Everybody Wants To Rule The World Even If They’re Not White Men

Answering a recurring and annoying question

“Can someone explain to me why any woman would vote Republican at this point?” a man recently asked on the site once known as Twitter. I assume he means white women specifically, as minority women overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Even in the 2018 “blue wave,” Democrats only managed to tie Republicans with white women voters, and Trump carried the demo by 11 points in 2020. Even after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, white women decisively backed Republicans.

---

---

However, I think the original poster’s rhetorical question misses the point. A far better question is why anyone votes for Republicans, a radical, far-right anti-democratic movement posing as a political party. Writer Jessica Ellis aptly responded, “I feel like I have to say this once per election, but women are not fundamentally more moral or virtuous creatures by nature than men, and they can believe the exact same level of fucked up shit and to the same degree.”

You’d think that Ginni Thomas and Martha-Ann Alito would disprove the far-too-common narrative that white conservative women are secretly moderate (“don’t you worry, Republican women will reject the pussy-grabber candidate and elect the first woman president!”) or are too afraid to publicly contradict their husbands. No, they are both independently horrible.

“The feminazis believe that [Justice Sam Alito] should control me,” Martha-AnnAlito told activist Lauren Windsor, who’d recorded her rant. “So they’ll go to hell. He never controls me.”

---

Alito To Senate: Drop Dead

---

White liberals will often wonder why people vote against their “self-interest.” That’s also the wrong question. No one votes against their self-interest and if you think they have, it’s more likely that you’re projecting your own self-interests onto them. The Republican Party is selling something they want — power and control over others they feel are inferior, so obviously Republicans who are women and minorities don’t respond well when liberals question how they could possibly belong to the GOP. It sounds as if liberals are calling them inferior, which is hardly a great canvassing strategy.

Why do you think only white men can join Evil, Inc.?

Liberals have asked how anyone can take the GOP seriously as the “law and order” party when its presidential nominee is an adjudicated rapist and a convicted felon. However, as American composer Frank Wilhoit observed in 2018, “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

“Law and order” was alway racial code for maintaining the white Christian male hierarchy. It goes back to the slave patrols. It fueled Jim Crow. Nonetheless, Democrats have frequently tried to engage with Republicans in good faith on “law and order.” The result was the 1990s crime bill and assorted offers to provide cops with free foot massages.

This argument is frustrating because mainstream elected Democrats often suggest that the Republican Party has some sort of guiding principle beyond fascist bigotry. It’s why former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi keeps insisting we need a “strong” Republican Party.

“I will say this — you’ll be shocked, probably — I think the country needs a strong Republican Party [like] we need a strong Democratic Party...but this is not it,” Pelosi said in 2023. “It isn’t our judgment about what it should be. It’s their judgment, but it's a missed opportunity for America.”

Nothing incensed certain Democrats more than if you dared question this messaging. They argued that this was all some masterful three-dimensional chess that escaped me: See, if Democratic leaders said that the GOP is not inseparable from MAGA and can be redeemed, they’d give longtime Republicans “permission” to vote for Democrats. It’s a brilliant tactic, except for all the ways it doesn’t make sense. It’s like a vegetarian restaurant owner insisting that McDonald’s might someday start serving more healthful menu items, but for now please try these bean sprout burgers.

Democrats, including President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, have rightly attacked the radical Supreme Court, but the implication is that it’s all Donald Trump’s doing. Trump didn’t nominate Stephen Miller or Jeanine Pirro but instead Federalist Society centerfolds who Pelosi might’ve once said represented a “normal” GOP. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are arguably the worst of the lost — both wholly corrupt partisan actors — and they were nominated by President George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush (because America is lousy with dynasties).

“This has never been a court that’s so far out of step,” Biden said at a fundraiser last week. Proximity bias might explain why the president seems to forget the Roger B. Taney Court — one so radical that President Abraham Lincoln flatly ignored it during the Civil War. Lincoln’s broadside at the Supreme Court during his 1861 inaugural address seems quite relevant today:

“The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

I can’t go long without seeing a liberal remark that Bush and son, John McCain, and Mitt Romney were Republicans they could at least respect. It’s a form of short-term memory loss by way of Stockholm syndrome. We’re in this sorry state because of those “respectable” Republicans, who have actively helped the “extremists” dismantle our democracy. McCain voted to nuke the Supreme Court filibuster so Republicans could confirm Neil Gorsuch, and later Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, with a simple majority. Romney supported Barrett’s drive-through confirmation.

Here’s what bothers me whenever the same liberals who share anti-Trump social media posts from Adam Kinzinger and Joe Walsh also imply that a Black or woman Republican is inherently self-loathing. That argument suggests that only white men have a true choice between the two major political parties. White men can care about low taxes and small government while pretending they never noticed all the bigots, but everyone else should apparently “know better.” Minorities don’t appreciate other people limiting their options. If you’re going to tell marginalized groups that they must vote for Democrats because Republicans will take away their rights and maybe even put them in camps, then you should stop talking about a “strong” Republican Party. There is no “loyal opposition” found among fascists. You shouldn’t call Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell “reasonable,” as Biden has, especially when Democratic fundraising appeals to vulnerable people paint him as the bogeyman. That doesn’t appear pragmatic or measured. It makes it seem as if U.S. politics is just the WWE.

The problem is that Nazis or Confederates existed at all. We shouldn’t instead fixate on the few Jewish Nazis or Black Confederates. Besides, it’s human nature to want to be on the winning team, and opportunists come in all colors and genders.

Follow Stephen Robinson on Bluesky and Threads.

Subscribe to his YouTube channel for more fun content.