The "YOU made me beat you" excuse for Republican beliefs

[PsychoBabble]

How California Gave Us Trumpism
Some of the president’s most hard-line advisers forged their beliefs in reaction to what they saw in their home state

Much has been made recently of how Trump’s populism and economic nationalism have tapped into this previously obscure strain of intellectual conservatism that arose in California. But a bigger, and perhaps stranger, surprise is how deeply Trump’s view of America as a nation in need of saving is shaped by California itself. Trump’s candidacy is usually seen as a shotgun marriage of East Coast money and heartland rhetoric, a slick Manhattan salesman retailing a muscular vision of “America” to voters in the Midwest and South—about the least Californian form of politics imaginable. And since the election, California, which voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, has emerged as the diverse, globalist anchor of the “Resistance.”

But under the hood, the state has been the ideological engine of the more heterodox strain of Trumpism now driving much of the president’s policy. Bannon, though raised in Virginia, honed his political identity in Los Angeles, where he spent more than a decade pumping out right-wing documentaries before taking over Breitbart News. White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner who may be the next-most influential thinker in Trumpland, is a product of the decidedly liberal enclave of Santa Monica. Michael Anton, an erudite high-level National Security Council aide, was raised in Northern California, including ultra-liberal Santa Cruz. Julia Hahn, Bannon’s bomb-throwing fellow Breitbart alum who is now an aide in the West Wing, grew up in Los Angeles, where she attended the prestigious Harvard-Westlake School—also the alma mater of Alex Marlow, the editor of Breitbart, the website that has become the primary media vehicle for Trump’s nationalist agenda.

As the administration settles in, these hard-liners, led by Bannon, have clashed with Trump’s New York advisers—especially the president’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kusher. The internal power struggle that recently cost Bannon his seat on the National Security Council, and may still cost him his job, is not just about personalities. It is a clash between two competing visions for the Trump presidency. And although Trump himself is a New Yorker, ironically, the most ideologically self-confident version of Trumpism is a California phenomenon.

The California exiles in the White House might not think of themselves as a coherent club. “If they are having meetings, they’re doing it without me,” Anton joked in a recent interview. But from their writings, statements and personal stories, it’s clear they share a common worldview born out of opposition to the liberal, Democratic hegemony in their home state and their discomfort with its demographic conversion. For people who think of California as a buffer against “America first-ism” and see Trump’s movement as purely an expression of unreconstructed nativists like Jeff Sessions of Alabama, it might come as a surprise. But to understand Trumpism as a response to what’s happening in America, it helps to understand what’s happened in California—where the conservative reaction to its political and cultural transformation has been honed to a sharp point.

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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/how-california-gave-us-trumpism-215038

[underpants]

1. Interesting rec'd

[gopiscrap]

2. something to think about

[KPN]

3. "YOU made me beat you" -- perfect descriptor!

[2naSalit]

4. Interesting perspective...

Having lived and voted in California in the past, I can see where this viewpoint came form, and I can't disagree with it. California, though perceived as a liberal state, has always had a strong conservative bent. Back in the early 1970s, I recall moving to southern CA and realizing that what I thought of as a pretty ;iberal place was actually more like a police state under ronnieraygun. I had imagined, from way over in New England, that given what I had learned of Haight-Ashbury and all the cool music and counterculture and all that, I anticipated something quite different from what I found. And what I found was that, at that time, you had to go to LA and the entertainment world or the Bay area, where most of the liberal action I heard of, was... the rest of the state was pretty R flavored conservative from what I saw. Lots of military in the state and back then, we were in Vietnam. My mother was all about the military back then and was married to a "lifer" in the Navy. They lectured me about the economic blessing the military was for the state and that I should be thankful for our protection and service to that community which came first and foremost in San Diego County.

I know there are a lot of more liberal minded folks there now, many decades later, yet look at the fact that not too long ago Ahhnuld was put in office after a recall vote to oust Grey Davis, and for the life of me I can't recall why he was ousted like that. I liked him when he was treasurer under Gov. Brown (I think) and somehow they ended up refunding a bunch of state tax money back to taxpayers, I remember getting a surprise check for a few hundred bucks. So it's not a given that California would be such a liberal place, especially to those who have or do live there.

So yeah, the state has one of the best PR systems on the planet, but there are a lot of R flavored conservatives with lots of cash and over-privileged offspring to have fomented the kind of creatures we have in the WH now.

[PsychoBabble]

5. interesting perspective, thanks ...

That is why I put this article up for feedback

[2naSalit]

6. Well...

it's definitely something we should all think about and look around and see what elements of such a situation might exist in our own locations. Most of the well off I have encountered of late are very religious about their entitlement to wealth and that the rest of us should just get over it and accept our "place" in the social strata. I met one such young man last summer who is studying to be a journalist, he claimed.

Somehow we were just discussing our jobs with a federal agency when it quickly transitioned into a discussion on the inevitability of inequality upon which capitalism is founded. He kept defending capitalism as though it were a) the most logical form of social organization; b) capitalism is to be revered in the same way as religion; c) why should he concern himself with whiners who don't have any privilege-while claiming that that very population had more subsidized privilege than he had as a rich kid-since he's all set-(affluenza)-? d) that those born without it must have deserved to be porn w/o privilege.

I kept hammering the point that with capitalism there is no direct, positive correlation with health and well-being of people or the environment... ultimately it's a self-centered and destructive path where resources are used to exhaustion and only a few humans temporarily benefit while the rest suffer from the ravages of resource loss.

He ended up actually thinking about that and conceded that I had made a number of points he had never considered. I never saw him again but I felt I had, at the very least, pulled the curtain back a bit for him to take a peek at the real world sans the rose colored lenses. I told him that if he was going to be a journalist, he needed to jettison any biases.

[PsychoBabble]

7. well done!

Keep up the good work

[ProfessorPlum]

8. Lived in the Bay Area for 5 years

Enjoyed it, but it was definitely not the laid back place that most people think it is. Everyone there is working, and working hard, to maintain their lives there because it is so expensive. I actually ended up playing piano at a Republican event there (with Jack Kemp!) but that is a long story. There are definitely a lot of conservatives in CA.

Not sure that having a few assholes from CA on Trump's team means a whole lot about California culture in general, or the reaction to it.