George, It's Not "1984"...It Was 1986

George Orwell wrote his dystopian novel “1984” in 1949, describing a country under total authoritarian control. He somehow concluded it made sense that 36 years was enough time for such a change to take place. With hindsight that speculation was, to say the least, rather aggressive. However, as we look back now at that period in the mid 1980s, a period where 63% of today’s Americans weren’t even alive, I believe the beginnings of what Orwell described was only off by a couple of years. 

An undetermined majority of Americans are baffled. They can’t understand how someone like Donald Trump can exist within our American culture, arguably, the oldest and strongest representative Democracy in the history of the world. 

They can hate him. They can hate his narcissism, his crass behavior, his checkered history, his ignorance, and his savagery, to name a few. This they understand. The conundrum is how, given these attributes, he instills devotion in so many ordinary people who are little different from themselves. In my world it is almost a constant source of discussion and bewilderment. I believe the hows and whys are just as elusive for those who support Trump as for those who despise him. 

The United States has been on a Liberal path since it began; albeit with a two steps forward one step back trajectory. With the acceleration of Social “Liberalism” in the 1960s and 70s, the political travesty of Vietnam, and recognizing slavery’s demonic offspring, racism, as officially and ethically wrong, there began the identification of individuals as Conservative or Liberal. Not necessarily what they believed in, but who they are. 

The Presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater tried to create that identification for Conservatives in 1964, but failed miserably. Richard Nixon had more success with associating political parties with ideologies. His successful “Southern Strategy”, where he converted Southern Conservative Democrats to the Republican Party set the political foundation for what happened in the 1980s. The (liberal) Rockefeller Republicans slowly became extinct. Policy took a back seat to ideological identification. 

It was Ronald Reagan who built the final bridge to ideological separatism, although in his early years his actions were often bipartisan. His natural charisma and personal decency worked in his favor. However, it all changed dramatically in 1986 and practically no one could see it, no more than the general population could absorb the technological changes to communication that were about to take place. 

In 1949 Harry Truman’s FCC formalized and institutionalized a doctrine called “The Fairness Doctrine”. Coming out of World War II it was widely known and obvious that a necessary ingredient for authoritarian rule to take hold, as it did in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, was the total control of communication to the general population. Only in that way could a single ideological view propagandize without antagonists. The “Fairness Doctrine” restricted editorializing over public airways by requiring opposing views to be broadcast.  This was a no brainer given the horrors that occurred during the 1940s. 

In 1986 Ronald Reagan, by his authority, ended the 37 year old doctrine. A Democratic led, bipartisan bill was passed by Congress to make the Fairness Doctrine the law of land, but Reagan vetoed it. And that was that. In 1987 we got Rush Limbaugh on the air and the race to create and profit from a new kind of Conservatism took off. 

Ten years later Roger Ailes, a former pitch man for Reagan, would meet with Rupert Murdoch, a tabloid mogul, and show him how to turn television news into a dominant controlling medium and money making machine. He could do it by appealing to the groundwork of Limbaugh and his Conservative Talk Radio ilk. Thus Fox News was born. They began to rally huge numbers of single minded viewers and listeners with the use of the same critical tool…fear. 

Fear overwhelms Truth any moment of the day, any day of the week. Hitler knew that, so did Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh. Their first coo was to embrace Christian Nationalists, and the fears that drove them, as their own. 

The Republican Party slowly began to recognize which side of the bread was buttered, but it wasn’t until the high water mark of progressive Democratic politics, the election of Barack Obama, that the Republican Party threw in, lock stock and barrel with the demagoguery of Fox News and radical Right communication. This all happening as the world’s communication went universally digital. 

Identification with Conservatism became all about symbols. The Republican Party was no longer a party primarily about fiscal issues. It became laser focused on how to rein power away from the likes of Obama and do it with a motivated minority. The New Conservative Republican Party masterfully adopted or usurped symbols for their followers to identify with. Flags, phrases, music, or even words, like “patriot”, became part of the pitch for identification.  That Donald Trump walked into this New Conservatism should not be a surprise. Trump is virtually a symbol himself. 

Trump the image, the name Trump itself, and a variety of other symbols (such as MAGA) have come to represent images that Conservatives (especially “Christian Nationalists”) identify with. Those images represent the fear that binds the New Conservatism. The fear is that “Liberals”, the “Radical Left”, the “Deep State”, the “Culture Crisis”, or the “Woke Nation” (to name a few) are coming to take away their freedom, destroy their religion, kill their babies, steal their guns, reprogram their children, neuter the military, undermine law enforcement, install Communism, bankrupt their businesses, and tax them into poverty. 

They believe this because for over three decades they have been used by Conservative Media and, more recently, the Republican Party for financial gain and power. They have chosen to listen to nothing else. Why?. Because they could. It doesn’t matter what Trump says or what he does, his vitriol, or violations of the Truth. For a devotee to reject Trump would be to admit that their fears have been misplaced or that they are inviting Armageddon. Ironically, it might be considered a rejection of one's Christianity.

There is a weaker counter Left which continually advocates opposition, often with similar myopia. Think MSNBC. However, to succeed those opposed to the New Conservatism need to rally people to symbols that represent what they are for, symbols they don’t currently have. Obama was such a symbol, Biden is not.

This new drive toward Conservative Authoritarianism, founded in 1986, only seeks to rally the faithful around symbols that represent what they’re against…what they are so irrationally afraid of. It's not hard to see who benefits.