Captured

By Deauwand Myers

Conservatives across advanced democracies share a similar ideology. They believe in "less government," smaller social safety nets, neoliberal economic policies, and are hostile to workers' rights while fetishizing concentrated wealth and free markets. But no conservative political party in any democratic country is as radical and unhinged as the American Republicans (henceforth called the GOP, or Grand Old Party).

In George R. Tyler's excellent book, "Billionaire Democracy," he quotes two economic scholars, progressive Thomas Mann and conservative Norman Ornstein, about this startling transformation of the GOP circa the Reagan era onwards. They argue, "We have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem [of wealth inequality in America] lies with the Republican Party ... The GOP has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

Chillingly accurate, and this text was written in 2012. What a difference a decade makes. Now, you have GOP elected officials believing or feigning the belief in disgraced ex-President Trump's "Big Lie" that the 2020 election was "stolen;" that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capital was minor, when it really was a violent, deadly coup attempt to prevent President Biden and Vice President Harris from assuming office; that climate change is fictional or overblown; that white, ethno-fascist racists are acceptable, and that global adversaries like President Putin are "smart" and admirable.

It all would be laughable if it weren't for the fact that the GOP is one of the two major political parties in America ― the most consequential, wealthy, powerful nation in world history. (Trump, after all, had full access to the nuclear launch codes).

I suggest a few additions to Tyler's book. First, yes we can argue that Reaganomics ravaged the middle classes of America and turbocharged concentrated wealth (often through tax policies, which as someone who owns stock, I can see every year where any passive income from my stocks and dividends is taxed at 15 percent, while most regular workers in America are taxed at much higher rates). The wealthiest Americans mainly get their income through stocks via dividends and the trade of stocks therein.

Yes, President Reagan demonized the poor, and since then, poverty in America has been seen as a sin of the individual, instead of what it actually is: a sin of the state.

But to place all the blame on Reagan and Trump is ahistorical at worst, or incomplete at best. The GOP was against all the social welfare programs championed by Franklin D. Roosevelt generations ago, and at least since the failed presidential bid of anti-civil rights icon Senator Barry Goldwater, expressed a virulent disdain of civil rights and the social progress of people of color and women. Republican President Nixon's Southern Strategy was a subtle and diabolically effective play to address white angst and fear of the progressive changes of the 1960s. Effectively, the GOP became what some Democrats were in earlier years: a party of white nationalism, xenophobia, anti-Blackness, and increasingly, greed.

Trump simply married the social and economic leanings of the party in a distilled and exceedingly unpolished fashion, unleashing the slimy bile that's been percolating across vast swaths of America for a very, very long time.

The low quality of democracy in America owes itself through more than the string of bad GOP presidents. From the start, American politicians were wary of majoritarian rule, and that, along with the many concessions given to Southern states to accommodate chattel bondage (the enslavement of people as property), makes meaningful policy changes difficult to achieve.

This situation is why America is the only advanced democracy in the world not to have universal healthcare, childcare, paid parental leave, and generous unemployment benefits. All of these programs are wildly popular with the American people, but, particularly in the GOP, not so popular with hyper-wealthy donors and business lobbyists who give the party a great deal of money. These dynamics are how a young democracy like Korea can impeach and imprison a corrupt president, while Trump is still free.

We have in the GOP a party that's power-hungry, venal, mendacious, cruel and unsympathetic to even the basic needs of the vast majority of the electorate ― even of their own constituents.

Worse, the false claims of voter fraud have made all elections seem "fraudulent" (of course, only if the Republican candidate loses). This situation means, for the foreseeable future and for 35 to 40 percent of all voting Americans, any Democratic president or Congress will be deemed illegitimate by the GOP. This situation is deadly for a democracy ― a concern shared by far too few GOP officials in states and in Washington.

Income inequality, weak democratic institutions, and poor policy outcomes are the results of more than just billionaires, but in aggregate, at least half of American government has been absorbed by the wealthy and big business and their interests. There's a word for that: captured.

Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside of Seoul.