The “politics of resentment” are not about small government per se, as the GOP has ostensibly been fighting for. Rather, it’s a tribalistic demand that government work for the people — but not for all of the people.
The core of the ethnonationalist perspective is that a country’s constituent groups and demographics are locked in a zero-sum struggle for resources. Any government intervention that favors one group disfavors the others. Government and other institutions are either with you or against you.
What FOX and talk radio have been teaching the right for decades is that native-born, working- and middle-class whites are locked in a zero-sum struggle with rising Others — minorities, immigrants, gays, coastal elitists, hippie environmentalists, etc. — and that the major institutions of the country have been coopted and are working on behalf of the Others.
[…] From an ethnonationalist perspective, government overreach is when government tells people like me what to do. The proper role of government is to defend my rights and privileges against people like them.
If government is protecting Them, then it must, perforce, be oppressing Us. Some of this comes from the fact that, yes, as institutionalized discrimination against those other groups has been combated, it has meant that the folk who used to assume the lion’s share of the societal pie and representation of what it meant to be “American” are having to share more evenly. But it’s become particularly acute in the face of prolonged economic downturns and stagnation that have nothing to do with any of this, but which provides the very real (if misplaced) feeling of being oppressed and disadvantaged.
Add in fear-mongering and rabble-rousing by conservative media and pundits (e.g., the truly chilling 2009 Limbaugh quote in the story), and you’ve got a sizable fraction of the population suddenly ready to take up torches and pitchforks to overturn societal institutions — but just for their own benefit.
It is, indirectly, the seeming victory of the Ayn Rand philosophy: I’m going to grab mine, you go pound sand.
This one quote shows what angry white guys mean when they talk about government overreach
Don’t want toxic smoke blown in your face? Move to Sweden.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. “ — John Kenneth Galbraith
I’d like to take that exhaust pipe and connect it to the cab of his truck.
Ok linda tewes
+Linda Tewes A classic quote indeed. Though there's something … a bit different about this. It's not about greed, as much as entitlement. This isn't wealthy conservatives trying to justify continuing to rob from the poor to give to themselves, it's people feeling that society has turned against them by turning toward others, it's people feeling powerless, not justifying their power. It seems driven by angry fear. It's certainly selfish, but a different kind of selfishness.