I agree with George Lakoff's model of country-as-family and his idea that Republicans subscribe to the strict father, hierarchical authority version of the thing. The point I would make is that it's now the mentally ill and abusive father model courtesy of evangelical Christians because this is their view. Now, you might think that surely most of their families don't have mentally ill and abusive fathers and that this is good because it means they can come around. That their support of Trump is aberrant.
Bad news. It's not based on their families and their experience or how they think families should be it's based on their conception of God. The God of fundamentalists and evangelicals is an asshole. Cruel, arbitrary, and unpredictable because He is unknowable, only to be experienced kinda mysteriously through grace in an instant of surrender under the watchful gaze of Jimmy Swaggart or Kenneth Copeland or some such charlatan and lunatic. So, this is bad news because God is inscrutable, immutable and perfect.
And, not to be questioned or fucked with under any circumstances. So, so is Trump. Trump stumbled into this role. They will never come around and Trump can't only not do anything wrong but they love him because he's mentally ill and abusive. For this reason historically the South has been an asylum. We have supported them at a loss and not expected them to meet normal standards, notably constitutional and legal standards up until desegregation, and so it was stable under those conditions.
But then came desegregation and this was fucking with God. So, again, just like after the Civil War, they regrouped and fought back any way they could. And, guess what, Republicans were willing to feed them all kinds of suggestions and veiled promises of a return to proper hierarchical authority in which blacks and minorities and women were back in their place. That's where we are now and how we got here. It was called the Southern Strategy and it worked unbelievably well. Welcome to the Confederacy.
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