The America the Right Hates Is the America They Created

Demanding less government and more free enterprise, Republicans paved the way to our downfall

Main Streets that once teemed with commerce and the bustle of local residents popping into shops, picking up mail, or dining at the local breakfast nook now stand mostly empty, devoid of anything that could resemble even the faintest hint of America before Ronald Reagan became president. 

Steering off the main road and down a side street that leads to the market yard — yep, the same place where the weekly farmer’s market used to take place — you drive past the forgotten playground, now overgrown with weeds and used by some as a convenient place to dump old furniture. At one time, almost every kid between the ages of 5 and 12 could be found hanging from the monkey bars and spinning endlessly on the merry-go-round. Now, the local addicts drape tarps over the rusted amusements and slip away into unconsciousness and even death. 

America’s business-comes-first and profit-over-people ethos has been a form of genocide that, sadly, no one on the right is ready to accept. So convinced they are that unbridled capitalism is the only American truth, they are blinded to the simple fact that the obsession with “government is the enemy” has left Americans defenseless against the extremes of the boardroom. 

It’s true that U.S. society has changed immensely over the past half-century or so, and not entirely in good ways: Inequality has soared, and deaths of despair are a real phenomenon (Why Does the Right Hate America).

The right, because they are incapable of conceiving that their economically extremist policies, the ones that led to the death of unions and welfare for the super-rich thanks to endless tax cuts, hopelessly blame Democrats and liberals for America’s decline. Without facts, they say that illegal immigration has destroyed America — they say this even as they themselves are passing bogus prescriptions for opioids, which they either use or sell to their neighbors. 

The good old days of selling lemonade and cakes at church have been replaced by neighbors who show up at “recovery” meetings for people with an addiction and sell pills in the bathroom. Right-wingers somehow blame such behavior on gay marriage and transgender Americans but fail to see the correlation between the rise of income inequality, which has accelerated since Ronald Reagan declared that “welfare queens driving Cadillacs” were wrecking our country. Since then, Republicans have fought tooth and nail to prevent federal dollars from helping those in need — including many of the white, Christian working class who most vehemently scream for a civil war to “save America” from the Democrats.

But what about those deaths of despair? They’re real and very much an indictment of our society. But while deaths from drugs, alcohol, and suicide happen everywhere, they’re happening disproportionately not in liberal big cities but in left-behind rural regions, stranded by economic forces that have caused a migration of income and employment to relatively well-educated metropolitan areas. If there’s “psychic despair” driving addiction, it seems to be the despair that comes from not being able to get a job — not the despair that comes from a decline in traditional values (Why Does the Right Hate America).

The economic policies of the right have crumbled the foundation upon which many small, rural communities built happy lives for generations. As more Republicans entering Congress proved their loyalties not to their constituents but to the corporations that took care of them, Big Business moved unseen into our communities, making it impossible for the “ma and pa” store to compete. 

Main Streets emptied, and strip malls filled with national chains took over most of the commerce. Now, vast swathes of our nation have become wastelands of retail selling endlessly to people who don’t really have much money. While in the post-COVID era, wages in many places have gone up, retail is scrambling for employees, the pendulum will swing back, and the power will inevitably return to the national chains — “You don’t want to work on Thanksgiving? Okay, you’re fired.”

Big Retail crushed many of our traditions by forcing families to hurry up their holiday dinners because “mom needs to get her section in Walmart ready for Black Friday.” While Americans are working more and still finding it impossible to make ends meet, the right-wing media machine is not blaming Big Retail, Big Pharma, or Big Oil for any of the problems of the nation; it would never dare show a correlation between Republican economic and social policies and how they have obliterated the holiday dinner — to name one meal a family should be able to share in peace together — instead it will push lunacy about child prostitution rings run by the Clintons or transgender women ruining sports. 

And if you would prefer a society with more traditional social relationships, more people practicing traditional forms of religion and so on, that’s your right. But don’t claim, falsely, that society is collapsing because it doesn’t match your preferences or blame liberalism for every social problem (Why Does the Right Hate America).

There are a lot of guilty parties for our fall — Democrat Chris Dodd from Connecticut, for example, paved the way for Purdue Pharma. There are failed policies by both parties that have led to our current decline. The most pressing problem, however, might be in the messaging. Republicans successfully market all of America’s woes as being directly caused by Democratic policies when actually most of America’s woes are directly related to the refusal by Republicans to govern; and, then, when they do, it is either to pass tax cuts or to make Big Business ever wealthier at the expense of the working classes.

I dare you to prove me wrong.