> It seems that the frame that got immensely popular
> in the past 15 or so
> years is the one which I call "gangster
> gratification" (you probably noticed
> my penchant for alliteration by now). This is the
> frame of seeking thrill
> and adrenaline rush by displays of raw aggression
> and nihilism to obtain
> instant emotional gratification.
Maybe the Repubs have takena cue from gangsta rap, but the main inspiration for the GOP ideology of the past 30 some years has been white backlash. The initial theorest was Kevin Phillips, now a sort of leftish populist (!), who wrote "The Emergining Republican Majority" back in 1969 or so, based in part on watching the successs of the George Wallace campaign in '68 and its appeal to white ethnics. Phillips and Nixon's strategists turned white backlash, politics of victimization and all, into a tool to take the South away from the Democrats in the wake of their support for the Civil Rights, especially school desegregation and busing. The code words were "law 'n order," with Blacks, and the Democrats who stood up for them, being identified with lawlessness and criminality. This process has continued unabated since, long before rap was more than a shadow -- and recall that in its earliest days it was Black Nationalist politics, not hooliganism that it celebrated. Think of Public Enemy or NWA, for example. Unfortunately this is not a strategy that leftists and liberals can emulate.
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