Bathrooms and the Sugar They Need
Capitol has little current interest in bringing back jobs to rural Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. So Republican politicians make the fight about keeping muslims out, going after legal and illegal immigrants, battling the current last of the sexuality battles — the transgendered…whomever they feel is culturally weakest.
We could talk solutions. Sharing bathrooms was never ideal. I’ve seen restaurants and malls in California that have numerous individual restrooms. I like this better than the troughs in mens’ bathrooms with the ever present concern that some drunk guy is going to turn early and render my flipflops a regrettable decision. Maybe individual bathrooms render this issue moot along the way. But bathrooms arent the issue and solutions are not welcome. Solutions would avoid the needless ostracism and discrimination for vulnerable populations. Scapegoating is the fuel of authoritarianism, but also the sugar that feeds Republican rank and file. It is what they want.
Capitol has little current interest in bringing back jobs to rural Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. So Republican politicians make the fight about keeping muslims out, going after legal and illegal immigrants, battling the current last of the sexuality battles — the transgendered…whoever they feel is culturally weakest. Will your supporters accept the attack on scapegoats instead of requiring increased economic power? Will they allow you send economic power to that banking class that extends from Goldman to Putin? Yes, they will — they almost always do. You don’t have to start with a jobs bill, an infrastructure bill, a redistribution of wealth from the top .5% to the bottom 70%. Just show them what you are doing to Native Americans, to LGBT, to muslims, to immigrants — that’s all the sugar they need.
This isnt a secret. Trump’s explicit promise to supporters was to put them first. Of course that isn’t going to be done with an economic payoff — Capital is chasing workers globally. His supporters will be offered the cultural payoff of rendering non-whites, non-males, non-christians invisible except for where the administration is pursuing them into the shadows. Why does that work? Why do they, generation after generation, accept the cultural deal instead of demanding a better economic deal. And, in this case, not even the actual deal. Republicans need only show the attempt to keep them out of public spaces, merely working to make the scapegoats feel unwelcome, threatened and worried. Think about the Republican fight on abortion. Even with complete federal power during the Bush presidency, they still didnt make abortion illegal. Republican supporters avoid complete victory for the same reason addicts avoid rehab — it disrupts the high.
Republican supporters want to know that you are forever pushing the others, the sinners, the different into the shadows. That the fight continues is fine with them. It means they may focus on keeping those others out while their own increasing poverty and powerlessness is mercifully out of mind. That is the instant soothing of the drug. They dont want solutions. They want sugar.
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