Almost 40 years ago, as a newly minted Pastor, I found myself ministering to a number of Senior Citizens who were being sustained in life by being on Social Security, Welfare, and public assistance. These folks were some of the most down-to-earth and welcoming people you’d ever want to meet, but almost universally they lived in very humble abodes and they barely eked out their existence.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that the way the public dole works is the State gives you just enough to remain dependent upon the state, but never so much as to break free of being dependent upon the state. In point of fact the system positively punishes people for income that is above the allotted acceptance level. As such, these folks were stuck in the poverty that they were in.
Recently, it has dawned on me that this is the way the Republican party operates with its base. The Republican party is not substantially different from the Democrat Party. Indeed, I have long said that together they form a “Uniparty.” The Republican party works in such a way to give their base just enough of what the base wants to keep them voting Republican but never so much that they might actually address the foundational problems that keep their voters returning to vote for them. Like my former parishioners who were given just enough of a stipend to barely survive, so the Republican party gives just enough satisfaction to the base to keep them thinking that their only hope is the Republican party. It’s all a con.
The abortion issue is a perfect example. The last people in the world that want to end abortion is the Republican party and that is because people vote for Republicans based on the morsel of opposition the Republican party provides against abortion. The Republican party knows though, that if the abortion issue was really finally solved, that would translate into losing hundreds of thousands of voters who no longer would have a reason to vote Republican. As such, Republicans provide just enough opposition to slow down abortion in order to get the anti-abortion vote but never so much opposition to abortion as to really end it.
Trump has also been a perfect example of this long running grift. As Fuentes has noted Trump is the first white race pimp. He has promised the moon but not delivered. Remember when Trump said in his debate with Biden;
“our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote,”
This was a dog whistle to whites that Trump saw the same replacement agenda that has been going on for decades. Trump hustled the white vote so much that the opposition never ceased in calling him “Nazi,” “White Supremacist,” and “KKK.” Yet once in office Trump has said repeatedly that we need more H1B workers because we lack the domestic talent (read “white people”) to do the jobs that need done. Trump has said we need more legal immigration. Here we see Trump, the race pimp. Promising the world to get elected but delivering nothing upon election. Oh, Trump, like all Republicans, will throw a bone here or there to his white base but always just with the purpose of keeping the white dupes on the Republican plantation.
The same is true of Trump’s whole “MAGA” persona. In real life though it is Make Israel Great Again, as Trump glories in being bequeathed with the sobriquet, “First American Jewish President,” as dished out by Mark Levin. Trump bemoans the dwindling power of the Jews in America;
One wonders why Trump doesn’t bemoan the dwindling power of Christians in America?
Trump’s affection for all things Bagel indicates that Trump, like all Presidents, was nothing but a Manchurian candidate. Not only has Trump been a race pimp but he’s also succeeded in being the best friend of Israel and the disgustingly stupid Evangelical Zionists.
Yet, despite all this the rank and file remain fast in matrix and the next time the vote is required the white folks will flock out to vote for the next Manchurian Republican candidate absolutely convinced that the little meat on the bones they are thrown is worth the surrendering of their souls.
One more example of this “giving people just enough to keep them impoverished” principle is found in the modern Evangelical Church. If one attends the average modern Evangelical Church they will get just enough Christianity to satisfy them but never so much as to cause them to question the Christianity of the church they are attending. Currently, it has become clear that there is a brewing, and roiling that is going on in the Evangelical/Reformed church. Young men are waking up to the fact that Christianity and the classical liberalism that has been woven into it are not mutually compatible. So, they go to these “churches” and they are given the soteriological realities of Christianity but always packaged in an Ana-Baptist framework. They are being given enough of the real thing to keep them satisfied but they are not being given all of historical Christianity (with its natural animus to Classical Liberalism, egalitarianism, to nations as economic zones, and its historic embrace of the Ordo Amoris), and these young men are beginning to notice. It is here that the most difficulty is arising in keeping those who are awakening “down on the farm.” For whatever it worth, I think the next 10 years may find minor explosions in the varying “conservative” “Reformed” denominations.
The world is changing. People, at least in some areas, are realizing that they don’t have to live on the bones thrown to them. People are realizing, at least in some areas, that they’ve been duped and played the fool and are becoming resolved to no longer play the fool.
For those who aren’t away of the change in the air;
You better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times, they are a-changin’