I'm talking shit here, this was all based on a shower thought I had earlier- tell me what you think.
Basically every moral unifying stance you can take politically has been taken by the left, with environmentalism, sustainable resources, human/worker rights and welfare systems being touted by the left, with the right responding to it as 'I kinda agree, but as long as it doesn't affect money'. None of these issues should negatively affect any of the masses on an individual basis- but the right have been conditioned to think it will affect them. But these 'values' are negations of ideas- not propagating new ideas.
What issues remain to energise the masses of the right? Gun violence has become so ubiquitous while gun rights only cater to a minority of the population, christianity is so broad that it could potentially preach against most of the right's values and the big one-abortion- only applies to fertile women- not exactly a universal demographic- with its main message being individualist 'the person's specific choice' which should conventionally appeal to the right. Racism is ever-present, but thanks to individualist messages of the right, 'all ______ race/religion' always has exceptions. 'They're bad- but my neighbour is alright'. Thanks to multiculturalism you'd think most of America have at least personal experience of people of various races/cultures, let alone people represented in media.
What's left to unite the right? Trump's message resonates because it's wonderfully vague about his occasional populist flourishes. The right have latched onto the swamp ideal. But it goes against the 'millionaires=good' message the right have slobbered up for decades.
What crimes could millionaires do that makes them worthy of vitriol? Thanks to lack of regulations and complete control of resources there's almost nothing they haven't done- and thanks to right adjacent media we have been presented alternate ideas as to why these breaches of regulations or ethics are fine.
What's left? Abuse of children is the only thing that is unacceptable to the right. Everything else has been explained away at some point or another. It's clear it's still a elitist racist idea- the idea that white children are being kidnapped from 'normal' families and abused is the problem- not those refugees on the border who have 100% been abused by ICE- the right have been told it's fine to ignore the abuses made against stateless, non-white, poor children.
TLDR: Abuse of children is the only moral thing the right have to not only preach about but to enact action over. Every other unifying passionate aspect of the right has been committed by 'their' elites the right worship.
(follow up note: obviously sexual abuse of any kind is awful- we should stop any instance of such- it is not a coincidence actual abusers and elites may propagate violence against the nameless and ambiguous sexual abusers, because they can control who is the villain day to day based on outside ideology rather than actual evidence of abuse)
One of the largest right wing ‘anti child trafficking’ organizations is run by former feds and CIA agents
Can you elaborate or post a source please?
I had a hypothesis for a while that the right-wing child trafficking attention was normalizing how children were being taken from their parents at the southern border. Those two things started being the focus of national attention around the same time. You'll notice that when right-wing Qanon types talk about child trafficking, they're talking about it in the context of kids being kidnapped from their parents in Wal-Mart parking lots and put in underground cages somewhere. That's what they consider abnormal. That's what the Other is doing. They'll talk about tunnels full of mole children or gangs picking up kids off the streets. They hardly ever talk about child trafficking in terms of poverty, homelessness, abusive parents against LGBTQ kids, detention facilities, or anything like that. It's all about some fanciful action movie type of child abduction, which completely sidesteps conversation about the much more common issues. Our society breeds child trafficking in ways that are normalized, but the Other is out there performing spectacle.
Matt has a bit about this in the vlogs about how if a better future has been entirely foreclosed for you, then you have to be upset on behalf of "the children"
I can't remember it clearly enough to find it in the transcripts
I can't quite tell, but just in case you thought I was saying abuse wasn't true, that wasn't my intention at all. his point was how they are no longer outraged on behalf of themselves due to capitalist realism
if I misread you I'm sorry
What’s left to unite the right? Trump’s message resonates because it’s wonderfully vague about his occasional populist flourishes. The right have latched onto the swamp ideal. But it goes against the ‘millionaires=good’ message the right have slobbered up for decades.
Republicans will always rail against 'liberal elites' along cultural lines because culture is dominated by elites. No matter what it will be Orthegonians vs Franklins. Trump's popularity was because of he was an elite that hated elites.
I remember reading a study that looked at the likelihood of children reporting sexual abuse, comparing the US and I think the Netherlands. This is all from memory so details might be off but in the Netherlands it was around 1 out of every 4 kids who told their parents or another adult in their life, while in the US it was around 1 in 40. There was speculation that the disparity was because of different attitudes towards sex, the Netherlands being more open about sex in general than in the US. But also when it came to sexual abuse of children...like in the Netherlands obviously it is seen as something terrible, but in the US it's like the-end-of-the-world, life-is-over bad, so, the speculation went, kids who were abused in the US didn't want to tell their parents or anyone else because they knew it would make them insanely upset, telling them wouldn't be worth it.
