The decline to moral bankruptcy of the GOP

Politics and religion
5111

With all due respect, at some point that is no longer true. That is like saying that Nationalist Socialist voters were not inherently evil or did not want Jews to die in a fire. The more hard line the policies and statements are coming from that party, the more difficult it is to disassociate the voter from their advocacy of those policies.

Are we to that point yet? I do not know. It is very difficult to hear the positions spouted by many Republicans today and somehow believe that those who would vote for those positions are not just wrong but evil. Personally I am not to that extent yet but there are days that “barrier” is starting to get very thin.

5112

On the one hand I’m with you. My workplace is about evenly split between Trump and Dem voters, so I’m around folks of different political stripes than my own all the time. For the most part, people avoid talking politics, particularly with folks they don’t agree with. But here’s the thing: Bush started a fake war that caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, refugees, poverty and the rise of groups like ISIS. He bungled response to Katrina, which resulted in hundreds of American deaths, displacement, and suffering for thousands of folks. He legitimized torture and surveillance. Trump has time-and-time again praised authoritarian dictators who use murder, torture, and terror to consolidate their power. He started a trade war, which will have the primary effect of taxing poor and middle class folks (by raising the cost of imported goods), while at the same time passing a massive tax cut for the ultra rich. He has deliberately stoked latent racial and nativist resentment, which has already resulted in deaths. Thousands of folks died in Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria because he utterly failed to respond to it. He implemented a policy which resulted in kids being put in cages, separated from their parents, with no way to re-unite them; a policy deliberately designed to sow terror. These are things that actually happened as a result of people voting for Republicans. At some point, people have to bear responsibility for their votes. Public shaming is an appropriate response to people who willingly participate in atrocity. The folks who were in the crowd shouting at and spitting on black kids being escorted by Federal Marshals into school in the 50’s were people and citizens too, who had every right to vote and participate in the public sphere. But it was also right for the Civil Rights Movement to use shame as a force against them.

5113
5114

Yeah, that’s not what I’m talking about. That’s not shaming; that’s mocking. Rick specializes in that, and I find it kind of despicable. Shaming is confronting someone with the fruits of their actions, not making off-color jokes at their expense.

5115

I honestly hadn’t read what you wrote, was just responding to the story. Thought “I smell toast” was fairly amusing.though shrug

5116

Also to @Matt_W. I understand exactly what both of you refer to and I’ll add a huge caveat to my opinion:

… it is only my opinion at this time. That would not be my opinion at the point I -really- think that the GOP becomes a fascist party or that I feel as if there is such a divide that actual confrontation needed to be immediate.

I’m separating Trump voters from Trump and how I view him directly. I’m also, reluctantly, still separating the GOP from how I view Trump directly, since there still could very well be hope for that party. As an example, once people vote in the midterms, perhaps there will be a change of mindset once they don’t hold every card and have seen how the public voted. I don’t think they are the full on fascist party at this time, and I hope, and pray, that that doesn’t actually become true. I still hold a lot of Republicans as friends/family/coworkers.

I probably shouldn’t have cross threaded @David2 's question as it bridges over from the immigration thread. I’ll move further comments there instead, with apologies to others here for that.

5117

Yeah, sorry I’m simulposting in two threads too, and Wilson came up in the other thread. I can just imagine these ladies getting an email from a friend saying, “You’re famous on twitter.”

5118

What would it take for you think this point has been reached? Because all the evidence points to that ship having sailed some time between Scalia’s death and Comey’s firing.

… and they want to vote for people who tell them their problems are caused by Jews Globalists and illegals and the Dems who keep pushing “identity politics” and “PC culture” and prioritizing “minority issues” over those of red-blooded Americans. Sorry, this makes them bad people. Are they “inherently evil”? Who cares? They are doing evil things by supporting evil ideologies. It doesn’t matter whether the person themself or the person they vote for is pure unadulterated or irredeemable evil. What matters is that they support an evil agenda. There should not be such a thing as “minority issues” and “identity politics” is an idea invented by a propaganda machine that wants to maintain white supremacy and serve the needs of the wealthy.

Instead of crying foul about the Democratic party trying to do stuff to get minority votes, the GOP could choose to also help create fair playing field. They don’t have to try the same things – there are probably more conservative-friendly approaches that accomplish the same goal – but if they were actually trying to fix the problem, there would not be a massive split in support based on race, religious sect, orientation, or gender. I suppose you could argue that Dems could do more to include the beliefs of Evangelicals, but that faith is perpetuated by a bunch of con artist pop-ministers so it’s hard for me to see what those beliefs would actually be in a world where both parties tried different approaches to serving them. Publicly, they mostly seem to believe in whatever the GOP’s current think tanks are spewing.

5119

I generally agree with your post. I think the tragedy here is that the human method of dealing with politics is ultimately unhealthy.

I would like to see us evolve into using more a project management model for politics, verse narrative partisan rhetoric. Move away from the blame and shame game and move to the details of what the goal is, what are the priorities, options how to do it, based on that information, and what studies have been done to support those models, and a review of previous success and failures in this area world wide and sober assessment of their effectiveness.

Create a impartial repeatable framework to the policy process of a non narrative nature.

5120

Yeah except, you know, only one party is really pushing that game to the extreme. Everybody doesn’t need to change just because the GOP is trash.

5121

By any reasonable measure this is what Clinton and Obama did. There’s even a name for this approach, technocratic. Where data and policy inform each other, and the policies put forward are chosen for their technical effectiveness at reaching a political goal.

If you look at Clinton, her speeches and policy positions, you see throughout a consistent usage of detailed data driven approaches used.

Unfortunately the GOP is entirely ruled by propoganda and fear, and nuanced papers don’t get media attention the way soundbites do. The answer to the oft asked ‘what does she stand for’ was almost always there, but as soon as the answer begins the media’s eyes glaze over becuause an answer that is more complex than ‘tax cuts, drill baby drill, and lock her up’ is too complex for the ruminants grazing on corn in Topeka to understand.

And, yes, I am equally blaming a feckless media as I am a stupid and lazy public. The American public, writ large, are idiots incapable of comprehending even the most basic argument beyond ‘do this, don’t do that’ and as such assume anything that requires shifting their brains out of neutral is wrong, and the media, seinsing this marketers dream of easily led sheep, are all too happy to oblige by only presenting simplified to the point of useless sound bytes and ruining any chance of public understanding of complex issues.

5122

Word. I’m not sure what the solution is here. I actually don’t think it’s that people are dumb. I think it’s more that they’ve already made up their minds and are just looking for confirmation… or something like that. I don’t know. No one does. Campaigning is, to some degree, shooting blindly in the dark. But it’s certainly not enough to have good ideas. And it certainly seems lately as if tactics and ruthlessness are what wins.

5123

Literal actual Nazis in WWII Germany weren’t ‘inherently evil’ in the same sense that Himmler and Heydrich and Mengele were, either. They didn’t have to be. They were just as evil (or, more precisely, just as blinkered and self-serving) as they needed to be to implement the policies of the above, and that was enough for armageddon and genocide. For all I know two out of every three guards at Auschwitz had pinches of conscience at bedtime. What I do know is what that was worth: fuck-all.

We have to be psychologically realistic about this. The abhorrent and unthinkable is completely human. A million Hutus in Rwanda didn’t suddenly turn into moustache-swirling Snidely Whiplashes before they took up the machete. The truth is far more unnerving than that.

So sure, lots of Trump voters are ‘regular people.’ And guess what? ‘Regular people’ have committed atrocities throughout history. The pushback has to happen before a tipping point is reached, aka now.

5124

My name is Kevin and I Like your post.

5125

Dumb or lazy, I leave open the option for both.

But it pretty much is one or the other at this point. It is possible to find these things, and for major national elections it’s not even hard. But just taking what the Fox News talking head says makes you one or the other.

5126

Excellent point and someone either here or on Reddit had linked a similar subject (Nationalism/violence) from Slate saying the same: If GOP doesn’t come out screaming in a check against Trump when he does or says things that lean totalitarian or nationalist then we are on that path.

I’m not a politician. And though I try to keep my eye on the news, I don’t catch everything, hell I hate to even listen to Trump to be honest. Certainly it could be that the reality is right in front of me and I can’t admit it because I’m afraid to. This entire thread embodies where we are at now. Are we there?

5127

Can we get this stickied?

5128

See, that assumes that what “liberals” are proposing doesn’t have sound science behind it, that what liberals are doing is being irrational, that what conservatives do is inherently rational.

For example, all last week i’ve been arguing with college educated conservatives - remember, i do live and work in Oil County - that recent UN reports had underestimated the methane output of agriculture, specifically with livestock. See! they said, the oil business isn’t the largest producer of methane! Get your facts straight liberals! And then i get a screed about how the world needs oil and gas and that there are starving people in Africa who don’t care about environmental laws and that they need energy to get themselves out of poverty and ect.

Ok, fine! Not a problem with a thing that’s said. Well, what about the UN Climate change report, i ask? Oh, that’s just fake news, don’t believe it. I’m sure they would have said Al Gore is making money on it, had they remembered.

In other words we operate on facts, but only when the facts are convenient to our priors.

It’s the same thing with gun control. Ok! i say. Sure, AR style assault rifles are not used that often overall. Let’s look at the statistics! The statistics by the FBI are that the majority of fatalities use pistols. Clearly, we should regulate pistols then, right? We know what the answer to that always is.

While i don’t believe technocracy is the penultimate goal - i think certain inefficiencies help create both stability and equitable distribution of resources - even a technocracy assumes you’re taking facts into account. Not just those facts convenient to your ideology.

So, sure, African-American communities in Chicago are more likely to commit and suffer from violent crime - but that doesn’t mean racially motivated police brutality doesn’t exist. Sure we need oil and gas - but that doesn’t mean climate change isn’t real, or at least, can’t be worsened by atmospheric CO2. Sure, a country absolutely has the right to limit immigration into its borders - but that doesn’t mean you lock children in cages and (apparently for many) get off on that cruelty.

Right now in most face to face conversation i have, i admit the former posit, but they won’t admit the latter. Conversations about O&G start and end with energy needs, not with pollution. That’s “not important”, it’s not true - and even if it were true, the former benefits is much more important than the latter. The alternative from their perspective is living in mud huts. Over and over in conversations the “Liberal objection” is simply dismissed out of hand as being fundamentally naive and untrue, and the “debate” really revolves around Conservatives trying to convince Liberals their objections are bunk.

I’d love to agree to a political solution with Conservatives and split the difference. But what happens in practice is that Conservatives lecture me that climate change isn’t real, and what they expect is that when exposed to their worldview, i’ll convert and agree. Extrapolate that out to the whole nation.

5129

Not sure whether there’s some ultimate goal I missed, or you think “penultimate” means “super-duper ultimate”.

5130

I posted this last week regarding Trump but it’s relevant in this context as well. Here are Lawrence Britt’s 14 Characteristics of Fascism. Read through them and ask yourself, “how many of these apply to The Republicans today?”

  1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
    Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

  2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
    Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

  3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
    The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

  4. Supremacy of the Military
    Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

  5. Rampant Sexism
    The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

  6. Controlled Mass Media
    Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

  7. Obsession with National Security
    Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

  8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
    Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

  9. Corporate Power is Protected
    The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

  10. Labor Power is Suppressed
    Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .

  11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
    Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

  12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
    Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

  13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
    Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

  14. Fraudulent Elections
    Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.