Conservatism Is The Problem, But Democrats Focus On The Final Boss

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It’s hard to conceive of it, but the 2024 election isn’t really about Donald Trump. For certain, America faces a dire future if Trump wins the presidential election. He is a racist xenophobe with limited intelligence who wants nothing but the worst for America and another term would be even more than his last, which was packed with widespread corruption, incompetence, and the mismanagement of a global pandemic. But it isn’t really about him.

The same is true for the races in the past where the Republican nominees were Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and beyond. All of these men led the Republican Party but the real villain beneath it all is conservatism and the affiliated party of that movement. Much of the ideas and certainly the high-level appointees installed by these men are effectively interchangeable. It doesn’t take a major stretch of the imagination to think about Brett Kavanaugh getting a Supreme Court nomination under Romney, or Reagan lying about weapons of mass destruction (look up Iran-Contra some day).

Conservatism is a failed ideology and a failed world view and it is the true enemy of American progress and advancement. The party’s presidential nominee is for all intents and purposes an interchangeable avatar or stand-in for those causes. Their presentation may vary from Bush II’s Texas twang or Romney’s stiffness or Trump’s verbal mangling, but they all operate from effectively the same sludge pit of failure.

The problem with the Democratic response to this is a culture that focuses on each of these men as if they are the “final boss” in a video game or movie. In entertainment culture, all events build up to the big bad at the end. The heroes overcome a series of obstacles, either internally, externally, or both, and come together to take on the baddie. When the baddie is vanquished, they usually fall to one knee, make a pithy statement about how they should have succeeded, and all their mustache-twirling evil plans evaporate into nothingness.

That isn’t how American politics operates. When Romney grimaced and conceded to President Barack Obama on election night in 2012, the Republican Party didn’t disintegrate like Thanos at the end of the Avengers saga. When Trump lost to Biden, the Mushroom Kingdom was not released from his clutches and while there were Ewok-style celebrations in the street, it hasn’t taken much time for his evil empire to strike back.

Grotesque figures like Trump and the second Bush are useful boogeymen and the threat of their rule should not be dismissed, but at the same time political attacks and rhetoric should not minimize the role of the underlying system.

In our current dynamic, it isn’t just Trump that is dangerous and unqualified, but it is his entire world view and the toxicity of the conservative orbit that currently revolves around him that makes him unfit for office. Trump is bad not just because he is Trump, but because he leads the conservative movement — which is rotten and corrupt no matter who the big boss at the top of the org chart is.

This is also tied into my dislike for the “MAGA Republican” label that Democrats have pounded into the ground. It apparently tests very well in focus groups and opinion polls, but it still suffers from Final Boss Syndrome in tying everything to Trump. If MAGA Republicanism died off the way that Tea Party conservatism evaporated after Obama’s victory in 2012, we wouldn’t be in such a mess. But by focusing on the temporary leaders to the exclusion of the whole system, liberalism misses its shot to really win major battles in this ideological war.

To paraphrase language usually associated with Superman, my favorite fictional character, there is no foe at the end lying in wait. This is a “never-ending battle” against a demented thought system and failed ideology that serves the interests of ultrawealthy oligarchs and bigoted crackpots.

When faced with making a case about the right-wing leader of the moment, great care should be taken to always tie these people in to the wider ideology. Trump is not a singular case of demented behavior, but a glaring warning signal about the disaster affiliated with conservative governance and leadership. The 2008 election was not simply about the defeat of a singular figure, John McCain, but about one skirmish in a fight against the right-wing ideology of invading Middle Eastern countries and allowing rapacious capitalism that brought the world to the brink of financial ruin to run unchecked.

It can be daunting. It is far easier to think of elections as a two-to-four year speed run through a video game, and to daydream about the moment of victory against the big bad at the end. Surely the defeat of George H.W. Bush in 1992 staved off the spectre of ludicrous tax cuts, right? When Trump lost to Biden, all talk of banning abortion and affirmative action fell to the wayside, right?

No. The so-called final boss was defeated, but their decrepit movement lived on, and in some cases, gained power often out of liberal naivete and unwillingness to fight a wider war.

If liberals want to wear the mantle of hero, and they should because that is what our society deserves, they will need to adjust how we approach these things. The GOP leader of the moment is just a mini-boss (with a lot of power). Defeating them is at best a temporary setback and instead of standing down, the fight always needs to be advancing, not relaxing.

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— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Threads @owillis1977

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