Recently, it's clear that the Republican Party, is full of anti-intellectuals who goes against the public good for "freedom". But how did it all get to this point?
We may have to go back to some disturbing trends of the Republican party on how they portray what they consider to be American values.
Let's take a look at a freshman congressman, Madison Cawthron, North Carolina 11th District, Republican, wheelchair user, soon to be divorced. What's notable about him? He was one of those that addressed the January 6th crowed. He blamed democrats for subverting the crowd, and was one of the last to admit there was no voting fraud that elected Biden. He's antimask and antivaccine, claiming that a proposed plan to send people door to door to convince you to vax will lead to g-men to "take your guns" and "take your Bibles". Don't believe me? This is all verified. He just made news announcing to a mostly college age crowd that they should drop out of college unless they want to become doctor or lawyer or engineer. He dropped out of college to work for a politician Mark Meadows, who later told him to run for his own seat, and he won. He considers himself the new face of the Republican Party.
Cawthron is still an athlete and supposedly trained for wheelchair racing. He still goes to shooting range regularly. This was a relatively recent photo:
Guns are a very sensitive subject around conservative Republicans, because white masculinity is intertwined with gun ownership in the US, even though there is no legal barrier for anyone else to own guns. It is believed that white men use guns as a phallic symbol to reclaim their social status.
Now, also keep in mind that Cawthorn just declared to a crowd of fellow young conservatives to abandon higher education like he did, at "Americafest" hosted by Turning Point USA.
No higher education means you're probably stuck at a menial job, and you probably need a gun to make yourself feel like a man.
But what's really disturbing is the following 14 signs. I won't explain where they come from yet, but I'll just list them, and see how many of them you see in the current Republican party:
- Tradition
- Rejection of science and reason
- Just do it, don't think
- Disagreement is treason
- Fear of difference, xenophobia
- Appeal to social frustration
- Obsession with a plot
- Enemy is both weak thus defeatable, yet strong enough to be feared
- Pacifism is consorting with the enemy
- Contempt for the weak
- Everyone can be a hero
- Machismo and weaponry
- Selective populism, influencer look as if they represent the everymen
- Newspeak
How many of these signs did you see? I see a lot of 2 (antivax), 3 (Jan 6th), 4 (polarization), 6 (anti mandate!), 7 (Qanon!), 11 (Lionizing Rittenhouse), and 12 ("Don't tread on me"). I guess Cawthorn himself can be a bit of 13.
The 14 signs I listed are "14 typical elements of Ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco, originally published in New York Review of Books in an essay.
Yes, I am stating that IMHO, the US Republican Party is moving toward fascism. And this is VERY disturbing.
And it's even more disturbing with a new tweet from Rand Paul
How to steal an election: “Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.”https://t.co/LwE3MdeWeG
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 27, 2021
This is quite disturbing, because what Rand Paul has described is absolutely legal, and indeed, is the proper way to get your constituents to get out and vote (or absentee vote). He even called it "legally valid way". So why is it "steal an election"?
It's clear that the Republican party has gone onto "newspeak"... they will randomly redefine a word to fit their own mindset instead of using the true definition of the word. And that's sign #14 above. They are redefining the word "stealing" to denigrade something they failed to do.
And it is VERY worrying for the future of the Republican party.
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