The Great Flip, V2.0

Not so much “behind enemy lines” today, as a mental dump.

There is a belief that the Republican and Democratic parties did an ideological flip around 1932 (with FDR). Some people claim it’s a fact, and others are less sure about that. Regardless, we know that Lyndon B. Johnson said his famous line in 1964: “I’ll have those niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years.” He was wrong. It was less than a hundred years. Thank you, Pres. Trump.

For all I dislike Johnson, he did say a few things that really hit home right now (obviously gleaned from some MUCH less savory quotes):

• “[T]he vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.“
• “If we stand passively by while the center of each city becomes a hive of deprivation, crime and hopelessness…if we become two people, the suburban affluent and the urban poor, each filled with mistrust and fear for the other…then we shall effectively cripple each generation to come.“
• “Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.“

These words, if they were the only words he’d said, are good words. It’s a shame that he sullied them by making so many other horrid statements.

Regardless, that brings me to today. I believe we’re seeing another shift of the party ideologies. Trump is at the helm, and many of us (still sounds odd to me to say that) are supporting him and his goals. He wants to drain the swamp, fix the financing, get us out of debt, stop us being the world’s police, and much more. They’re noble dreams, and I hope many or all of them come to fruition.

They’re also the dreams that belonged more to the Left of a decade ago. I watch some of the really old GOP folks getting their panties in a bunch over Trump’s takeover of the Republican party, and I have to smile. Being “on the inside” now, I can see more of what he’s doing. Let’s face it… Trump was considered a Dem until a little under a decade ago. There’s a reason Hilary didn’t have any issues with him running on the Republican ticket. She figured if she lost, if the Dems lost, they’d STILL have a Dem in the White House. Little did they know that Trump actually stuck to his moral guns. Shocking, I know. He took his campaign promises seriously.

Back in the 60s, race and ethnicity wasn’t as much of a party talking point as it is today. Instead, it was regional. Places down south, both parties were less inclined to be happy about the Civil Rights Act. Up north, the politicians were considerably more supportive, again on both sides of the aisle. We managed, for a brief moment (which is a different moment in different regions, unfortunately for history, making it hard to track), to have actual equality. The color of someone’s skin didn’t matter. And then the great pendulum swung again, and suddenly things were moving hastily in the other direction. Instead of helping black and brown people to stand up and be contributing members of society, there was instead a call to appease those black and brown people. There were calls for reparations, and demands that more black and brown people be hired, regardless of their education or intelligence.

This has always struck me as being incredibly damaging. While it might have been important (I’m still on the fence about it) to “force” schools and businesses to accept black people for a single generation (ie about 20 years), to continue it beyond that was no longer helpful. Instead, it was reinforcing the idea that people who weren’t white were somehow damaged goods. They were so under educated or bad or stupid or slow that they required special hiring laws that applied only to them. And the proof is all around us. Simply look at the current state of affairs in most cities and larger towns. Blacks are self-segregating, choosing to live apart from the greater society of the United States. It’s easier to live as “a black man in America” than to live as “an American.” Generally speaking, people will always take the easier way out.

For a long time, the Dems have been the (at least apparent) champions of civil rights and freedoms. The Republicans were clinging to the old rules, and in the case of the really old GOP, still are. Sort of,”if it was good enough for my grand pappy, then it’s good enough for me.” But with Trump coming into power, that is changing. The people that are at the forefront of the Republican party are people who are (sorry to say for those who care about such things) downright progressive. Don’t believe me? Look at Trump’s own campaign promises:

• release classified and redacted records on Kennedy and Martin Luther King’s assassinations
• fix education so it actually educates rather than indoctrinates
• pull out of global pacts that do nothing
• work on fixing the cost of living
• work on fixing the cost of energy
• root out the Deep State and those who are practicing crony capitalism
• make sure people coming to the United States are interested in freedom and liberty
• encourage manufacturing here in America to help Americans
• lowering taxes on average and low income Americans

Not every one of those has been completed, but near as I can tell, he’s at least attempted to get stuff moving on all of them. There are more, but I figure you all know about them. These are the kinds of campaign promises I would have expected out of a Democrat in the 1980s, folks. And now they’re coming out of Trump, on the Right.

If that weren’t enough proof, look at who’s come over: Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert Kennedy Jr…. I mean, come on folks. If a Kennedy joins your party, you’ve GOT to be progressive. And we are. Here on the Right, we’re getting progressive. For the longest time, that was the darling of the left, to be progressive. No longer. While the Left is struggling with defining a woman, the Right is protecting women, encouraging freedom of thought and expression, and pushing for less interventions and more inventions. Sure, there are some parts that haven’t quite caught up (the current fear of vaccines comes to mind, along with the fear of nuclear energy), but I have faith it’ll all come around.

I believe that 50 years from now, the history books will record this as another shift of the ideologies of the parties. I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all.