OPINION: GOP establishment created Trump mania
The Republican Party does not have a Trump problem. Pointing at Donald Trump as the source of current GOP public image woes equates to pointing at an effect and calling it a cause. The source of the problem lies deep within the collective psyche of the GOP electorate itself — a trait their leadership has been systematically fostering for decades. Trump is merely the inevitable outcome.
The ravenous thing currently off its leash and gnawing on the Achilles tendon of the GOP is something we all have inside us. Freud called it the id. Put simply, the id is the source of all self-serving impulse. It is a vital yet dangerous part of our psychology. Vital because it pushes us to go out and get the things we need to flourish. Dangerous because it can inspire us to sacrifice personal safety for pleasure, or go about getting our desires met by antisocial means. Fortunately we have a leash for the id — a specialized part of the ego known as the superego. It pushes back, keeping the id in check. Those with a stunted superego we call antisocial. Those who never developed a superego we call psychopaths.
However, even highly functioning superegos in normal people can get repressed. Few things help to repress superegos better than charismatic individuals telling us we deserve a bigger piece of the pie than somebody who doesn’t look like us, doesn’t worship our god(s), doesn’t subscribe to our worldview, who wasn’t born in the “right” place, or who dares to challenge a status quo that favors us.
Trump certainly fits the bill of said charismatic speaker. However, there is one thing even better than charisma at helping to impede superego functioning — power brokers who actually provide the larger slice of pie to a select group at the expense of others.
With every policy implemented in order to protect or advance the privileged status of their shrinking base electorate, the GOP establishment has shifted the personality of their party out of balance in the direction of the id. They have made it less likely for self-serving to be tempered by products of the superego such as ethics, morality, or simple human decency. (See the plurality of evangelicals voting for Trump despite his less-than-Christian behavior.) Trump didn’t “tap into the anger” of the white conservative electorate. He is merely the opportunistic narcissist elevating his status by encouraging and above all modeling what it looks like to take the leash off the self-serving id. But it is the GOP establishment that has been loosening the strap for years.
Every time a congressional district map gets redrawn not to accurately reflect the true social makeup of a state, but to award more influence to votes coming out of whiter, more conservative, areas, it sends a message to the white-conservative electorate: “You deserve more pie just because ...”
This “gerrymandering” of districts also fosters the capacity for partitioning information — a mental trick conveniently allowing fatal contradictions between facts to be blissfully ignored. This mental smoke and mirrors routine allows the GOP to promote themselves as staunch defenders of the Constitution and vanguards of the democratic process while completely ignoring how their gerrymandering efforts are the antithesis of true democracy.
Every time the GOP makes it harder for minorities to vote, white conservatives are implicitly told, “You deserve more pie just because ...” With every policy proposal based on the conscious or unconscious assumption that God has bestowed upon the Republican Party a holy right to discriminate against or disenfranchise human beings based on gender orientation, conservatives are encouraged to see something righteous in denying social goods and inclusions for others.
Every time a party official accepts the endorsement of a religious leader who speaks as though God has handed down to the GOP a divine duty to exact legislative vengeance against those who do not live by the same views, righteousness shifts in the direction of self-righteousness.
Every time humility before God is used to justify a complete and utter lack of humility among fellow human beings, the GOP blatantly advances the belief that Christians are to forever be in charge of this increasingly diverse nation. (See Ted Cruz asserting, “As I see it, any president who doesn’t start out his day on his knees isn’t fit to be commander-in-chief.”)
Every time the resulting arrogance is used to publicly presume that natural occurrences such as mega-hurricanes or droughts are “acts of God” intended to punish us for things like gay marriage or abortion, the GOP base is encouraged to ignore the insurmountable scientific evidence of how our self-interest seeking is damaging the environment — how today’s unsustainable lifestyles will leave only pie crumbs for future generations.
Every single time constitutionally mandated governmental functions are stymied or manipulated to wage political war against those who do not subscribe to Republican beliefs, a pie that is supposed to be distributed based on the ideals enshrined within the Constitution gets distributed in a way that disproportionately reflects the will of the GOP core conservative base. (See the current congressional stonewalling over filling the vacant Supreme Court seat — something polls indicate a majority of Americans want to happen now — something the current president is instructed to do in a timely fashion by the very Constitution that Republicans vow to uphold.)
Every time Republicans do these things, democracy ceases to exist.
Trump is not the cause of the GOP’s problems. Trump is the dangerous opportunist now taking advantage of what the GOP establishment has tirelessly and shamelessly helped to set loose within its own ranks. The establishment has shifted the personality of the party towards the Donald (the id), and they naively keep doing so even by the way they lament Trump. Every time Marco Rubio goes on a public tirade saying, “This [Trump’s bigotry] is not the party of Lincoln and Reagan,” he is committing a crime against all that is decent and democratic.
Lincoln sent a resounding message across all history that whites are not so special as to possess the right to make a slave of another human being. He insisted that whites rein in their aggressive self-interest seeking at the expense of others. Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and opposed the establishment of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
As president, he paid lip service to ending apartheid in South Africa, but utterly lacked the political will to do so. He attempted to veto the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 and failed to fully enact the law once Congress overrode his veto. In 1988, he attempted to veto the Civil Rights Restoration Act. The bitter truth for Republicans is that Reagan did much to wipe the noble traits of Lincoln from the personality of their own party.
Holding Reagan’s legacy in the same light as Lincoln’s is merely an attempt to make Reagan-esque white privilege appear somehow noble for the GOP electorate benefiting from it. Rubio and his establishment ilk can complain about Trump all they want, but the Donald is a nightmare of their own making.
Every citizen (white or not) whose superego is still adequately functioning needs to recognize that the danger posed to the integrity of this nation does not begin and end with Donald Trump. For now it only ends with him. Its beginning (its source) lies within each and every one of us. Trump is merely the Pied Piper for those base impulses. The architects of the social/political conditions that have made it seemingly impossible for such a wide swath of the GOP base to resist Trump’s tune are the GOP powerbrokers that stack the deck for white conservatives, then get all bewildered at why they have to put up with Trump.
Up and down the ballots this November, we need to respond to Lincoln’s call. We need to echo that call forward for the next generation. By God, there will not be discrimination tolerated from one group towards another, nor shall the few be privileged at the expense of the many! Not in my country!
We need to put in check what the current GOP can’t seem to put in check for itself. In every elected position that has not been so completely insulated from the democratic process by gerrymandering, the GOP has to go. And they have to stay gone until they too can once again hear Lincoln’s call and temper their self-interest seeking. I for one will not hold my breath.
Todd W.Cardin is a resident of Kalispell and is a licensed counselor.