, no matter where it went.

Deeply rooted party obedience has been established. Many whom I once respected and are no longer recognizable. Those of us who did not follow the leaders no longer have a place in the Republican party and have largely become Independents.

I voted straight blue in the last election, but consider myself Independent. There is no reason to believe that either one party or the other will continue to resonate with my beliefs, that is made perfectly clear after seeing so many fall so easily into the proverbial swamp.

Today I am accustomed to being labeled a liberal, lefty, or Democrat by those who refer to themselves as “We the People”. Among my social media friends, I maintain a fair percentage of Trump supporters, filtering out those who are excessively rude.

Yesterday I saw a Facebook post presented in white letters on a dark background which said “Call your state Senators everyday and use script below:

My Name is _____________ I am calling to instruct my Senator of MY WISHES and for them to REPRESENT MY VOICE in opposition to the FRAUDULENT ELECTORAL COLLEGE on Jan 6th. I am demanding them to OBJECT to the slate of electors from the battleground states in support of Representative Mo Brooks. THIS WILL BE MY DECIDING ISSUE at the next election and I WILL NOT VOTE FOR (SENATORS NAME) should they refuse to represent my wishes”

Does that mean that those who sign this petition will vote blue, in the next election or will they join or form a third party as they should have done in the first place were it not so easy to undermine an established party from within?

At this point even Mitch McConnel has advised against the Senate taking action against the electoral college. Since recognizing Biden as the next president, McConnel is calling for action and collaboration on covid relief, a welcome change in attitude.

Was McConnel’s change in attitude influenced by Romney speaking up, and thus standing out as a clear alternative leader in the Senate?

I responded to the call to action on Facebook, saying that I consider it to be near treason, and was met with another responder who consistently added “my” as a prefix each time he referred to President Trump throughout a long list of allegations made against the Democratic Party, all of which were attributed to President-elect Biden, as though Biden had personally committed every one of them. The allegations included instances of personal opinions expressed about Trump. In the mind set of the Trump loyalist, one is either a Trump loyalist, collectively referred to as “We the People”, or the rest of America, all presumed to be Democrats and collectively referred to as “the establishment”. This directly correlates to the Putin’s agenda, which is said to be driven by a will to undermine all western established governments.

I pointed out that Biden, the individual man, had not been involved in politics during the last four years and advised separating self from partisan politics and acting out of love for this country instead, to which there has been, to date, no response.

Considering that the Trump loyalists have been self righteously referring to themselves as “We the people” for so many years, it follows that the cult now feels that votes for the opponent of their leader should be thrown out, since anyone voting against Trump is excluded from “We the People”, the pen name that declared independence of the colonies from the crown, eventually leading to the formation of the United States of America. It is an irony that the cult calling itself, “We the People” is following a leader who has founded his brand on wealth culture and lives in abodes styled like palaces.

America is suddenly realizing it has a problem that is deeper than Trump. Although it may seem to have come suddenly upon us, it was a long time in the making. There are many roots, racial inequality being but one of them.

I submit that another cause is the unnoticed coup of 1968 when the Federal Congress passed The United States Intergovernmental Cooperation Act of 1968, Public Law 90–577 a design to centrally manage the economy of the entire Union from the federal to the municipal level using grants as its instrument. Federally managing the economy is not an enumerated power in the United States Constitution. The Act was passed at a time when there was little media coverage beyond the six o’clock news and is still widely unknown today.

The centrally managed economy is advocated and advanced for financial reasons but has an exclusionary cultural effect in which there are clear insiders and outsiders and a hierarchical system of control, another version of the government by crown, or the establishment. Large corporations are favored in such a system and even the government functions as such, continually marginalizing smaller enterprises, which can be a stand in in this analogy for the individual. As a system creates its own “targeted sectors”, it creates insiders and outsiders. When there are many businesses of many sizes and there is a middle sector to the economy, there are more options for anyone to find a place of belonging but today small businesses are becoming a casualty of corona virus.

Years ago I read about how ISIS recruits its army, targeting those who do not feel they have a place in society. It is not so different with the Trump cult which identifies with being outside the established society and having only their dear leader to represent them. I believe some Trump supporters are just in it for the money, feeling that they will do better for themselves by his tax policies, but others are in the cult because they have found a sense of belonging missing in the larger society. Even so, it is hard to comprehend how and why they will follow Trump where ever he leads, even as he leads down the most UN-American of paths, calling themselves “We the People” every step of the way, sounding like the dictatorship of the proletariat, or some such class. It was not an exaggeration when Trump said his base would still support him if he shoots someone in the street. Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that. Let’s address the problem on larger terms before it has the impetus to advance to the next level of a military coup.

I recently heard a discussion about the loss of natural meeting places in contemporary society, places where in one interacts with people of diverse political views. The discussion only skimmed the topic as it claimed that bowling teams and PTA’s are becoming cultural phenomena of the past, exacerbated by the fact of social distancing required by corona virus.

America is confronting a cultural crisis and its not just the economy but our economic structure has been a player in its creation and will forever be inseparable from large social forces. The problem has been, in my opinion, too much thinking based in its only about the economy. We need to recognize and integrate other value systems and to clearly identify understand the political philosophies at work within the structure of the economy.