The Man Card: White Male Identity Politics from Nixon to Tump

The Man Card: White Male Identity Politics from Nixon to Trump

Directed by Jackson Katz (2000)

Film Review

This documentary reveals how Trump’s tough guy, misogynist persona isn’t a new phenomena – that it results from a 50-year-old Republican strategy to steal white working class votes from the Democratic Party.

Filmmaker Katz credits Nixon campaign advisors Roger Ailes (who would go on to launch Fox News in 1996) and Lee Atwater with instigating the strategy. Inspired by George Wallace’s ability to win five states as the American Independent Party candidate, Ailes tapped into the growing Southern backlash (which had voted Democratic since the Civil War) over Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 Civil Rights Act. Ailes could sense growing anxiety among all white working class males for what they perceived as the “feminization” of society by expanding rights for women, gays and minorities. Ailes would go on to craft a Nixon campaign that would do nothing to improve livings condition of working class men. Instead it  would entice them to vote Republican by defending their cultural norms.

Nixon (1969 – 74)

The Nixon campaign would emphasize a strong military (and support for the Vietnam War) and a tough on crime stance, while simultaneously portraying McGovern as a pacifist  liberal elite (despite McGovern’s strong labor background and status as a decorated World War II pilot).

Reagan (1981 – 88)

Republicans would amplify the strategy during the 1980 Reagan campaign, portraying Reagan (a prominent member of California’s country club elite) as a cowboy and man of the people and Carter as too soft and sensitive to stand up to the Soviets. It was during the Reagan campaign that the Republican Party captured the votes of white evangelical Christians experiencing growing concerns about threats posed to their traditional patriarchal order by feminists, gays and women working outside the home.

George H W Bush (1998 – 92)

Bush senior, the next Republican president, also had a wimp problem owing to his elitist Ivy League background. However with Ailes and Lee Atwater as his advisors, he successfully reversed Dukakis’s initial l 17 point lead by portraying Dukakis as wimpier.

Clinton (1993 – 2000)

In 1992 Clinton won back some of the working class vote, by positioning himself as tougher on crime (supporting the death penalty, harsh law and order initiatives and major welfare reform) than Bush. However this would not stop Rush Limbaugh, other right wing talk radio hosts and Fox News from exploiting white male anxiety about their changing roles. The result would be the Republicans’ recapture of the House (under Newt Gingrich) for the first time in 40 years.

George W Bush (2001 – 2008)

Bush junior would deliberately purchase a ranch in Texas (to conceal his own elitist background) to prepare for his presidential campaign. He would be constantly depicted in the media wearing cowboy hats, driving pickups and clearing brush. In Bush’s case, the strategy would be less effective. Exit polls and evidence of computerized vote rigging suggests Democrat candidates Gore and Kerry won both the popular and electoral college vote in 2000 and 2004.*

Obama (2009 – 2016)

Although Obama lost the white male vote in 2008 and 2012, he more than made up for it in other demographic support. Fox News and other right wing media outlets would foment a massive backlash against the election of an African American to the White House. This would result in the the formation of the Tea Party, Minutemen and “Birther” movement (alleged controversy over Ovama’s birth certificate), in which Donald Trump was a major figurehead.

Trump (2017 – )

Trump has been a master at tapping into white male anxiety. According to Katz, he easily won the Republican primaries by ridiculing the manhood of his Republican opponents. He portrays himself as a “blue collar” billionaire, glorifying gun culture and tapping into evangelical masculinity (despite his playboy reputation), while running an unapologetically misogynist campaign. His rise to power parallels the rise of strong misogynistic leaders around the world (eg Bolsonaro, Putin, Xi Jingping, and Erdogan).

---

*See https://wincrit.icopa2014.org/ebook-ready/was-the-2004-presidential-election-stolen-exit-polls-election-fraud-and-the-official-count

Who Stole the American Dream?

The Heist: Who Stole the American Dream and How We Can Get It Back

Directed by Frances Causey and Donald Goldmacher (2012)

Film Review

The Heist traces the banking regulations Roosevelt enacted during the Great Depression – with the goal of preventing future economic cataclysms – and the systematic dismantling of this regulation that commenced in 1971. The documentary credits this deliberate attack on the financial regulatory system for the 2008 meltdown, the decimation of American unions, the total control of federal government by Wall Street corporations, and the most unequal economic system in the world.

The filmmakers date this orchestrated attack on US financial regulation to the Powell Memo,* which the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable seized on to launch twelve right wing pro-business think tanks (including the CATO Institute, the American Enterprise Institutes and the Heritage Foundation). Funded by six families, these foundations were created with the deliberate aim of capturing business schools and the media with fundamentalist free market ideology. They proceeded to lobby all levels of government for tax cuts on the rich, as well as financing focus groups and psychologists to develop propaganda persuading blue collar workers to vote against their own interests.

In 1980, they succeeded in convincing large numbers of blue collar Democrats to vote for Reagan. In addition to implementing tax cuts for the rich that created the largest federal deficit in US history, Reagan also repealed the Fairness Doctrine,** opening the door to a radio talk show market 90% dominated by right wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh.

Guided by the Powell Memo, right wing Democrat Bill Clinton repealed the Glass Steagall Act,***, deregulated derivatives trading, gutted the Federal Communication Commission’s authority to regulate media monopolies, and sped up the outsourcing of US jobs through the enactment of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (which created the World Trade Organization).

Obama would prove even more pro-business than Clinton, with his refusal to prosecute the banskters he bailed out, his appointment of GE CEO Jeffrey Imelt (a notorious job outsourcer) to head the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, his promotion of the myth that Social Security is insolvent, his deregulation of private pensions, and his support for the Transpacific Partnership (TPP).

The film features great clips from Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Paul Craig Roberts and Ross Perot (speaking out against NAFTA during his 1992 presidential campaign).

---

* The Powell Memo was a memorandum Lewis Powell prepared at the request of the Chamber of Commerce. It remained secret until after his appointment to the Supreme Court. The Powell Memo

** The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, requiring the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was—in the Commission’s view—honest, equitable, and balanced.

***The Glass–Steagall Act, passed by Congress in 1933, protected customers’ deposits by prohibiting commercial banks from engaging in investments. It was enacted as an emergency response to the failure of nearly 5,000 banks during the Great Depression.

 

 

Deer Hunting with Jesus

Deer Hunting with Jesus

by Joe Bageant

Book Review

Deer Hunting With Jesus is a graphic account of the abandonment of the white working class by the American left. And how this left the door wide open for right wing fundamentalists to claim their allegiance.

The book’s format is largely autobiographical, as the (now deceased) college-educated journalist Bageant describes his return to his working class roots in Winchester Virginia. He’s dismayed by the deterioration of living standards. The people he grew up with in the fifties and sixties no longer have any job security, nor input into their pay or working conditions, nor employer-sponsored health or workers compensation benefits. Yet instead of being angry with the factory that exploits and demeans them on the daily basis, his former schoolmates have been conditioned to deflect this anger onto educated liberals.

According to Bageant, class warfare is very real in the US. Unfortunately it isn’t between workers and the employers who exploit and demean them. It’s between the educated and uneducated. The goal of Deer Hunting With Jesus is to examine exactly how the white working poor of the rural south and Texas have come to internalize key values of the gangster capitalist class. For example

• Labor unions are bad because they have priced Americans out of jobs.
• Entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, food stamps) are handouts that encourage laziness.
• The rest of the world envies us (these are people who are one paycheck away from the street) and wants to steal our freedom.
• Wars are good because countries get out of line and need to be put in their place.
• Wall Street should take over Social Security because they’re better at managing money than bureaucrats.

The Advantages of a Cheap, Unquestioning, Compliant Work Force

The conservative PR specialists who spawned Fox News and talk radio personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have been extremely skilled in exploiting the fear and ignorance of this demographic. An ignorance, according to Bageant, that Republicans have deliberately created by systematically dismantling the public education system. There’s nothing the corporate elite likes better than a cheap, unquestioning, compliant labor force that pays high rents and medical bills.

According to Bageant, approximately half of all Americans are illiterate, semi-literate or functionally literate. He breaks down the statistics as follows:

• Approximately 30% of Americans can’t read at all.
• Another 10% can’t read well enough to fill out a job application or understand food labels.
• Another 12.5% can’t read well enough to understand a business contract.

Liberals Feel Uncomfortable Around the Working Class

Redirecting blue collar anger against liberals has been incredibly easy, as the working poor have far more contact with rich Republican business leaders and slum lords – in small town churches, taverns, and fraternal organizations like the Elks. Liberals feel uncomfortable around them and shun them socially.

Their only contact with liberals is when they go to a doctor, lawyer, social worker, or parent teacher conference. Where they are often talked down to and insulted. Unintentionally of course. Most educated people are unaware that they do this. Based on my own working class background, I can confirm how common this is.

The Scots-Irish Roots of Fundamentalism

The highlights of the book are the chapters in which Bageant discusses the Calvinist Scots-Irish heritage of what he describes as “Middle America” and the major blunder liberal Democrats made in leaping on the gun control wagon.

From the early 1700s, America has always fostered two parallel belief systems, the Yankee liberalism that characterized the New England colonies and the fundamentalist Calvinism that would come to characterize the southern colonies.

How Democrats Bungled the Gun Control Issue

Given my personal opposition to gun control, this chapter was my favorite. According to Bageant the only good call the Republicans every made was to side against the gun control lobby. Unlike the Democrats, they understand the deep reverence for guns and meat hunting that is passed down over generations in rural communities. While urban liberals with no experience with guns – and who never have to take the bus alone after a graveyard shift – typically decide they know what’s best for everyone.

This section includes detailed analysis of Congressional Budget Office research about the decline of gun violence and women’s use of firearms to protect themselves against sexual assault.

1968 Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey was totally mainstream and pro-Vietnam war. It’s really sad how radical his views on gun control sound in 2014:

“The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”

Link to Bageant’s website for other great books and articles: http://www.joebageant.com/joe/