Trumplicans?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by wegs, Jun 9, 2019.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    He restored much of the W&Cheney swamp, the worst in living memory, and further polluted it with the worst available now.

    He disrupted only the honorable and competent. Seriously: name a dishonorable or incompetent official or agency Trump has willingly replaced with an honorable and competent one.

    He brought in only the dishonorable and incompetent. His entire cabinet and most of his staff is corrupt and dishonest in their public and private dealings both - to the point of criminal prosecution being indicated, in several cases - but Trump has disrupted criminal prosecution of such matters.

    He created a safe space for organized crime - defunding and crippling Federal law enforcement in all matters affecting his fellow tax cheats and financial fraud perpetrators.

    And so forth.

    And all of this was predicted, visible, obviously going to be the result, of a Trump Presidency. The people who voted for Trump voted for this. The idea that they thought they were voting for honesty and probity and housecleaning by this mobbed up, Russian buddy, casino owning, real estate manipulating, media showman, multiply bankrupt, gilded commode rich daddy bullshit artist is simply not believable - the only way they could be that stupid is to be willfully so, to blinker themselves in pursuit of some other overriding agenda.

    There was never going to be a swamp draining, a disruption of corruption as usual (business as usual, sure - but only the honest and competent stuff), and everyone paying attention knew it. The Trump voter had it all laid out right in front of them. They got what they voted for, pure and simple.

    When they own up, acknowledge, cut the crap about Clinton (and Gore, and Kerry, and all the rest at the Congress and State level), and come to Jesus about what they've done and why they did it, they will be entitled to "views" that mitigate their guilt.

    Until then: No more hiding behind "Tea Party" and "Rhino" and similar bs, supposed private reservations publicly paraded as excusing actual behavior. Trump=Republican, Republican=Trump.

    Burn the lifeboats.
     
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  3. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    the opposite ?

    how they excuse themselves be declaring the administration as a fascist empire but the party rule it under need for lesser fanaticism etc etc...
    the election run up was a game of political nuclear chicken
    just when you thought the right had gone too far, they had to up the anti and go over the top, just like a reality TV script.
    probably written by bannon.
    the evil master mind behind it all that seems to have walked away.

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    there is a strong sense of "we cant break it so smash it as hard as possible, and we are ok with Armageddon judgment day anyway"
    type of mood about the republican party.
    flying in the face of climate change screaming i dare you dont come in to the tide.

    one more hit for the addict, just one more hit.
    a bigger hit will make it better.
    we dont have to quit while we feel good
    we need to chase the dragon when we feel bad
    the worse we feel, the harder we chase

    it is as much a socio-psycho-cultural problem.
     
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  5. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    burn the lifeboats ---
    they're full of migrant kids
     
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  7. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    you got life boats ?
    damn i should have gone for the co-pay option
    you get what you pay for right
    no such thing as a free trade
     
  8. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    18,935
    No, I wasn't going that far.

    Sometimes simply pruning a tree will stimulate growth throughout the tree. It may not matter much in the long term which branches get pruned.
     
  9. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    unless that pruning is the high income tax bracket tax exemptions.
    then it matters more than the 2nd amendment
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    If you hire a guy with fungus covered clothing to cut off the healthy branches, leave the fungus infected branches, and then graft on more fungus infected branches, you can't claim to have been expecting more apples from a healthier tree.

    There is no excuse for the Republican voter, or pundit, or politician.
     
  11. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    Well, it started out with us having territorial limits where American factory ship weren't allowed to fish... ended up with these seven lifeboats and got to keep our own Coast guard.
    But at least we're not Mexico.
     
  12. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    Well, it works for death penalty sentencing...
    If we don't know is exactly what will grow with all this stimulation, maybe that doesn't matter much.
     
  13. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    8,828
    Like Democrats, Republicans make promises they never keep, so yeah, a Trumplican is probably an entirely new creature.
     
  14. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    Promises not kept are one thing. There may be plausible reason why you didn't get to your son's ballet recital - like, you got hit by a garbage scow...
    A quite other, and much worse thing, is threats that are kept. You may have, in the heat of the moment, told your neighbour: "If that dog shits on my lawn again, I'll shoot him!" but you probably won't. The Republicans, if they find any dog-shit in their yard, burn down a neighbour's house. Bushicans cheered. Trumplicans bring marshmallows.
     
  15. Yazata Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,902
    It isn't a matter of 'identifying' with Trump, so much as Trump's voters feeling that Trump was the only Presidential candidate in 2016 that actually spoke to the issues that they were concerned about.

    There's a growing split in the Republican party between --

    1. The wealthy Wall Street elites and the self-styled "conservative" punditocracy, who somehow imagine that America's most pressing issue is reducing taxes on the rich along with smoothing the road for globalist big business with no regulation, free-trade and open-borders. This group is small in numbers but controls lots of wealth, armies of lobbyists and has great influence in the halls of Congress. They see themselves as the natural leaders and as the source of all of the Republican party's good ideas. They just assume that Republican voters will continue to vote for their candidates, but forgot to persuade the voters why the voters should do that. Their disdain for their own voters is often obvious and palpable.

    2. The average Republican voter who is neither rich nor a pundit, for whom America's biggest issues are the destruction of the Middle Class, both economically and socially. The economic aspect includes the deindustrialization of the United States, terrible trade arrangements where China drains away entire strategic industries along with millions of jobs and hundreds of billions a year in trade imbalances as the US finds itself funding China's rise. (But only the "little people" are hurt by this as middle class communities turn into slums, while the elites get filthy rich.) Republicans on the street are also alienated by the dramatic cultural changes being relentlessly pushed on them from the left, changes that make them feel like unwelcome strangers in their own country. They are put off by incessant identity politics that totally destroys any sense of community and turns the population into a maelstrom of competing factions. And of course the illegal alien problem where being American and even the rule of law mean nothing any more.

    It should be obvious that the agenda of the first group of ostensible "Republicans" runs directly contrary to that of the second more numerous group. In fact it's the first group that are at least in part responsible for some of the issues that most concern the second group. Trump's 2016 brilliance was recognizing that tension, enabling him to peel the majority of Republican voters away from their self-appointed leaders.

    That depends on what one takes "the ideology of the Republican party" to be. Trump might not represent the views of the Republican 'establishment', but he does seem to represent the views of the majority of Republican voters. That's why he absolutely trounced Jeb! and little Marco, the media elite darlings, in the 2016 Republican primaries.

    So... which of the two visions of Republicanism above has the keys to defining the "ideology"?

    It's a fundamental political question that goes to the heart of what democracy is: Should policy be shaped by the concerns of the voters and flow from the bottom up? Should the voters possess (and sometimes exercise) the power to vote out "leaders" who don't represent their interests? (I think that's how the Founders envisioned it.) Or alternatively, should policy be shaped by various elites and flow from the top down, with voters only becoming relevant when various elite factions need their electoral support in their struggles against other elite factions? Should voters only vote for who the "better people" tell them to vote for (even when that's not in their own interest)?

    Where does sovereignty ultimately lie, with the people themselves or with some self-appointed class of neo-aristocrats?

    It's not just the United States. We are seeing very similar forces playing out in the European Union: Brexit in Britain, Matteo Salvini and the Lega in Italy, Marine LePen and RN in France, in Hungary, in Poland... We saw it in Brazil, we might have just seen it in Australia. Even in India, with Modi's recent reelection. In each of those places, a significant percentage of voters seem to have come to the conclusion that their countries' established elites represent only those elites' own interests and not the interest of the voters.

    We live in interesting political times.
     
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2019
  16. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    Except that it's false. The terms "left" and "right" first appeared in 18th century France. They referred to where different factions grouped themselves and sat in their parliament. The words became fixed in the political vocabulary during the French revolution.
     
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2019
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Agreed. However, "leftist" is a more recent creation to do what Wegs describes - paint one side as unreasonable and far from center.
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    .
    The Dittoheads from 1994, the W voters from 2000 to 2007, the Tea Party weasels from 2008 to 2015, the fundies all along, and the rest of the Republican base, backing, and media, are the same creatures as voted and backed and bullshitted for Republicans in 2016. The same people, believing the same things from the same sources.
    One of the bullshit memes they believe is "bothsides", as you and every other Republican voter here illustrates at every opportunity.
    The Republican media campaign to trash all "fixed" political vocabulary in the US has been operating for thirty years and more, and has been largely successful - one way to track it back is to find when they first sold the notoriously rightwing and authoritarian Clintons as "left".
    Don't forget the part where you point out that that was all bullshit foisted upon them by the rightwing corporate media. The disengagement from reality is central. (They are the source of identity politics, for example - the single most powerful identity group, imposing its identity politics on everyone else for generations).
     
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2019
  19. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Yes, there are republicans who feel that - and many other groups as well.

    White supremacists feel like brown skinned people are taking over the country and not honoring their white betters. Incels feel like they are unwelcome strangers in a society where many people have relationships with the opposite sex. Religious fundamentalists feel like there values don't matter any more because there are gay people who aren't shunned. Far right wingers are upset and offended that more and more people are not remaining the "right" sex or sexual orientation, or even choosing one or the other. Xenophobes feel like strangers in a country of immigrants (even, ironically, when they themselves are immigrants.)

    The freeing of the slaves, suffrage for women, black rights, the ability of married women to own property, immigration, the ability of women to prosecute their husbands for rape, the legalization of gay marriage, the availability of sex reassignment surgery, the strengthening laws against sexual assault - all these represent dramatic cultural changes that some people could not, or cannot, adapt to. Some of these changes are new. Some have been going on for hundreds of years.

    The question is - should we pander to these people? I think that if we discovered that we were making the KKK feel like they were unwelcome strangers in our country, most people here would say "good." Same for incels and xenophobes. But what about people upset and depressed by gay marriage? Or non-binary gender? Or women who are gaining power over men when it comes to sexual assault? I have no doubt that in 20 years we will say "good" as well - but for now, they represent a voting faction that elect people like Trump.

    That's the dilemma many people (and politicians) face now. Speak your conscience - or pander to the deplorables?
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    The only clearly and specifically "left" issue in there might be property ownership by women. Describing this stuff as "relentlessly pushed on them by the left" is acceptance of a propaganda frame.
    There are few "ideologies" more rigidly devoted to promoting the interests of an elite over everyone else than fascism.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The deplorables are a minority, and pandering to them wrecks the country - including destroying any reliable value their support might have for the person of conscience (they will turn on a dime if instructed by their media handlers).

    The critical support gained by pandering to them is from the financiers and organizers of the Republican Party.
     
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    It may wreck the country, but it can also win elections.
    That's the way many far right people see it. "Why do gays have to marry? Why do they have to shove it down our throats like that?" They see any expression of freedom that does not benefit them as a form of evil being "relentlessly" being pushed on them, generally by "social justice warriors" or some other diminutive.
     
  23. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    Pandering from one party; appeasement from the other -
    either way, they get the attention they thrive on and the more attention they get, the more they act out.
     

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