“Monsters from the id”
by Tom Sullivan
So I’m driving through an upscale neighborhood in Greenville, SC this week and pass a big house with a big yard, and a fresh, new Confederate flag flying right beside the road.
Except it’s not the familiar battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, the one they just took down in the state capitol. It’s the first flag of the Confederate States of America.
I’ve seen a lot of Confederate battle flags over the decades, but this is the first time I’ve seen this particular flag displayed by a homeowner. Ever.
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I wonder how many others recognized it? The battle flag came down in Columbia just weeks ago and already neo-confederates are going “more abstract” with their white supremacist. Just as they once did with “forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff.” Somewhere, is Lee Atwater smiling?
The RNC apologized to the NAACP a decade ago for the Southern Strategy. Republicans just never abandoned it. Fueling white resentment as a get-out-the-vote tool has worked too well too long for the GOP. They just can’t quit that flag. Resentment is the conservative id. Nurtured for years. Promoted. Now in the person of Donald Trump it is coming back to bite them. Maybe:
They say he’s trashing the Republic brand. They say he’s “stirring up the crazies,” in the words of Senator John McCain. But Trump is the brand, to a sizable degree. And the crazies have long flourished in the Republican media wing, where any amount of gaseous buffoonery goes unchallenged.
And now that the party can’t control him, Trump threatens to destroy its chances if he doesn’t get his way, running as an independent with unlimited wealth — a political suicide bomb.
Trump is a byproduct of all the toxic elements Republicans have thrown into their brew over the last decade or so — from birtherism to race-based hatred of immigrants, from nihilists who shut down government to elected officials who shout “You lie!” at their commander in chief.
Dan Balz wrote at the Washington Post:
Many Republicans want Trump to go away. But they are wary about trying to hasten his fall because they fear they will pay too high a price among those for whom he has provided a voice.
A voice for those with years of conditioned resentment thirsty to guzzle the Kool-Aid Trump is peddling. And ready to burn down their own shining city on a hill if they can’t have her for themselves.
“Monsters from the id.” The horrors of our nightmares were unseen enemy in Forbidden Planet. An enemy unleashed by a race of geniuses who destroyed themselves when their own creation spun out of control.
But don’t hold your breath.