Reply #26: Aggressive, right-wing conservatism will NOT decline [View All]

[DivinBreuvage]

until it is beaten out of them, just as Militarism and Political Extremism literally had to be beaten out of Germany and Japan. Aggressive political extremism doesn't just go away, any more than religious fundamentalism just goes away. The people who are drawn to those worldviews do so because they are motivated by fundamental psychological compulsions that trivialities like elections or public disapproval cannot efface. In fact an unfavorable election result pushes them to organize tighter, work harder, and pour forth more money; and public disapproval is worn by them as a validating badge of honor (though it may cause them to pursue their activities "under the radar" for a while).

It is true that the majority of Americans do not support their agenda, and even among their adherents a substantial number support them only because they are not better informed. It is certainly possible that in the next few years the tide of public sentiment will indeed turn against them. But they already have such a strangehold on political offices, on the electoral process, and on public debate that a shift of public sentiment will not in itself excercise the leverage needed to pry them from power, at least not from the back corridors and locked rooms where they have always done the majority of their damage, secretly and unseen.

Only a soul-hammering catastrophe -- so severe that it shatters the psychological foundations on which their worldview is based, so overwhelming that it makes them know to the core of their bones that Jehovah and Mammon are actively against them and refuse to let them win -- will effectively wreck right-wing conservatism in America.