Useful Suggestion

As the Republicans continue to make hay on political issues that they will almost certainly never pull the trigger on, I like the idea of calling their bluff.

When Ron Desnatis goes after Disney's special governmental district in Florida over cultur war issues, it is a good thing to suggest that this is a good idea, because it is an unconscionable corporate subsidies by the citizens of Florida, for example.

The Republicans take these positions, because they know the response from Democrats accrues to their political advantage.

To put it bluntly, trolling motivates their base, and it is time to counter-troll:

Let’s take it as a given that the right wing’s culture wars are, overwhelmingly, a ruse. [Because it is a ruse — Me]Taken together, they amount to a bad-faith attempt by cynical political wolves to lure in the rubes, appealing to lowest-common-denominator fears and ignorance as a way to distract from the substance of what the Republican Party is actually doing. Nowhere is this more nakedly apparent than in the laughable bleatings of Republican power brokers against the ​“elite.” Donald Trump’s ​“blue collar billionaire” con is now being pushed by less gifted con men against the idea of corporate ​“wokeism” — a thing that does not, in fact, exist. Yes, this is all shallow and actively harmful political maneuvering, none of which should be taken seriously.

So can we get anything good out of it?

I think so. We can say with great confidence that these culture wars will continue, because they work. Let’s set aside for a moment the Critical Race Theory panic and neo-book banning frenzy and focus on one specific variety of these culture wars: The fake Republican embrace of the working class. This is the sort of thing embodied by Marco Rubio’s March 2021 halfway-endorsement of the union drive at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, because, he said, ​“companies like Amazon have been allies of the left in the culture war.” It is the sort of thing embodied by Fox News host Tucker Carlson inviting Amazon Labor Union leader Chris Smalls on his show for a sympathetic interview in a (failed) attempt to get Smalls to trash Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It is the sort of thing that motivated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to declare war against Disney, one of his state’s biggest power brokers and stalwarts of Republican state politics, because the company criticized an anti-gay bill.

………

Republicans are doing this because they are opportunistic. But their opportunism is based on an assumption that nobody will ever call their bluff. The Republican Party writ large figures that it can insult corporate America as unconscionable woke elite liberal scum out of one side of its mouth and still enjoy the political and financial support of corporate America on the other end, because the people that control things understand that this is all theater and that the Republican legislative agenda is still resolutely pro-capital and anti-labor.

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There is another, much more promising opportunity: To drag the Republicans into an extremely uncomfortable position by acting as if they mean what they say. When Ron DeSantis declares that he is stripping Disney of its privileged legal position (which will likely never come to pass, which would be his ideal outcome), the Left must stand up and say: Yes! We hate corporate welfare! A rare bipartisan moment of agreement! When Republicans lazily rail against Wall Street and Big Tech and the Ivy League because those institutions dared to pay the cheapest sort of lip service to liberal values while fueling inequality and monopolizing data for the purpose of increasing revenue and fostering an insular ruling class that never changes, we need to recognize that the right wingers have miscalculated. They have gotten themselves out of position. In the same way that a boxer must attack when an opponent misses a punch and falls off balance, now is the time for the Left to lean in and push these points, hard.

………

Republicans aren’t built for this. You want to give a speech on the Senate floor decrying Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as a bad person for being woke? We will introduce a bill to order that his wealth is confiscated, loaded into cargo planes as pallets of cash, and dumped over abandoned middle American factory towns. We’ll put every billionaire to work in fast food restaurants! You like to make fun of Starbucks as a pretentious bastion of elitism? We’ll do you one better — we’ll unionize the whole damn company! We’ll unionize Goldman Sachs! We love this game. Don’t just speak about it, you Republican poser Ivy League grads masquerading as salt-of-the-earth populists. Be about it. Republicans think they can win on some rhetorical battleground. They’re not prepared for what will happen when we take them at their word. Never let a good opportunity to pour gasoline on the class war go to waste.

Unfortunately, this not going to happen because:

1. The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is already bending over backwards to convince the corporate elites that all of its talk about fair wages and equality are just talk, and they really want to protect the worst of the worst of the richest of the richest.
2. Much of the  Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) likes the current status quo just fine, and all of the bankster looters are the friends and classmates.
   
3. Who would donate large sacks of campaign cash that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) misuses in order to make their money?

It would be nice if it were to happen though. 

There is a class war going on, and it is being waged by the top 10% of society, including the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), on the bottom 90% of society.