The Sad Journey From FDR To Donald Trump

Click here for an excellent article by Heather Cox Richardson at The Guardian, entitled "From Goldwater to Reagan and now Trump. But Americans will fight this latest brand of cartoon conservatism."



It presents an outline of the development of American society from the Great Depression through FDR's New Deal, through Eisenhower's Middle Way and into the tumult of the civil rights movement in the '60s, the development of movement conservatism, influenced by William F. Buckley and the National Review, Barry Goldwater, Nixon's Southern Strategy to absorb disgruntled racist Southern Democrats into the Republican party, through Ronald Reagan:

With Reagan, the principles of movement conservatism captured the White House. Reagan contrasted his own cowboy persona with the “welfare queen”, a black woman who drove a Cadillac and lived high on the hog thanks to government benefits she collected under “80 names, 30 addresses, 12 social security cards… and on four non-existing deceased husbands”. In office, Reagan slashed government regulations, taxes and social welfare legislation, explaining that the government activism that created the welfare queen was destroying America by killing individual initiative and morals.

Reagan ushered in the "Greed is Good" era of Gordon Gekko, and started the huge transfer of wealth from the lower rungs of society to those at the very top.

Dominated by movement conservatives, the Republican party advanced an increasingly cartoonish narrative divorced from what a member of George W Bush’s White House [reportedly Karl Rove] famously disparaged as “the reality-based community”.

Despite some pushback during eight years of Clinton and eight more of Obama, movement conservatism brought us to the era of Donald Trump:

In the 2016 election, Donald Trump stripped off whatever genteel veneer remained on that narrative. He presented himself as a larger-than-life Gordon Gekko, a successful billionaire who had risen from almost nothing through his own hard work. He deliberately reinforced the idea that he – and by extension his supporters – was better than other Americans. He cultivated the support of white supremacists and boasted of sexually assaulting women. And yet he nodded to his own rhetorical sleight of hand: he lied shamelessly, boasting: “I love the uneducated.” To his supporters’ dismay, as soon as he was elected, Trump embraced the policies of movement conservatives, turning policy reins over to ideologue house speaker, Paul Ryan, who called for more tax cuts, the destruction of Obamacare and the shredding of the remnants of the social safety net, and to Vice President Mike Pence, who pushed a dramatic rollback of abortion women’s rights. But the triumph of movement conservatism has illuminated that it is hollow. Trump is Gordon Gekko on steroids, a man so convinced of his own superiority that he can abide no rival and yet who is clearly unprepared for the presidency. He focuses solely on dominance and power rather than competent governance.

It's a good article, but I wish it had mentioned the Powell memo. Click here for my post entitled " The Powell Memo: Founding Document For Corporate Dominance."