I’m a coastal liberal, but I’m sipping a regular drip at the moment.
Am I allowed to say Nazis suck? :)
No, because everyone knows that west coast liberals are just as bad as Nazis. /s
I want to thank Oghier for some great posts here.
What we are faced with is a white identity party closely coordinating policy with a propaganda organ that is continuously on screens in a large fraction of public places in this country-- both heavily funded by wealthy individuals determined to entrench oligarchy. This is a giant problem that is not going to go away for a generation or two.
A realistic plan for addressing the problem has to acknowledge that the existence of a white identity party is pretty much inevitable given the demographic changes the country has gone through. Just saying “You are the white identity party!” doesn’t do anything; you’re not going to shame people out of supporting white identity politics. You have to make the case that politics should be more than a zero-sum identity game, and strive to reinforce the institutions that allow it to be more than that. That’s not trying to find a middle ground; that’s trying to reframe the debate so that more people find themselves on the same side.
Thanos approves of this plan.
The Green Party Should run Thanos against Trump in 2020 — “Thanos 2020: Limit The Damage.”
Why do we have to do this again? Oh right, because white people are now killing others in mass shootings and suddenly the rest of the country has to understand them and coddle them and wring our hands together and change whereas before… well I guess that is what privilege is. As soon as what one group had been peddling and selling for years slightly shifts, its’ off limit, rule change, hold the presses…
No. We don’t have to talk about zero-sum identity games while Jewish bodies are bleeding on the floor of a synagogue. I think it’s okay to talk about murder and the fact there are Jewish bodies on the floor and why their lives were snuffed out at this point. The GOP just wants to wish those bodies away and get something else on the headlines for Fox News. We don’t have to make that easy.
I’m still a General Zod booster, personally.
As long as I get “Australia”!
This. So much this.
I want to know who these mythical Republicans are who don’t support putting kids in cages because, if they’re out there, I haven’t seen or heard from them.
I’m not conservative but I respect true conservatives and the fact is, they’ve all left the party by now. Anyone still on board with the Republicans at this point is on board with Fascism. Maybe they are single issue voters (tax cuts, abortion, whatever) but they are single isssue voters who are willing to sign off on Fascism to see their goals achieved.
Maybe (probably) a bunch of them are too ignorant to recognize Fascism when they see it but they are still on board with all of the underlying characteristics of Fascism. Scapegoating ethnic and religious minorities? Misogyny? Cronyism and corruption so long as it’s their side? Nationalism? Unless they’ve been in a coma the past couple of years they are officially on board with all of the above which makes them Fascists whether they know it or not.
It’s a policy put forth by the Republican party.
There comes a time when a part does things so bad that you either are supporting it, or you leave the party.
The GOP is Trump’s party now. If you are still a republican, that’s what you are about.
I’ll start thinking about common ground with the GOP the day they denounce Steve King.
They’ve had 16 years to do it.
I’m still waiting.
And I’ll consider it when they lock McConnell up for treason.
I mean that will probably never happen unless Mueller finds something insane on him.
Though voting his ass out would be a good step towards things.
OK – I agree with this. But also consider that they may not believe the media. They may believe that children are not being caged, that these refugees are infested with criminals, etc.
There’s a reason the Trump administration spends so much effort on brazen lies. Sanders isn’t up there trolling liberals. We’re not the audience. She’s speaking to their base, because many of them believe her lies. Cognitive Bias + Right-Wing Media + Social Media = bubbles of bullshit.
I believe three kinds of people live in those bubbles:
- The consciously evil
- The willfully ignorant
- The truly ignorant
The first group needs to be punched. The second group isn’t worth chasing. The third group includes many who simply don’t spend any significant time following the news, and what little they see is on Fox. Are they irredeemable? I hope not, because we need some of them to return to reality.
I think some will. As Trump becomes (even more) openly racist, you would expect more people to notice that this shit is really happening, and Lou Dobbs is lying about it.
I agree with utterly EVERYTHING you’ve said in your post! I’ve tried to make these points, but clearly less eloquently…
They are too far gone.
They have directly enabled terrible things at this point. They’ve harmed our country.
In order for them to change, they would need to recognize and admit what they’ve done. And they won’t, because that would be hard. It would make them feel ashamed of themselves.
So they just push those Revelations down. They pretend they don’t know what they are doing. But they know. Everyone knows the score at this point.
And what’s messed up is that they are still ashamed. But they suppress it, and it just bubbles up as angst and hatred for other people.
“They” is, what, 40 million people? And they’re all too far gone?
I think Trump sheds supporters with every incident like this. Sure, there’s a hardcore base that thinks literally anything he does is divinely inspired. But I don’t think everyone who will leave his fold has already done so.
With politics and identity so intertwined, it’s a slow and complicated process for many to change parties. Surely, that process is not already complete. We should act with the assumption that we can still help that happen, or at least not make it less likely.
yep45
TPM follow-up on the candidate who supposedly invited the Jews for Jesus “rabbi”. It’s as weird as it seemed, if not more so.
There is barely a whimper from Republicans on this stuff. And when it comes down to brass tacks, every Republican outside of Lisa Murkowski (and Sue Collins once) has been rubber stamping everything trump wants done.
Even in Michigan where our auto industry is going to get decimated by tariffs, our Republican leaders aren’t doing anything to shout down and stand up to trump. They don’t care about us. They care about the trump republican party.