The reactionary forces in American politics have always enlisted the support of their own victims by promising them that they too can some day be prosperous if they are just patient and back the immediate agenda of Capital.

Keep quiet, get with the program and one day you will no longer be exploited by your boss, you will get the opportunity to oppress your own workers and customers. If it hasn't happened yet it must be because those commie libs want to give all your stuff away to furriners, brown folks, and lazy hippies, i.e., folks who aren't hard workin' and god-fearin' volk like us. Its the same bill of goods they sold to Johnny Reb in 1860; join up and fight for your god-given freedom to own slaves and one day YOU can have your own. And its the same bill of goods Adolf Hitler managed to sell to the hard-working, disciplined and highly cultured people of Germany.

The true genius of the modern Conservative movement is that it managed to convince its own victims to work against their own economic interests and political freedom by leveraging their racism, nationalism, religious fundamentalism, anti-intellectualism and nativism against them.

America has always been able to find a compromise between the productive dynamism and efficiency of the Right and the justice, compassion and humanity of the Left. This has been done through democratic reforms, unions, civil rights, election reform, rule of law, consumer, worker and environmental legislation while simultaneously allowing every citizen to manage his own economic life and personal property. Maintaining this balance has not always worked smoothly, and there have been setbacks and contradictions, but it is America's finest achievement and its greatest gift to human civilization.

But for those who see human life as simply an arena for their own self-aggrandizement and the endless accumulation of personal wealth and power, these reforms have always been anathema. And what we are seeing now in politics is the natural result of those who are willing to wake up the most hideous demons in our collective psyche in order to briefly put to rest the howling beast in theirs.