I think it's pretty fair to say that the leadership of both major parties, elites in and outside the government, and the military/intelligence services are right wing, and have been historically so in the United States barring the brief period between the New Deal and the destruction of Keynesianism in the 80s.
How do you explain the policies where the right wing has been steadily losing ground for the past 50-100 years? For example on immigration, on gender equality, or sexual liberation? Are the elites just losing those battles? Because it doesn't seem like they mind.
Not sure that contradicts what I said? For example, Richard Nixon was a social conservative that ran on a backlash against socially progressive causes, but was still a left wing president. Supported industrial regulation with the EPA, instituted price controls, governed fully within the Keynesian framework of the day. He was to the left of most of the modern day Democratic party.
You're claiming the leadership of both parties are right wing, and elites inside and outside of government are right wing. Why, then, has the right wing lost so much ground on those issues I listed over the past 50-100 years?
Do you deny the issues I listed are issues where the right wing has lost ground in the past 50-100 years? If so, what do you even mean by "right wing"?
If not, then your position is that the elites have been losing on those positions for the past 50-100 years. Is that what you think?
What is there to acknowledge other than your claim that the elites inside and out of government are historically right wing, except for a few brief periods of time? The bit about Nixon being a left-wing president? I don't care about your classification of Nixon as a left-wing president. It has nothing to do with your claim that the elites inside and out of government have historically been right wing.
The perception that right wing has lost ground is an illusion. There is dramatically less dissent in America today than there was in the past, much less threat of any social movement that would endanger the status quo.
To a large extent, the right wing policies of decades past have worked incredibly well to focus authoritarian force where it is most useful to right wing goals:
- Suppression of the black population, the crack epidemic, and destruction of the black power movement.
- Massive increases in the number of people in prison, but most notable is the successful campaign to make Americans view prisoners as subhuman and deserving of extremely cruel and unusual treatment.
- The dramatic increase in the ideas of American Exceptionalism and the associated force projection after the cold war. It was not certain this was possible, but it has been achieved thanks to successful fear mongering PR about terrorism and militant Islam.
- Dramatic increases in social inequality. There are many reasons for this, but foremost among them is a loss of social power by the have nots relative to the haves, and the resulting shift in wealth patterns.
- Low voter turnout rates. Americans have been made to feel absurdly proud to live in a democracy, yet only around half see any value in casting a vote. This is akin to convincing the people that pine needle tea is delicious and contains many essential nutrients.
- Broad support for unprecedentedly generous corporate welfare. More and more industries are viewed as too important to fail, and significant societal resources are allocated to the preservation of the status quo. Chieftains in those industries have captured massive upside gains while successfully foisting downside risks onto society as a whole. There is no serious consideration among regulators or officials that the incentive system is remotely unjust, and we are told to be grateful that the industries were saved.
- Widespread hero worship of cops, military, and other projections of authoritarian force. The NFL is sponsored by and heavily promotes the US military, and police departments use aggressive PR stories about kitten rescues, etc., to help whitewash their image in the face of more and more examples of profound misconduct. Further, there are rarely any investigations into such misconduct (abuse of power, etc.) that reach beyond low level participants.
Those are just a few examples, but most of the increasing trends are broadly right-wing in their nature and are supported by various groups. Consider the example of US military intervention in foreign lands. Some support it because the "evil" regime oppresses women, some support it because the regime is brown-skinned, some support it to help "ensure stability" in the region, etc. There is now a grab bag of reasons to support American Exceptionalism and glorification of military force projection, which is broadly right wing, yet the options appeal to people across the entire American political spectrum, including the so-called left that seemingly believes that smart bombs are the best way to improve womens' rights worldwide.
Consider the rhetoric around gentrification for a host of other examples of the built-in right wing bias in American culture.
In other words, right wing views have become so utterly dominant in American culture that there is no longer any real need to add oxygen to it, so the political right wing appears to be losing ground.
Consider all the laws that prohibit employees from accepting jobs in the same industry, laws that extent patent protection to absurd time durations, the general public complacency about unauthorized wiretapping and more broadly the Snowden revelations. Nobody cares about this stuff because the right wing view considers it normal and appropriate/acceptable.
Even something as gut wrenching as the ICE camps for children was a major issue only because it offered partisan benefit. Obama took no heat for doing essentially the same kind of detention system. Then magically a few months later everyone has forgotten about it now that it's no longer politically useful.
The illusion of left vs right makes people feel that there is actually dissent in the US. There is very little.
An important example you had is criminalization and imprisonment. It turns about Bill Clinton, a Democratic president, was the one responsible for the terrible 1994 crime bill (3 strikes comes from there, etc). He was strongly supported by his wife Hillary the future Senator, Sec. of State and presidential candidate. Her comment calling African American youth "superpredators" was very telling: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug...
At the same time it was surprising to see for once, Trump and everyone else back the recent prison reform bill:
The package, which would immediately release 4,000 federal prisoners according to some advocates, passed the House judiciary committee last week and is likely to be brought up for a vote early next week. The bill would also expand compassionate release, giving elderly and terminally ill inmates a path home, and invest tens of millions in re-entry programs. It would also end the shackling of women giving birth behind bars and provide them with necessary hygiene items at no charge.
You've ignored the examples I gave of policies where the right wing has clearly lost ground, and in doing so have missed my point. I'm not claiming the right wing has lost ground everywhere. I'm suggesting the right wing has lost ground where it is in conflict with the interests of the elites. And it has typically gained ground in areas that are of high importance to the elites and relative unimportance to the bulk of the people who make up the right wing.
A large influx of economic migrants is in the interest of the elites, not the bulk of the people who make up the right wing. It is the elites who have pushed for and benefited from those policies, and they have been wildly successful.
Equality among the sexes not a right wing goal, and that is the direction society has moved over the past 100 years.
Sexual liberation, and the related disappearance of Christianity from popular culture, is not a right wing goal.
Social inequality and corporate welfare are goals of the elite, not the right wing, which primarily consists of rural working class white men who are victims of the policies meant to bring about those goals as much as anyone else.
Military intervention is a project of the elite and transcends political parties in the US. Working class Republicans would never have dreamed up going to Iraq or Libya or Syria to oust a dictator, any more than working class Democrats would have. Either side can be made to support such a conflict as we have seen by taking advantage of in-group out-group tendencies, but they'd never come up with it themselves. They have no reason to. But the elites do, so it happened.
You're right that there is little real dissent in the US. The reason is that real dissent is suppressed by the elites, not protected by them. It's harassed and deliberately targeted by government officials. It's kicked off of platforms run by the elites. It's viciously attacked at every turn by the elite-owned corporate media. If you want to know where the real dissent is, look for the ideas that the elites actually try to stop.
