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The neoconfederate, extractive, mammonite, and aristocratic wings of the republican party are all actively, consciously against any exercise of civil power. Their power requires a public sphere too weak to prevent their looting activities.

And it's not like they care about absolute economic measures; they care about relative economic measures, not overall wealth or opportunity.

So it's not "fear of change and dynamism"; it's fear of losing power. There's a corresponding commitment to a world in which the people who are winning now win forever, nothing important changes, and even if you can't literally own people, you can certainly capture their entire economic output.

As an objective, it's impressively deluded -- things are going to change more in the next fifty years than they have since our species came to be -- but that doesn't mean it's not real.

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