Wages and the Wages of Sin: Evangelicals as the Right's Soldiers

The comparison I mapped out in my last post - linking the collapse of democratic politics in Brazil in 1964 with the current political sentiments of the Republican Party - can be developed a little further.

As industrialization developed and deepened in Brazil in the years prior to 1964, the goods being manufactured in Brazilian factories were higher end consumer goods, destined for elites, or products, in most cases manufactured in Brazil by foreign corporations, intended for global markets. If the goods produced in Brazilian factories were manufactured to be sold to Brazilian consumers, then the state and Brazilian industrialists might have felt compelled to improve workers' pay. With better wages, consumers could buy more goods, increasing demand, creating opportunities for growth, and putting more profits into manufacturers' pockets. Because this wasn't the case, Brazilian technocrats and industrialists had no incentive to grow workers' wages. In fact, to compete in the global market, Brazilian planners and manufacturers wanted to suppress wages, to manage production costs. The result was an increasingly desperate working class which attempted, through unions and politics, to air their grievances and demand a larger share of the nation's wealth. In the end, industrialists, state technocrats, and the military stepped in to overturn democratic institutions and suppress working class aspirations.

This parallels America's present economic realities to an unmistakeable degree. American manufacturers don't produce consumer goods in any meaningful quantity anymore, with perhaps the exception of the automobile industry. The items we do manufacture - medical devices, sophisticated technology for business, precision-manufactured parts for industry - aren't targeted to rank and file consumers. As a result, it is irrelevant to American corporations whether workers make enough to buy toys and shoes and clothes and kiddie pools. What matters is how well business is doing, since the market for our manufactured goods is the business sector. Wages can drop, unemployment can rise, and Wall Street doesn't blink. But when businesses stop buying, Wall Street reacts. Over the years, America's business sector has corrupted the country's political leaders, as lobbyists and campaign contributions have marginalized the interests and the voice of nation's working class. Regulatory oversight has been dismantled, workplace safety has been compromised, the right of workers to unionized has been attacked, wages have stagnated, and the wealthy have grown wealthier, all while politicians, including Democrats, sat by and watched. Our compromised political process, incapable of producing meaningful solutions for an increasingly desperate working class, has lost its legitimacy.

In Brazil, industrialists joined with the military to overturn democratic institutions. That hasn't been necessary here. Corporations and their lobbyists have managed to render our political institutions irrelevant. Here, the coup was carried out without armed forces.

But the right does have foot soldiers to aid it in its efforts. The evangelical right, as deeply concerned about social chaos and moral decline as the Brazilian military was, has been recruited by the Republican Party to take the battle to the streets. In a nation of increasing diversity, shifting moral precepts, and growing tolerance for non-traditional forms of sexual identity, the Christian right has moved from moral panic to moral panic, accomplishing three things useful to the Republican Party. First, by mobilizing to prevent the legalization of gay marriage and address fears about the declining influence of Christianity in America's civil institutions, Christian activists have increased Republican turnout. Second, they have managed to shift the frame of political discourse, positioning moral issues ahead of economic concerns. Third, by doing so, they have divided middle-class and working-class voters, and persuaded working-class Christians to ignore appeals from their unions and co-workers, voting for morally-crusading Republican candidates, who, once elected, set about the work of suppressing wages and attacking unions. It's a cynical type of politics, divisive and deeply anti-populist.