But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.
I’d go as far as to say the protectionism and conspiratorial thinking is the result of an actual betrayal that the larger population have not emotionally reconciled. The right wing, along with the left wing, sold out to corporate interests in a steady manner over decades.
Sometimes, it can be difficult to accept betrayal. It’s similar to grief, you can’t believe it’s real - Say it isn’t true, there must be another explanation. Tell me it’s these social welfare programs, and immigrants, say it isn’t the systematic erosion of the working class.
My kid? Failed fifth grade? Me? A bad parent? Impossible, the teachers are bad, the education system .... Who is ready to accept this stuff immediately? The American public have been voting against their own interest for a long time. You have shitty healthcare and benefits because you got duped. You spent your tax money on foreign wars because you got duped. Your stock market is an unregulated casino where bankers toy with your money with impunity, and you’ll bail them out, again because you got duped into eating the bullshit. No, not my kid, he’d never murder anyone, the cops must have set him up. This is certainly the denial stage for the right wing.
The Left has it’s own grief coming soon enough. Lots of promises, lots of stuff that’s never going to come true. Lots of stuff about the Democrats that’s no different than the Republicans, and one day they’ll have to conjure up some conspiracy to deal with the dupe.
Some part of me almost understands the Trump voter. He transparently manipulates you (oxymoron?). If you’ve been lied to for decades, there is some dignity in accepting someone that straight lies to you versus the bells and whistles liars like some Presidents have been.