How Nixon’s “Southern strategy” morphed into today’s MAGA base
To the editor: The Republican Social gathering’s clear drift towards fascism, as detailed by Miles Taylor in his op-ed article, “The lasting risk just isn’t the ‘subsequent Trump,’ however the MAGA base,” was the inevitable byproduct of the GOP’s “Southern technique,” as initiated by Richard Nixon in his profitable 1968 marketing campaign for president.
The dog-whistle enchantment to white “Dixiecrats” (racists) after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 drove the conservative technique. Thus started the politics of recent white resentment. Former President Trump and his acolytes merely milked all of this to attain energy.
The normal Wall Avenue Republicans have reluctantly maintained this coalition for decrease taxes and deregulation, believing they may management the beast — considerably much like Germany’s enterprise elites who confidently assumed they may corral Adolf Hitler’s extremism. Gee, how did that work out?
Historical past does certainly repeat itself — and when few appear to be paying consideration.
Bob Teigan, Santa Susana
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To the editor: Trump misplaced in 2020. Interval. However I can perceive why the Trump individuals have their suspicions in regards to the election.
For a lot of Republicans, it got here all the way down to this: Democratic lawmakers used the pandemic to alter how residents in lots of states vote for president. While you make a change that huge and the election is comparatively shut, the loser is sure to be suspicious.
Now that the “new” system is in place and the voters have turn out to be used to it, the 2024 presidential election ought to go rather more easily.
Mark Walker, Yorba Linda
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To the editor: Taylor is appropriate in asserting there’s a far deeper drawback than the present election cycle.
There’s a darkish aspect to human nature. We appear to be predisposed to understand threats, actual or not, as issues that in some way diminish us. Logic and customary sense do little to alter these beliefs.
One doesn’t have to review Germany within the Thirties to bolster this concept. Within the Center Ages, the Crusades are additionally prime examples of this habits.
Why is that this human impulse so prevalent? There appears to be no remedy. Is self-destruction inevitable? Can I’ve my sizzling fudge sundae now?
Richard Kopelle, Los Angeles
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To the editor: I discovered it disturbing to learn in Taylor’s article the assertion, “Tens of tens of millions of individuals now imagine conspiracy theories which are provably false, a realty that can form the American political system in unknowable methods for a few years to return.”
I noticed the “60 Minutes” section on the immense energy of synthetic intelligence to entry the totality of human data and use it to style clever, fact-based writing.
The builders of such AI functionality ought to make a “fact app” that gives the likelihood that any given assertion is true or false. This may be a very unbiased end result, unbiased of any politically primarily based enter. Such an app may very well be made accessible on everybody’s smartphone.
Wouldn’t it’s great if we may very well be assured that statements by people working for workplace had been true or false?
David Comings, Costa Mesa
