Tough nut to crack

 

  So many folks on the so-called right seem to want to claim Ronald Reagan as one of their own.  That's just a thought right there, but not the thought I started with when I got the idea for the post.  Maybe you can say that it is a symptom, but not the disease of the times.  So what is this disease?

 I wished I could put my finger on it exactly. But I will carry on, perhaps I will hit on it eventually.

  It seems to begin with the acceptance of the Marxist Paradigm.  There was a somewhat long essay in the Atlantic, that didn't seem to make the cut -- it was "archived" whatever that means.

  It was written by a self-described former Republican who lamented that the GOP had a "Nazi Problem".

  It has long been my assertion here that a true conservative should not be borrowing Marxist ideology as some sort of gold standard of their own.  This thought pollution of Marxism is a big problem, and so the tendency ( and a very strong one at that) is to ape the leftists when anyone dares to disagree with them. They label those with whom they have a disagreement as "Nazis".   What a revelation!

  Somewhere within the bowels of the GOP is this festering desire to recreate the Third Reich.  Or so they believe.  But for commies, anybody, including those within the Party, are subject to being called Nazis.  There's just no room for dissent in totalitarian ideologies.

  When you someone who likes to join the other side as soon as they fail to gain traction, they love to do shit like this.

  So the author of this Atlantic screed does it too, and identifies with the Bushes, McCains, and Romneys.  You can add to the list as their modern equivalents, such as the Cheneys and the MTGs.

  What's behind all this Marxist ideology?  The belief in their dialectic?  Reagan had one too.  But Reagan's dialectic didn't divide people up into classes, as the Marxists like to do.  His dialectic was about freedom versus the opposite. Dialectics is really a theory about opposites.  The problem with Marxism "thought" is in the idea that Marxism and Nazism are OPPOSITES.  But that's not the case in the Reagan dialectic.  Freedom and tyranny truly are opposites.  Marxism and Nazism aren't much different from each other.

 So Reagan could condemn Marxism as well as Nazism.

 By doing so, he won 49 states in 1984.

  Also, by doing so, he could unite the factions of the GOP.  But the Bushes did the reverse.  George H.W. Bush took a united GOP and managed to divide it.  In doing so, he opened to door to Slick Willy.

  How do the Bushies divide the GOP?  I think they do that by rejecting the  Reagan dialectic, and embracing the Marxist one.

  Any attempt to push for freedom is greeted with hostility from these people.  If they're going to join with the Marxists, then why be a part of the GOP in the first place?

  So this is about as good as I can get it, I think.  If the GOP cannot align itself as the party of freedom, it cannot unite, and stay that way.  It failed after Reagan, and hasn't found itself since.

  Reaganism isn't perfect, but doesn't have to be.

  Bush didn't like Reagan really.  But he latched on to his success and won in 1988 with it.  But when he governed, he disavowed Reagan and divided the Party.  I dunno, maybe it is for good.  Trump hasn't been able to unite the party.  If Trump continues long enough, a good part of this party will take their ball and go home. But they won't get the thing that they claim they want.  So in that way, they are just like the Democrats.  It is never about what they say it is about.  So it isn't about "extremism".  It isn't about Epstein.  It's really just about themselves.