Backlash can cut both ways
An opinion piece from Finland might be one of the more instructive things Republicans could read this Sunday morning.
Marja Heinonen, a Finnish writer, journalist and author, writes that after decades of neutrality Finns have reconsidered their stance toward NATO. Popular opinion has shifted. No longer concerned about “poking the Russian bear,” at least 60 percent of Finns now want to join. Heinonen explains, “[T]he atrocities in Ukraine have changed our minds.”
Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto dismisses any threats of retaliation from Russia with which his country shares an 830-mile border. He blames Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“You caused this. Look at the mirror.”
That is sound advice for conservatives who have seen their once “grand old party” reduced to a cult of personality. Their oligarchs built a conservative movement, media outlets and all, to advance essentially a one-percent agenda. They kept their base hopped up on grievance for decades while wealth and opportunity gaps widened. When the Southern Strategy faltered, they found others in addition to Black Americans their base could blame for their misfortunes: anyone and everyone non-white and non-evangelical. Fostering ignorance and trafficking in anti-everyone-else propaganda kept the right’s foot soldiers on low boil. It worked for a time. Until the monster Republicans built and fed came for them.
Like Putin, Republicans grossly miscalculated. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has backfired. Like Finns in 1939, Ukrainians would not roll over and submit. Putin and Russia are now paying a price. Republicans for decades thought they could control the radical right. They found in 2016 that the radical right, led by an ignorant bully, controlled them. By Jan. 6, 2021, the mob was coming not just for Democrats but for them as well. The Republican Party they once knew is gone. The cultists are in charge.
Heinonen explains why Finland still controls its fate (CNN):
Decision makers and the general public have to understand all the ways that Russia may try to strongarm us as we move toward [NATO]. With a high degree of media literacy and being blessed with one of the world’s best education systems, Finns are less prone to falling victim to Russian disinformation.
American conservatives attracted to strongmen like Putin have made disinformation the coin of the right-wing realm. They have flooded their media spaces with nonsense to where facts and logic no longer apply. Finns are less prone to disinformation. Republicans depend on it to retain power as a minority.
They found with the ascendance of Donald Trump that while they thought their base was voting for low taxes, small government, etc., it was in fact internalizing the daily dose of xenophobia dished up to keep them voting for the Chamber of Commerce’s economic policies. Trump and QAnon put the lie to that. Republicans have yet to look in the mirror for the reason why.
Finland, says Heinonen, “still faces a geopolitical balancing act, but it can’t allow itself to cower when confronted by the neighborhood bully. To do so would only invite aggression.”
American conservatives now cower before bullies their own efforts have nurtured as well as before those who have taken the lesson that bullies are what their base has been conditioned to want. For all the conservative bluster about freedom, they and we could lose all of it. That is unless Americans who still retain their faculties and principles fight back. Putin’s invasion has backfired. Pray that the authoritarian movement Republicans have raised will too. Backlash can cut both ways.
Democrats have their work cut out for them. Their leaders appear out of touch with the American mood, practicing politics as usual as if they too want to make great the America their party dominated for much of the 20th century. But the United States has changed. The political game has changed. They have not kept up.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.