The Death of the Right
The American right has collapsed. Despite immense political energy emanating from those disenchanted with the status quo, there is no outlet for it to flow through. This is because the Republican Party is not a generator of ideas, it is a parking brake for progressivism.
In 1856 the Republican party was the leftmost party on Earth. It advocated for the abolition of slavery, deeming it a legalized evil that plagued the land. The morally driven abolitionist position soon led to the deadliest war in American history and the destruction of the American South, which the region has never recovered from. Karl Marx himself wrote a letter of admiration to President Lincoln for his “matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.”
Today it is laughable to suggest that the Republican party is left-wing. Yet it is undeniable that its origin is one of pathological liberalism. This emotional idealism remains in the DNA of the Republican Party, many Republicans view the United States as a picturesque Norman Rockwell painting. Rockwell’s work however was World War II propaganda commissioned by the US government.
Usurpation of the Right
This idealistic perspective has yielded only failure. Donald Trump’s populist overwrite of the party is evidence that the GOP is now a hollow shell, depleted of vigor and political energy. Trump was once a lifetime Democrat, beloved by both leftwing media, artists and political figures alike. Unlike the fiscally conservative Republicans of old, Trump ramped up government spending and added 3 trillion to the deficit. He is not cut from Republican cloth, he is not truly a Republican at all. Rather he is a populist who took the path of least resistance to the Oval Office and capitalized on the national contempt for the political establishment.
Trump, like many baby boomers, sees Norman Rockwell’s America–made obvious by his MAGA slogan which overwrote the Republican platform overnight. In this way Trump is like many Republicans, he has an idealistic and emotional motivation to preserve something that has never truly existed outside the propaganda of the FDR administration.
His populist agenda has conquered the sickly GOP and while populism is a powerful force in a democracy, it is essentially useless unless it can transform the regime it presides over. Moreover, if populism fails to alter the establishment’s hold on power, the establishment will inevitably outlast the populist tidal wave.
The New Right
The Republican party is hollow and Rockwell-oriented populism will not bring about true change; it may even serve to prevent it. A new right will be forged from the rubble of the GOP. To be effective, it will be a reactionary movement that understands the cold Machiavellian function of the establishment in DC and more importantly, knows Rockwell’s paintings were commissioned by FDR as wartime propaganda. A movement that knows that the Constitution and Executive branch have been rendered impotent by the establishment. The intellectual framework for this movement is forming, it suggests the solution to the nation’s decline is the destruction of the deep state and an empowered executive.
