I believe the groundswell for Sanders and the groundswell for Trump are in response to the same phenomenon, rising inequality. The GOP establishment was so blindsided by the Trump thing because they just do not understand how important immigration reform is to their base.
They underestimate the psychological effects of unemployment in the United States and what exactly that means for the male ego, given our socialization to be the breadwinner provider, it is no wonder that our rates of incarceration, violent crime, and suicide among the male adult population in the US is so high.
There is this effect of not being able to get a job plus seeing more and more tan skinned Spanish speaking workers with their sweaty wet backs who seem to have no trouble finding employment, and you suspect health insurance and SNAP benefits, which statistics say is largely true, because around three-quarters have.
The GOP and the Free Market Ideologues definitely underestimate the effects of having so many workers undermining the minimum wage, which sets the base wage for all other professions to a degree (along with inflation) and also is important in defining poverty. Our minimum wage can be raised upward, but as long as corporations continue to hire undocumented workers for under minimum wage all other physical labor intensive work becomes less valuable due to its relation and our commodity fetishism of attempting to measure social interactions (labor) in one metric (the Dollar).
These GOP guys think they're cute, cancelling elections to unbind delegates to choose their guy instead of going with popular will. The base is surprised for some reason that the guns are now turned on them, after they already stepped all over the blacks, Hispanics, and poor white voters through voter registration and ID laws, shenanigans with early voting so people who work full schedules have more of a challenge to schedule waiting for hours in lines on election day which takes hours instead of minutes because elderly volunteers have to use the shitty WiFi to use privately contracted iPads to scan state purchased identification. If you are surprised that the GOP has no respect for democracy or the opinions of actual Americans, you are a fucking idiot and I hope this is a good lesson for you in future political decision making.
There is this weird psychosexual Cuckold thing, which I can see why this has been a theme in their movement given how emasculated they must feel after the previously mentioned things. The fear of minorities railing their female partners is surprisingly high among these people, and it is being expressed in projective insults and memes, and they can't stop talking about it. Jeb Bush especially evoked their rage, for having been perceived to marry the help and raise the children of somebody who was brown. Then they're confused why people think they're racist, because it is so convoluted and they won't ever own up to some weird psychosexual shit like this....it is some J. Edgar Hoover stuff, that weird repressive right-wing fascist-sexualism.
This post was edited by Skinned on Apr 14 2016 05:29am