Why is no-one in America protecting vital cultural interests?

William Safford says:

On one level, I agree with your assessment that most Americans often have grave difficulty with concepts such as “conservative,” “liberal,” or “socialist” and “communist” for that matter.

Our current apotheosis of ignorance is the Orange Enemy of the People. Just one example: some months or years back, the Orange One was asked a question by a reporter about “liberal democracy.” It is clear from his answer that he had no idea whatsoever what the questioner was asking. He went on some unrelated rant about liberals vs. conservatives, rather than discussing the actual topic at hand. What an embarrassment! Alas, it’s just one embarrassment of many over the last four years.

It was yet another indication of how out of his depth he was in any political office, much less President. President Obama could write a doctoral dissertation on the topic. The first President Bush could have connected it to his wartime experience in the Pacific Theater during WWII. Nixon, for all his failings, was fully conversant in this. Even Reagan (with coaching) could have parsed the subtleties of perestroika with Soviet Premier Gorbachev vs. Soviet rule under Brezhnev, as compared with liberal democracy. But the Orange One? Fail!

To be fair to Americans in general, the words and their denotations have, in certain cases, shifted over the decades. What we refer to in 2020 as a “liberal” is a substantially different concept from what someone in 1865 would have considered a “liberal.” An 1865 “liberal” is more akin to a modern libertarian, although it is far from being a congruence.

Furthermore, in the U.S., as you are well aware, there are only two major political parties, but their characteristics and their alliances have shifted a number of times over the years. The Republican and Democratic Parties of 1865 are vastly different from those of today, and not merely because of the intervening generations.

In 1865, when the Republican Party was less than a decade old, a substantial faction thereof was radical progressive on race: they forced through the Reconstruction Amendments, which outlawed slavery (mostly), prohibited discrimination against the voting of Black men (at least theoretically), etc.

Now, the Republican Party has forsaken, in infamy, the honor of being the Party of Lincoln; the Democratic Party is the one that now receives the lion’s share of support from the Black community, even with its own imperfections. The Republican Party is now the party of white supremacy, certain factions notwithstanding.

Compare this with the Democratic Party, which historically was the party of slavery (certain contemporaneous factions within it notwithstanding). It was Southern Democrats who were the primary slaveowners in antebellum America. It was Southern Democrats who clamored for the defense of slavery in the guise of state’s rights, and who pushed the South into treason and sedition in the Civil War. Despite the progress made by northern Democrats under FDR and the New Deal, it was the Southern “Dixiecrats” breakaway Southern Democrats who sponsored the avowed white supremacist third-party Presidential candidate Strom Thurmond in the 1948 election against both the Democratic Party incumbent President Truman (who, though far from perfect on the topic of race, did integrate the armed forces that year) and the Republican Party candidate Thomas Dewey (“Elected Governor of New York in 1942, 1946 and 1950, he was known for his legal knowledge, political moderation, and efficient, business like administration. Among his achievements was the first state law anywhere forbidding racial and religious discrimination in employment.”).

How far the Republican Party has sunk into infamy since Dewey!

You wrote: “The American right have a lot more in common with those they decry as fundamentalists than they would ever admit.”

You are correct.

The first evangelical Christian President was Carter. The evangelical movement rejected Carter in 1980 in favor of a non-church-going, divorced and remarried candidate. Their support of a candidate who was not himself an evangelical Christian, but who said some platitudes to them, helped Reagan be elected. History repeated itself multiple times, culminating with the 2016 election of the Orange Enemy of the People, whose life has been led in almost every way against everything that an evangelical Christian believes, yet they kowtow to him to this day.

Let us be clear: the Christian Right has its historical roots in antebellum slavery. There was a schism of the Baptist denomination: “In 1845, the Southern Baptist Convention split from mainline Baptism over the issue of whether slaveholders should be allowed to be appointed as missionaries.” (Wikipedia) Much of American fundamentalist Christianity has been in support of, or at least tolerant of, white supremacy. To its credit, factions therein have worked against this trend in recent years, but it is still a dominant force within its movement.

The Republican Party allowed itself to be hijacked by the former white supremacist Dixiecrat Southern Democrats, who fled the party in the wake of the civil rights legislations of the 1960s into the welcoming arms of the Republican Party. Now, the white supremacist populists have emerged from under the rocks, and have assumed power under their Fearless Leader, the Orange Enemy of the People.

For shame!