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The Mexicanization of American Politics
American Greatness ^ | 29 Apr, 2023 | Roger Kimball

Posted on 04/30/2023 4:47:07 AM PDT by MtnClimber

Our public life today is a seething cauldron of animosities.

We see it everywhere in American politics. One army general gave voice to the fear in a memorable simile, worrying that the country might collapse like “Mexico and the Central American countries” unless something was done to tamp down partisan passions and encourage unity. His comment went viral, and soon people across the country were talking about, and deploring, the possible “Mexicanization of American politics.”

The governing question, as one distinguished historian put it, is whether “American politics [has] become permanently ‘Mexicanized’?” Another commentator, considering “the Mexicanization of institutions,” defined it as a toxic situation in which “all party contests have the character of civil war.”

We all know what they mean. And it is scant consolation, I believe, to note that the general to whom I refer was writing in 1877 or that “the distinguished historian” was C. Vann Woodward, writing about the 1876 election and its aftermath in his book Reunion and Reaction (1951).

We can discern plenty of echoes of that most disputed election in the conduct of our political life today. The contestants then were Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican governor of Ohio, and Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic governor of New York. Reconstruction was still in force; federal troops still controlled the Southern states. Tilden won the popular vote by some three points. He also won 184 electoral votes to 165 for Hayes. The election came down to 20 disputed electoral votes in three Southern states: Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Congress formed an Electoral Commission, with a majority of Republican members, to resolve the dispute. In the end, the commission awarded all 20 votes to Hayes, giving him a victory with 185 to 184 electoral votes.

What was the price of that victory?

The Republicans got the presidency, but the South got the end of Reconstruction. The South might have ended it anyway, since they had held on to a majority in the House and had voted to cut off funds for the occupying federal troops. As it happened, “the compromise of 1877” was never publicly debated. On the contrary, it was the result of what Woodward called “secret covenants privately arrived at.” Did it have the desired effect of restoring stability and order to the metabolism of American political life? To a large extent, yes, though Woodward, in a later edition of his book, argues that that pragmatic victory came at the expense of abandoning the “idealistic aims” of Reconstruction, i.e., the full extension of civil rights to blacks, something Woodward thought had been definitively achieved with the civil rights movement, and the attendant judicial interventions, of the 1960s.

Be that as it may, what seems most salient for our current situation is not the compromise that unfolded behind closed doors in 1877 but the determined fractiousness that preceded it. Indeed, what we have seen is a return of something like “the Mexicanization of American politics.” As many commentators have observed, the country is more divided now than at any time since the late 1850s, with divisions as bitter as in the early years of Reconstruction.

The late English philosopher Roger Scruton put his finger on one aspect of this division when he observed that “Left-wing people find it very hard to get on with right-wing people because they believe that they are evil. Whereas I have no problem getting on with left-wing people because I simply believe that they are mistaken.” What I have called the Manichean spirit of the Left, its almost gnostic division of the world into an elite of virtuous souls against a coven of ignorant wickedness, is something we see everywhere.

Whether the subject be “climate change,” COVID policy, racism (real or imagined), the latest wrinkle of sexual exoticism, the perfidy of Donald Trump, or any other item on the menu of woke enthusiasm, the spirit of segregation and snarling repudiation is alive and well. You are either with us or you are damned.

It is worth noting that today, unlike it was in the late 1870s, the malady is systemic. That is, the spirit of repudiation affects not just partisan politics but just about every aspect of our social life: education, entertainment, the media, even many churches and corporations. Still, it is in the realm of politics that this intolerant gnosticism appears in its most naked viciousness. It is not strictly a party-political phenomenon. Scruton drew his line between Right and Left. But perhaps the deeper division is between those who regard politics, and the powers it commands, as the most important human impulse and those who, on the contrary, see politics as subordinate to other values and pursuits.

The Mexicanization of American politics operates with the threat (and, sometimes, the reality) of violence in the background as a potential expedient. It is meant to stay mostly in the background—mostly. Surveillance, ostracism, censorship are generally the preferred weapons, at least in the beginning. In terms of electoral politics, you can already see the narrative taking shape. I suspect that those who view Ron DeSantis as someone with less “baggage,” and therefore more virtue points, than Donald Trump are naïve. By the time the 2024 campaign gets underway in earnest, and should DeSantis be the candidate, the Democrats will have completed their transformation of the Florida governor into “literally Hitler.”

Our public life today is a seething cauldron of animosities. Compromises are not wanted, only unconditional surrender. We’ll know that that has changed when a candidate who dissents from the consensus of the ruling party is allowed not only to take office but also to take power. I am not holding my breath.


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: communism; mexico
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1 posted on 04/30/2023 4:47:07 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

The woke think they will be in permanent control so that they never have to answer for the damage they have caused.


2 posted on 04/30/2023 4:47:22 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

If we bring in millions of Mexicans annually, how can we not expect the Mexicanization of our politics?

And everything else for that matter.


3 posted on 04/30/2023 4:53:43 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd (Donald Trump is a setting sun. Ron DeSantis is a rising star.)
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To: MtnClimber

“Diversity is our strength” /BS


4 posted on 04/30/2023 4:53:52 AM PDT by Baldwin77 (First they came for Trump ...)
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To: MtnClimber
Compromises are not wanted, only unconditional surrender.

This is one of the truest things I've seen on FR about our present political situation. The value systems are so far apart, we are Yugoslavia waiting to explode. One side can NOT live with the other. Period.

5 posted on 04/30/2023 4:53:55 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin (Freedom is the freedom to discipline yourself so others don't have to do it for you.)
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To: MtnClimber

To what are we unifying over? The left hates the Constitution. The left wants to weaken state right. The left wants to eliminate the EC. The left wants slavery. The left wants to end the Second Amendment. The left wants to allow the non-citizen to vote.

What are we uniting over?


6 posted on 04/30/2023 4:55:04 AM PDT by Jonty30 (Black widow spiders aren't the only species that eats their mate after finishing with them. )
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To: MtnClimber

Best get ready because there will be violence no matter which way the elections go.


7 posted on 04/30/2023 5:00:02 AM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: MtnClimber
unless something was done to tamp down partisan passions and encourage unity

Remember the lie that diversity is a strength?

8 posted on 04/30/2023 5:18:57 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
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To: MtnClimber

“....One army general gave voice to the fear....”

Why not name names?

Follow-up by asking Milley and criminal Jao about the issue?


9 posted on 04/30/2023 5:40:16 AM PDT by Paladin2
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To: MtnClimber

It was 0bama who brought us the Africanization of American politics and life in general.


10 posted on 04/30/2023 5:41:42 AM PDT by euram (allALL)
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To: MtnClimber
A "cauldron of animosities."

Yeah, or maybe a festering bucket of DUNG.. That's what our nation has become.. And getting worse everyday..

And we can ALL share in the cause of it... I'm truly ashamed.. :(

11 posted on 04/30/2023 5:43:28 AM PDT by unread ("It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required." W. Churchill.)
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To: MtnClimber

Cartels will “own” the west coast..headed easterly at an alarming rate.


12 posted on 04/30/2023 5:55:41 AM PDT by Leep (Hillary will NEVER be president! 😁)
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To: Taxman

ping


13 posted on 04/30/2023 6:08:02 AM PDT by Taxman (SAVE AMERICA! VOTE REPUBLICAN IN 2023 AND 2024!)
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To: All

It’s the Mexicanization of all of America


14 posted on 04/30/2023 6:19:21 AM PDT by escapefromboston (Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.)
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To: MtnClimber
"Compromises are not wanted, only unconditional surrender."

Patriotic Americans cannot compromise with traitorous Demonicrats!!

15 posted on 04/30/2023 6:22:06 AM PDT by Carl Vehse
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To: Responsibility2nd

The people coming over the border now are not mexicans. they’re mostly central and south americans with a sprinkling of people from all over the world.


16 posted on 04/30/2023 6:34:42 AM PDT by ckilmer (q)
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To: MtnClimber

Sadly, I fear they are right.


17 posted on 04/30/2023 8:22:04 AM PDT by GingisK
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To: MtnClimber

A lot of us on the right are starting to understand the left for what it really is, and view them the same way they view us — in some cases, even more so. These are not nice people.

#ThePartyOfTolerance #TheyCallItCompassion


18 posted on 04/30/2023 9:13:48 AM PDT by TBP (Decent people cannot fathom the amoral cruelty of the Biden regime.)
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To: Jonty30
The left wants to replace the Constitution and its democratic-republican structure and institutions with technocracy, the rule of "experts." COVID is a good recent demonstration of that, but it goes back at least to the monster known as Woodrow Wilson. (Biden strongly resembles Wilson in a number of ways.)

A very bad novel called Philip Dru, Administrator lays of the "progressive" vision of the technocratic expertocracy. If you can find it.

19 posted on 04/30/2023 9:17:56 AM PDT by TBP (Decent people cannot fathom the amoral cruelty of the Biden regime.)
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To: Baldwin77

I have never encountered a group of people less diverse, less equitable, and less inclusive than the DEI crowd.


20 posted on 04/30/2023 9:18:54 AM PDT by TBP (Decent people cannot fathom the amoral cruelty of the Biden regime.)
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