How a stodgy, mainstream party was reinvented as a den of lunatics and monsters & why it was no acci

[DonViejo]

The Republican prison experiment: How the right-wing conquest of the GOP altered political reality

How a stodgy, mainstream party was reinvented as a den of lunatics and monsters -- and why it was no accident

-snip-

There is no silver lining to the fact that one of our nation’s two political parties has disappeared into a self-concocted ideological fog of delusion and denial that has cut it off from political reality, American history, basic economic facts, international law and even its own past. The evil zombie sock-puppet condition of the GOP is the most gruesome single symptom of our failing democracy, and one that has inflicted immense harm not just on our country but the entire world. It didn’t happen by accident.

I would contend that the Republican Party has been the subject, willing or otherwise, of a version of the Stanford prison experiment, conducted on a grand scale. I wrote about that famous 1971 simulation, now the subject of a new feature film, earlier this week: A group of normal, middle-class California college students eagerly embraced roles as sadistic guards and abused prisoners, submitting almost immediately to the social order of an entirely fictional institution they knew had no real power. Properly understood, the Stanford experiment is not about prisons or schools or other overtly coercive social institutions, although it certainly applies to them. It is about the power of ideology and the power of power, about the fact that if you change people’s perception of reality, you have gone most of the way to changing reality itself.

The Republican Party did not organically evolve into a xenophobic, all-white party of hate that seeks to roll back not just the Civil Rights movement and feminism, but the entire Enlightenment. It did not accidentally become untethered from reality and float off to the moons of Pluto. Those possibilities were already present, but they had to be activated. Partly as a result of its own ideological weakness and internal divisions, the GOP was taken over from within and from above: In the first instance, by a dedicated core of right-wing activists, and in the second by the ultra-rich, super-PAC oligarchy epitomized by the Koch brothers. The two forces sometimes worked separately, but ultimately the first was funded and sponsored by the second.

One key element of this ideological conquest was that the party’s understanding of itself and its place in American politics and American history was reshaped to conform to a fictional narrative that is now widely believed to be true. Ultimately the Republican prison experiment has replicated itself on an even larger scale, remaking not just the GOP but American political reality.

-snip-

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/18/the_republican_prison_experiment_how_the_right_wing_remaking_of_the_gop_altered_political_reality/

[villager]

1. "the zombie GOP driven the Democrats much further to the right that at any point in their history"

Well said. Sadly enough.

[Fred Sanders]

2. What is the full quote, some folks like to have the full quote before commenting?

No one in the Democratic Party is trying to change the perception of reality as the GOP is systemically attempting, huge difference just right there, as the linked article points out.

[villager]

3. The linked article also points out how skewed our current politics is, how far rightward

...and how much easier Republican extremism makes it for Democrats to "cozy up" to Wall Street.

[GeorgeGist]

4. Not only has the zombie GOP driven the Democrats much further to the right ...

Not only has the zombie GOP driven the Democrats much further to the right that at any point in their history, it has paralyzed the legislative process, driven electoral participation to historic lows and turned the deep American current of political apathy and mistrust into a majority sentiment.

[Fred Sanders]

8. If you read the paragraphs before the reference to "the Democrats" refers to financially

well off members of the party attracted even further to the right by money, not the entire party.

It is a big tent!

I thought it was conventional wisdom that the Democratic Party has gone further to the left, e.g. Growing support for Sanders, pulling front-runner Clinton along, but the well off financial part connected to Wall Street and Madison Avenue, that part of the party may be an exemption, that part may be true.

[Hekate]

5. I'm in process of reading the whole article. That is some supremely scary stuff. nt

[MisterP]

6. Powell Memo, anyone? with the 60s the Establishment was stinking scared and regrouped,

generating a new sense of themselves as having a united identity and a persecuted one at that; there was a lot of collaboration among the people who fought the New Deal, from preachers to university presidents, and a 40s-60s Military-Industrial Complex, but nothing quite like this deliberate effort at creating a movement

then came Ranch Hand an Tet and Saigon and the Church Committee--whoa nelly! we lost a war, the spook party was over, and Adm. Turner was starting to clean house: during the late 70s a new and tightly synchronized rightward swing occurred: there were coups that radicalized the NRA and Baptists, appeals targeted to the middle classes by "sagebrush" ranchers and oilmen, space advocates, Team B, pharmacists, the media (Rupert Murdoch but also The New Republic demanding more Contra aid in the name of liberalism); barking maniacs like Rothbard (retarded kids should be left to die), Milton Friedman (America needs five Pinochets), and other Randroids were suddenly the royal road out of stagflation

the Reagan Revolution forged a new party out of four major constituencies: warmongers (Haig, Secord, Singlaub, Kirkpatrick), fundies (Hargis, Robertson, Moon, Falwell), corporatists (Dow, the MIC, Justice Powell, Hunts, Kochs, Big Oil), and right-libertarians (Hunts, Kochs, Big Oil): so for instance the very elitist and scientistic (but also Romantic/hedonistic) Robert Heinlein would fall into the "militarist" and "libertarian" quadrants and loathe the other two

the endless howling that Iran's going to incinerate us all by sunset and glaze-eyed fundies saying the Debbil is let into your house through Celestial Seasonings tea boxes are all descendants of these moves--and wouldn't be in office if they weren't profitable to someone; likewise the Dems' takeover by "money first, policy after" types has antecedents in the 70s (Scoop Jackson!)

[rock]

7. To actually be a viable, legitimate party in a Democracy, the GOP

Would have to do a lot of stuff that, frankly, they're not comfortable with, like:
1) telling the truth;
2) having actual solutions to social problems;
3) facing facts;
4) accepting rational thought;
5) believing in science;
6) dropping hypocrisy (ooh, really uncomfortable).
And it goes on and on. Notice this approach allows them to survive because the other party ultimately solves the problems for them.

[Johonny]

9. This is a great read

[kenfrequed]

10. Hm...

Sort of underlines the folly of attempting to compromise with these people.

[uhnope]

11. "So we see millions of well-meaning people getting ginned up to vote for Hillary Clinton, despite.."

"So we see millions of well-meaning people getting ginned up to vote for Hillary Clinton, despite the nagging sensation that the political universe in which she represents the best available option is a cruel hoax."

ouch

[hifiguy]

19. That is a mountain of truth packed into one sentence.

If she is the best possible option, we are fucking doomed.

Feel the Bern.

[kath]

22. Wow. a sentence of truth that hits you right in the gut like a ton of bricks.

Marking to read full thing later when I can summon up the stomach for it.

[blm]

12. GHWBush and RevMoon were intel cronies since 60s. Moon started his propaganda media in 1980,

coinciding with Poppy Bush's run for presidency, and later his forced (Reagan hated him) selection as VP.

RevMoon was considered an expert in 'mind control' an asset not lost on his longtime pal Poppy Bush. Tim LaHaye was also considered an expert in 'mind control' and aligned himself with Moon in the late 70s. The 'Left Behind' series of books were crafted to form a political power base of firm believers.

Rupert Murdoch came along in the 90s to broadcast the propaganda media sources that RevMoon had already spent over a decade developing into a vast network. Washington Times, Human Events, Insight, Frontpage, etc…...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bad-moon-rising-john-gorenfeld/1102623743?ean=9780979482236

Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom


What does it say about American politics when a famous 1970s cult leader publishes a Washington newspaper, dresses up in the U.S. Senate offices like King George III, and no one in D.C. seems to care? One night in 2004, at one of Washington’s most outrageous dinner parties, members of Congress bought a shining crown and robes to a billionaire mystery man…

http://culteducation.com/group/1277-unification-church/23675-religious-right-joins-rev-moon-at-pro-bush-inaugural-luncheon.html

[TygrBright]

13. I wish this weren't so accurate....

Among other things, the GOP’s flight to Crazytown has permitted leaders of the Democratic Party to crawl ever more cozily into the pockets of Wall Street bankers and to become ever more intertwined with the national security state — while still proclaiming themselves, in all innocence and with considerable plausibility, to be less noxious than the alternative.

I would point out, however, that those Democratic leaders would not have been in position to crawl into those pockets had they not already been under the influence of the Post-WWII MIC enabled by the well-intended (and perhaps at the time but ONLY temporarily necessary) structural institutionalization of corporate influence in the governmental process.

Those who drafted the Constitution had a very good understanding of what happens when a powerful extragovernmental institution wields enormous social and economic power: Thus they explicitly separated institutionalized religion from institutionalized government.

I believe that if you could bring those drafters in a Time Machine to see the results of the Industrial Revolution and the unchecked Corporate Capitalism it spawned, and then send them back to their work in the Eighteenth Century, they would also have explicitly separated institutionalized business from institutionalized government as well.

sadly,
Bright

[NBachers]

14. Excellent an intelligent read. Thank you for posting this.

[pampango]

15. "... the Republican Party was not always anti-immigrant, not always opposed to socialized healthcare

not always committed to a fundamentalist reading of the Second Amendment and, for the love of Christ, not always obsessed with abortion."

Planned Parenthood is constantly and unanimously vilified by today’s Republicans as a Satan-worshiping, baby-killing feminist cult. But in 1970 it was granted federal funding by none other than the guest star of today’s show, President Richard Nixon. Furthermore, here’s what Nixon said at the time: “No American woman should be denied access to family-planning assistance because of her economic condition.”

There were prominent pro-choice Republicans as recently as the mid-1990s, but the party’s official ideology on abortion has been reshaped by an activist minority just as the party itself was, through the use of emotionally charged symbols and images and the banishment of such wussified abstractions as facts, logic, history and context.

Lastly, there’s the most unlikely part of Nixon’s startling pronouncement: Its direct reference to economic inequalities and the need to address them. No Republican would say any such thing today, of course ... I do not delude myself that Nixon cared about poor women or their health, but in the political climate of the time he was obliged to say he did. That political climate was exactly what had to be changed, from the point of view of the overlords who designed the Republican prison experiment, because it posed a long-term threat to their economic and political supremacy.

Progressives often view the zombified 21st century GOP with an understandable mixture of apprehension and bewilderment: How the hell did this happen? Can it really be working? The answers to those questions are that it was the result of a brilliant long-term strategy to alter the dynamics of American politics – to change perception, and then to change reality — and that it’s working much better than most people perceive. As Phil Zimbardo can tell you, when you’re inside the experiment it’s hard to see how much it has shifted your perspective.

Republicans used a 'long term strategy' to change perception which could then be used 'to change reality'. The change in perception was never based in reality but it was used to change the political reality.

We can use reality to change perception (something republicans could not and did not do) which than then change the political reality. It will be a 'long term strategy' but it must be done.

[erronis]

16. I can't reply to each of the great top-level responses in this thread,

But I do want to give my kudos to some very thoughtful comments. Most of them quite disturbing.

[dem in texas]

17. This is the death throes of the Republican party

The Republican party is made up of old white men and controlled by old rich white men. Sooner, not later they are going to die off. In the meantime, we have the Hispanic and other minority groups growing like crazy. US politics is ripe for a new political party. Remember the Whig party? The Republican party was formed as the Whig party died. Many Hispanics are conservative, but will not vote Republican because of the ultra right, anti-immigration rants they are hearing from the candidates. It is going to be very interesting to see what happens. Donald Trump is a gift to the Democratic party.

[uhnope]

24. but the article says it's likewise the death throes of US democracy

[valerief]

18. K&R

[hifiguy]

20. Kick and Rec

Great article!

[malaise]

21. Exellent read

but sadly these lunatics control the state houses and therefore elections

[etherealtruth]

23. K and R, hoping everyone takes the time to read this