Inside her, you will find sanctuary ..
She sells sanctuary.
In 1979 and 1980, two seemingly unrelated events changed the course of the world for the last two decades of the 20th century and into the first two decades of the 21st century. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher emerged from the internal chaos of the UK's Conservative Party. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the presidential election in a landslide, heralding the start of the "Reagan Revolution." Neither Reagan nor Thatcher were particularly well known or well thought-of before their accession to power. But their time in office spawned a dramatic shift to the right, politically and economically, that gave rise to the lunatic fringe of right-wing politics and social attitudes of today. In many ways, the current iterations of this right-wing revolution has taken on the characteristics of a large and well-entrenched cult.
In the UK, Thatcher was a hard-line conservative who scorned her colleagues in the Conservative Party led by Edward Heath. Thatcher found Heath and his colleagues too weak, too eager to compromise with unions and Europeans. When she became Prime Minister in 1979, she made it a personal crusade to "bring Britain back" from what she saw as the chaos of the post war years and through the 60's into the 70's. Britain was going through a prolonged experience of rising unionism, culminating in the Coal Miners' Strike led by Arthur Scargill, and many Britons, who saw the rise of the welfare state begin crumble, feared that civil authority was being replaced by a type of workers' revolution led by the coal miners. Thatcher saw this as the cause of the wide-spread economic malaise that plagued Britain for decades after the war. She pledged to stop it, and enough Britons felt that she deserved a chance to establish order.
In the US, Reagan was seen by Americans as a folksy, pleasant, quiet-spoken man who represented a vague idea of "old" American values. The US had been badly shaken by the experience in Vietnam, and by the "counterculture" of youth, drugs, rock music, hippies, civil rights and feminism that had characterized the 1960's. As in Britain, a type of fatigue had set in because of the rapid pace of social change that made mainstream Americans look for a leader to establish order. Added to the failure of the American war in Vietnam and the loss of international prestige and leadership, this yearning for a strong leader became visceral. The assassination of John Kennedy, the failure of Lyndon Johnson, the corruption of Richard Nixon with Watergate, and the too-nice and ultimately weak persona of Jimmy Carter made the election of Reagan inevitable.
Together, Thatcher and Reagan found each other as types of "soul mates" and began to imprint their vision of how the world should be on the two leading countries in the English-speaking world. They both espoused "supply side" economics, and a belief that government should get out of the way of the business class and allow business people to create wealth, with many benefits "trickling down" to the masses below. De-regulation, union busting, tax cuts ( particularly to corporations ) followed. As Thatcher broke the will of the coal miners in the UK, Reagan took on air traffic controllers in the US when a strike broke out there. Reagan refused to back down to union demands and beat the unions, who mistakenly believed that because of the perception of unsafe skies the US government would eventually give in to their demands. Both union defeats bolstered Thatcher's and Reagan's approval with a general public that, again, was fatigued with the strenuous and far-reaching of the previous efforts to enact social change. And a cult was born.
Over the next almost 40 years, the world has seen the effects of Thatcherism and the Regan Revolution. Two generations have grown up in this environment. Attitudes are entrenched and the way of life envisioned by Thatcher and Reagan have become a stone-cold reality. To be fair, many nations have turned to more centrist or even left-leaning governments in this time, but those governments are often seen as being either one-offs, or a temporary break from the more "natural" governments of the right-wing. Mitterand, Clinton, Blair, Obama and others have come and gone, only to be replaced with the Chiracs, Camerons, Bushes, Mays and Stephen Harpers of the world.
The pendulum has swung far to the right. But, as with all pendula, it only goes so far before it begins to swing back. The election of Obama in the US, Emmanuel Macron in France, and Justin Trudeau in Canada have signaled the beginning of the swing back. And this is where the cultish aspect of the right wing becomes most noticeable.
Obama's win in 2008 frightened conservatives to the core in the US. Those conservatives saw the swing to the left as the onset of socialism and an all-out assault on their more "American" values and beliefs. The rise of the Tea Party, and the hijacking of the established Republican Party by the Tea Partiers signaled that the right wing was becoming more narrow, more entrenched against the swing of the pendulum. The rise of political figures with extreme, evangelistic, xenophobic and ultra capitalistic views was striking to see: Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Dick Chenney, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and the ultimate personification of this entrenchment, Donald Trump, became a parade of populist leaders, full of bombast and strident pronouncements against those who quickly morphed from political opponents to full-blown enemies. They found a core of supporters who similarly morphed from voters to followers. The cult had arrived.
In Britain, the full expression of resistance to the emerging swing to the left of the pendulum found its voice in Brexit. The fact that Britain is still in the existential throes of the Brexit conundrum shows that the leftward pendulum swing was more advanced in Britain than the US, but the likes of Nigel Farage and his followers keep the xenophobic forces of pro-Brexit alive and well.
In Canada, the resistance to the left swing of the pendulum found its most active voice in the western provinces, particularly in Alberta and Saskatchewan ( ironically the birthplace of Canada's version of socialism, the CCF party which became the left-leaning NDP). In the prairies, a populist voice was heard in the person of Preston Manning and his disciples Stockwell Day and Stephen Harper. As the Tea Party did in the US, Manning's Reform/Alliance party hijacked the more moderate Progressive Conservative party of Joe Clarke and Brian Mulroney to create the much more hard line right wing Conservative Party of Canada, led by Harper and now Andrew Scheer. The CPC has similar iterations across Canada: the so-called "Progressive" Conservatives of Mike Harris, Ernie Eaves and now Doug Ford in Ontario; the United Conservative Party of Alberta led by former Harper cabinet minister Jason Kenney ( which emerged from the infighting between the very conservative Progressive Conservatives of Alberta and the very, very, very conservative Wildrose Party); the mayoralty in Toronto of Rob Ford; the emergence of the Saskatchewan Party of Brad Wall and now Scott Moe; and many other examples.
What becomes clear in all of this, from the days of Thatcher and Reagan until the current time of Trump, Harper, Scheer, Ford and Kenney, is that there are common characteristics of the leaders, the parties, the supporters and their beliefs. Consider the following commonalities:
1) BOMBASTIC WORDS AND PHRASES
While Reagan and Manning were given to speak in a rather pleasant and "gentlemanly" fashion,
most of the others are given to angry, inflammatory and simplistic words and phrases. The worst example of this is Trump, but others are close to his style. Saying words or phrases in an angry tone, or being constantly offended by the effrontery of the "others" is a hallmark of this style. Threatening harm or violence to the "others" is the most extreme example of those like Trump.
2) REPETITIVE SLOGANS AND UNTRUTHS
It has become necessary and commonplace to track the words of Trump, Ford and other right-wing leaders to discover where their words are deliberately misleading. And the common slogans ( "Make America Great Again", "For The People", "Britain Out of Europe" ) are easy to project and easy to hear and believe. Slogans are catchy and require no elaboration or intellectual justification: hence, they are fodder for those who want to believe and those who see the efforts to enact social change as evil. Any effort to engage the cult in rational discussion is met by stock talking points, false equivalencies, denials, and ridicule.
3) ACTIVE CREATION OF ENEMIES AND DEMONIZATION OF THOSE WHO ARE NOT IN THE CULT
This takes many forms. If you don't look like the leader or most of their supporters, you are not in the cult. If you question the authority of the leaders, you are a trouble maker. If you attempt to confront the lies or partial truths of the leaders, you are a rebel and dangerous ( the media is particularly "at fault" here ). If you disagree with anything the leader or his followers stand for, you are an enemy. And there are now so many enemies ( journalists, academics, scientists, women, minorities, non-believers ) that the cult members close ranks more vigorously to protect their values.
4) AN EVANGELISTIC ZEAL TO FIGHT FOR AND SPREAD THE CULT'S BELIEFS
Because there are so many "enemies" out there, the members of the cult must be devoted to two things: their own ideals and the destruction of the ideas and activities of the enemies. Thus, people on the other political or social side are derided as being "kooks", "lefties", "dummies" and being weak, effeminate, brainwashed by the writings of intellectuals, and thieves who are determined to take the hard-won wealth and values of the cult members and distribute them to the less-deserving "lazy" elements of society, the people Thatcher once derided as the "underclass". And the devotion is often cloaked in religious terms. Pastors and televangelists are often eager to discuss politics and policy, or economic trends as they are to discuss their faith in God or Jesus. Their flocks are persuaded not only to do good Christian works, but to strive for wealth and vote for the leaders who embody these beliefs. The link between church and state is firmly and completely cemented by this.
5) MEMBERS OF THE CULT MUST WORK TOGETHER AND AUTOMATICALLY SUPPORT ONE ANOTHER
Thus, Stephen Harper can show up at the annual Ford Family Barbeque and speak of a "hat trick" of him being Prime Minister, Rob Ford being mayor of Toronto, and everyone working to make Tim Hudak the Premier of Ontario. ( It didn't work, but came close ) Or Donald Trump can endorse Boris Johnson to be the next Conservative Prime Minister of Britain. Or Trump can speak fondly of Vladimir Putin or Kim Jung Un. Or Duterte, Bolsinaro or Orban can look to Trump as a model. Or Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, Scott Moe and others can work to make Andrew Scheer the new Prime Minister of Canada, ending the cursed reign of the weak, effeminate, flighty and left-leaning Justin Trudeau. It is partisanship carried to absurd lengths. It's why Fox News and Rebel Media and the Toronto Sun exist. It is now a never-ending war of victory for the right wing, and the complete and utter destruction of the left and its views of progressivism, inclusion, equity, empathy, and distribution.
Thus, the emergence of what I call the "modern CONservative". The letters "CON" are deliberately capitalized to denote that the beliefs, strategies and activities of this group is a colossal con. It is the effort of a devoted and disciplined cult to define itself, promote itself, recruit new members and win. That's the only thing that matters to the modern CONservative: winning. Governing is actually a boring, convoluted and threatening thing, something that might actually make the cult begin to see that their values are wrong or destructive. Win an election, gloat, run down your enemies and plan for the next election. Lie, deny and obfuscate.
We can only hope that the rest of society can see past these cult members. And we can only hope that the pendulum will continue to swing back from the narrow deception of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
