Hello Everyone:
Happy New Year. Yours Truly is back from a much needed vacation. Hope your 2019 is off to good start. The Candidate Forum was jumping for joy last Thursday, watching Speaker (love writing that) Nancy Pelosi take control of the House of Representatives. Even more joyous was all the beautiful black, white, yellow, and brown female faces take the oath of office. Blogger cannot wait until the State of The Union address on January 29 just to hear Mr. Donald Trump say "Madame Speaker." Shall we move on to today's subject?
Modern conservatives have a contradictory understanding: "as generators of wealth for its patrons to hoard" (nytimes.com; Oct. 10, 2017; date accessed Dec. 18, 2018) and "reservoirs of non-white criminality for its media outlet [nymag.com; Dec. 11, 2018; date accessed Dec. 18, 2018] to decontextualize and demagogue [foxnews.com; Oct. 30, 2017; date accessed Dec, 18, 2018]." In essence, Eric Levitz opines in his New York magazine article "Conservatives Are Right to Write Off Big Cities," "It has less fondness for America's urban centers as actual human societies; to the contemporary conservatives, New York City is s nice place to vilify (and/or invest in), but you wouldn't want to campaign there" (nymag.com; Dec. 11, 2018).
Mr, Donald Trump has spent much of his short political career giving voice to the exurban conservatives hallucinations of inner-city life (Ibid). In the president's mind, cites are crime infested (ajc.com; Jan. 14, 2017; date accessed Dec. 18, 2018) disasters where "there are no jobs, no educations, opportunities, you get shot walking to store, everything is perpetually on fire [washingtonpost.com; Mar. 17, 2017; date accessed Dec. 11, 2018] and beleaguered white workers are constantly rioting [politifact.com; Oct. 23, 2018; date accessed Dec. 18, 2018] against imperial liberal elite hat insists on helping MS-13 murder their daughters" (nymag; Dec. 11, 2018). Did you get all that?
In the meantime, in shaming normal (Ibid) Republican politicians and people who deliberately live in these "cesspools" do not deserve membership in the Grand Old Party. To wit, the Republican Wisconsin State Assembly speaker stood up to make the case that "his legislative majority [which was elected by a minority of voters] had more politics, legitimacy than the incoming Democrats governor [who was elected by a plurality of them] because [nymag.com; Dec, 9, 2018]
If you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority... we would have s clear majority... We would have all five constitutional officers and we would probably have more seats in the Legislature.
Eric Levitz observes, "It might seem unwise for a national political movement to make open contempt for all of the fastest-growing parts of the country a pillar of its messaging" (nymag.com; Dec. 11, 2018). As unwise as it sounds, you need to look at the governing institutions--"which grossly inflate the electors, clout of low-density areas" (nytimes.com; Sept. 25, 2017; date accessed Dec. 18, 2018)--make the political gambit tenable in the medium future... In short, there really is not a simple way for modern day conservatives to reconcile its ideological commitments with seriously improving its voter turnout in the urban centers.
Or so Mr. Levitz and, by extension most GOP operatives, would believe. The National Review's Kevin Williamson has a different opinion. In his column "We'll Always Have Fort Worth" (nationalreview.com; Dec. 9, 2018; date accessed Dec. 18, 2018). Mr. Williamson takes members of the Republican Party to task for assuming that their poor voter turnout in cities indicates a problem with the cities rather than a problem with...us (Ibid). He clarfies that us are the conservatives who are less worldly and more nativist than I (Ibid). Mr. Williamson suggests, somewhat naively, that the solution is if you simply dial down the xenophobia and dial up the praise of free enterprise, then Manhattan would as red as a tube of Nars' Dragon Lady lipstick.
Kevin Williamson writes,
Republicans do very well with people who drive an F-350 to work--and God bless them. Republucans--and, more important, conservatives--do not seem to have very much to say to people who take the subway to work. Which is a real missed opportunity: If you live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and work in Manhattan, then you get an object lesson in the failures of statism and centralization every...day--twice. If you live in Philadelphia and have school-age children, you need to read Milton Friedman: You know from bitter experience what a b,easing it is to be free to choose--and what a curse it is to have choices taken away.
American conservatives have always been at their best when they speak to Americans' aspirations.... William F. Buckley Jr.--never worried about being denounced as an "elitist." Ambition for advancement, and the wealth and status that comes with it, was until five minutes ago part and parcel of conversativism. That was the best message Americsn conservatives ever had: "Being rich and happy is awesome! Here's how you can do it, too.
And there are still millions of American who want to advance and enjoy the best things that American life has to offer,... many...of which are to be found in the greatest abundance in American cities and in he cosmopolitan culture that American conservatives once took for granted as something of their own. What do we have to offer them? When was the last time we asked them what it is they like about Brooklyn and Austin? When is the last time we considered their personal and cultural aspirations with anything other than resentment, contempt, and outrage? (nationalreview.com; Dec. 9, 2018)
However given the current political climate, where Republican office holders are championing division, these sentiments are wishful thinking, at best.
Kevin Williamson's National Review article offers little in the way of how "urban conservatism" might look like against the current socio-political backdrop but suffice it to say that it is rooted in the mythology of American upward mobility. This is kind of mythology that espouses that anyone can work their way up the socioeconomic ladder through hard work. Nothing wrong with that but it embraces capitalism as its mechanism for success. Capitalism depends on market forces and Mr. Williamson seems dismiss the role it plays in the dysfunction and negligence--and the incomprehensible malice--of poor white America (Ibid). The motorcycle factory in North Dakota closes, no worries, there is more to life than assembling motorcycles and days gone by.
Like the late President Ronald Reagan, Mr. Williamson shows no love for the poor but no animosity for immigrants--who arrive on these shores with dreams of a better life that can be had through American capitalism. However unlike President Reagan, Mr. Williamson has little use for right-wing populism. This is not to say that he does not have a viable strategy for building a conservative base in the cities.
Eric Levitz writes, "Williamson is correct that many New Yorkers are dissatisfied with the quality of public transportation in their city. But to say, Brooklynites are sick of subway delays, ergo they're natural supporters of the Republican agenda is a bit like saying Comcast subscribers are sick of service outages, therefore, they'd love it if you smashed there television screens and then force-fed shards of glass (nymag.com; Dec. 11, 2018). The problem is not that the New York City subway system is state controlled and centrally operated, the problem is Republican opposition to federally funding for public transportation (enr.com; July 19, 2016; date accessed Jan. 7, 2019). Granted, construction costs--the result of powerful labor organizations--is another factor (Ibid; Nov. 13, 2018). Be that as it may, "insisting on the necessity of increasing g investment in the public goods--while promising to deliver higher returns on those investments, by taking on organized labor--is the vocation of moderate Democrats, not conversatives,..." (Ibid; Dec. 11, 2018)
The fundamental problem with Kevin Williamson's approach to conservatism is that there is no traction for it anywhere in he United States and the rest of the developed world. In democracies, with less entrenched and anti-majoritarian constitutions, the conservative parties do not stubbornly cling to eliminating social welfare spending or upward distribution of income because their constituents do not believe that poor people should die from preventable diseases so wealthier voters can deduct the cost of that second house.
While British Prime Minister Theresa May's Tory government recently asked for an additional £2 billion in new funding for public housing (indianaexpresse.com; Sept. 19, 2018) and Canadian conservative leader Stephen Harper increased funding for single-payer healthcare (the globeandmail.com; Apr. 30, 2018; date accessed Jan. 7, 2019), American conservatives continue to slash funding for the very services and infrastructure that is necessary to drive American capitalism (curbed.com; Feb. 13, 2018; date accessed Jan. 7, 2019). Oddly, this is still a winning agenda in states with abysmally low voter turnouts, giving the Republican Party a virtual monopoly on the cultural conservatism (pewresearch.org; May 21, 2018; date accessed Jan. 7, 2019).
The point to all of this is that Republicans have failed to respond to the dynamics of urban culture. This is a culture that embraces pluralism as a means of comfortable living. Although racial and ethnic tensions continue to simmer below the surface--occasionally bursting through the surface--cultural pluralism still is the way to go. Municipal governments are guilty of de facto segregation (washingtonpost.com; May 10, 2018; date accessed Jan. 7, 2019) and discriminatory law enforcement (chicagotribune.com; Oct. 12, 2018; date accessed Jan. 7, 2019). In short, no city is perfect, in fact, far from it. Rather than just write off cities as crime and disease ridden places, what the Republicans need to do, according to Kevin Williamson, is ask what they can do to win back the urban voter.
No comments:
Post a Comment