The previous few weeks of conservative politics have been jam-packed with demonstrations of concern and cowardice, poking holes of their facade as powerful guys (and gals).
As an illustration, senior White Home aide Stephen Miller took a break from creating insurance policies meant to harm immigrants and appeared within the Oval Workplace, alongside President Donald Trump, to tell the world how afraid he’s of parks in Washington, D.C.
Praising Trump’s set up of federal regulation enforcement and Nationwide Guard members within the nation’s capital, Miller explained, “For the primary time of their lives, they will use the parks, they will stroll on the streets. You might have individuals who can stroll freely at evening with out having to fret about being robbed or mugged. They’re carrying their watches once more.”
Yearly, millions of individuals go to Washington and don’t have any downside with the parks. Little infants are superb there. Individuals put on watches.
Trump’s deployment to town has been a critical affront to locals, notably town’s giant Black inhabitants, but it surely has additionally uncovered a falsehood on the heart of Republican fearmongering. The Nationwide Guard on the bottom is largely focusing on trash pickup and responding to visitors accidents, regardless of the administration’s apocalyptic rhetoric.
Essentially the most high-profile crime the deployment has dealt with thus far is a sandwich thrower they couldn’t persuade a grand jury to indict.
The appropriate has rather a lot invested of their picture because the strongest folks in American politics. From MAGA crimson hats to George W. Bush fanboys carrying cowboy hats, the conservative motion has embraced “macho” as its aesthetic for many years.
However most of the time they’ve been utter cowards, displaying weak spot on a bunch of points going through Individuals.
As an illustration, when the AIDS/HIV disaster started to hang-out the nation within the Eighties, then-President Ronald Reagan didn’t confront the issue straight. As a result of the illness first surfaced within the LGBTQ+ group, and that was the place a majority of the deaths initially occurred, Reagan ignored the issue.
Behind closed doorways, his staff laughed at the tragedy. In public, he would barely say a word, refusing to have the braveness to exhibit primary compassion and humanity for his fellow Individuals as a result of they had been homosexual.
The non secular proper additionally embraced homophobia, attacking LGBTQ+ folks for the purported sin of their existence. One of the crucial distinguished bigots within the motion was Rev. Jerry Falwell, a key ally of the Republican Occasion who whipped up a homophobic frenzy whereas pushing to ship votes for the occasion.
However Falwell was a coward. In 1991, after being confronted by counterprotesters, Falwell whined to the Los Angeles Times, “Everybody within the lodge was frightened. I believe they meant to do me hurt.” A decade later, Falwell (and fellow coward Pat Robertson) was busy blaming the 9/11 terrorist assaults on homosexual folks, abortion, and feminists.
Former President George W. Bush, on whose watch 9/11 occurred, cherished to embrace the tough-guy aesthetic. He posed in a cowboy hat on his ranch and described al-Qaida terrorists as “evildoers.” However same-sex marriage terrified him.
Bush was so afraid of individuals getting into into matrimony that, in 2004, he backed a constitutional modification that might prohibit marriage rights to opposite-sex {couples}. He described it as a “critical matter of nationwide concern.” In right-wing media, Invoice O’Reilly, then a bunch on Fox Information, issued serious warnings to his viewers that authorized similar intercourse marriage would result in weddings with dolphins, goats, turtles, and different animals.
Years later, when the Supreme Court docket legalized same-sex marriage, the one “critical matter” has been the scale and scope of wedding ceremony truffles.
Bush was additionally on the forefront of sharing his concern with the general public. His administration pushed a color-coded terrorism alert system. It was a manifestation of cowardice that permeated his administration, leaving the seize of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden to his successor, President Barack Obama.
Bush’s signature coverage—the disastrous invasion of Iraq—was about fear of al-Qaida and their nonexistent alliance with the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.
The conservative Nationwide Rifle Affiliation echoed Bush-style cowardice greater than a decade later, telling their supporters in 2014 that they wanted weapons as a result of militants from the Islamic State group, generally referred to as ISIS, might be outdoors their houses.
Trump’s cowardice has been on show for his total profession as a political determine. He launched his first presidential marketing campaign by speaking about his concern of Mexican immigrants, citing the absurd need for a border wall to guard towards them. There appears to be nothing Trump is extra afraid of than brown-skinned folks, particularly if that individual is former President Barack Obama. Trump nonetheless invokes Obama as a boogeyman greater than eight years after the Democrat left workplace.
Extra just lately, making an attempt to bolster Trump’s actions towards D.C., Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee claimed he sleeps in his office as a result of he’s so afraid of Washington residents. Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin bragged that he breaks native legal guidelines and doesn’t drive with a seatbelt in D.C., as a result of he’s supposedly residing in fixed terror of being carjacked.
Conservatism is about tearing issues down, not constructing them up. The motion would reasonably spread wild fantasies about American cities as city hellscapes as a substitute of admitting that cities have been on the forefront of American innovation on a number of community-oriented points.
The appropriate may take a look at these insurance policies and leaders and give you methods to implement them in rural and suburban areas, however they’re too afraid to confess that their concepts merely haven’t labored. This can be a massive motive why they embrace concern and cowardice.
Demonizing the opposite has all the time been the straightforward method out. Denigrating human beings, utilizing the ability of the state to close down outdoors concepts and voices—that’s what cowards do.
And that’s what the conservative motion, from Trump on the prime and all the way in which down, does every single day of its existence.
