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As much as recent GOP was always convinced the left was destroying the country (ahh, sweet memories of Pat Buchanan’s 1992 convention speech), there was always a foreign enemy. The near-exclusive focus of current GOP enmity is on fellow Americans. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/us/politics/trump-race-2020-election.html
Trump has dismissed the importance of demonizing a foreign enemy, even N Korea—*except* insofar as foreign individuals want to become Americans. (A possible exception is China, but he has a very odd relationship going there). All this turns unusual vitriol on other Americans.
Actually, this puts me in mind to again read Buchanan’s speech and see how it compares to present moment... will report back.
I’m back (it’s short). My jaw dropped for that Buchanan speech. I have a tiny permanent scar because I was so absorbed in what he was saying that I didn’t notice incense burning my leg, which may be THE most stereotypical injury EVER for a leftie 1st-year college student...
That is, my jaw dropped at the time. Now, as I suspected, it wouldn’t stand out in a Hannity or Carlson night. A good chunk of it is about how Democrats don’t see foreign policy as sufficiently important...
I snipped the scandalous parts. Most is still standard fare. Pro-life, pro-religious schools, Hillary will destroy your family. LGBTQ attacks are still here in present day too, of course, though more focused on trans folks. I guess they gave up on opposing women in combat...
More religion, anti-LGBT, anti-women in combat. Now some anti-porn. This was pre-internet! But they really have mostly given up with charging Dems with bringing about extraordinary sexual loucheness, and are now more likely to rail against the Puritanism of feminism...
Which is odd because there was still a strain of anti-porn in feminism back then. I’m guessing the switch is due partly to their party leader, partly to stuff like relative divorce rates in blue and red America, but most is defending men fired for sexual harassment....
Here’s the part where he declares a culture war. Absolutely standard, arguably tepid, stuff to emerge from the mouth of a Fox News host or GOP candidate today—even an establishment, Rubio-esque candidate...
And finally, he comes to the LA riots where he does not mention race, but praises the military stopping “the mob.” And says that we have to “take back our culture and our country”....
Some of you are spring chickens, and will not remember that this speech stood out as wildly divisive. It confirmed what the left had always said the right was *really* up to. Now, with a few tweaks, it is a straightforward, even mild, statement of the current GOP platform...
Here’s a link to the speech./ https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/buchanan-culture-war-speech-speech-text/
