A huge number of Americans who could not bring themselves to vote for Trump in 2020 because he is extremely rude. Some who could not do it because of multiple marriages and affairs - it is not disputed that Trump has been a womanizer. DeSantis is not rude and no one thinks he is a womanizer.
Disclaimer: I voted Trump in 2020 and will again in 2024 if he is the nominee.
I know people who voted for Trump in 2016 but not in 2020, as they were very turned off, even downright disgusted, by his clownish and incompetent presidency. We need to move on past the Karl Rove theory of elections: No, it's not the base that wins: neither party's base is big enough. It still is the fence sitters, and a Trump candidacy will send most of them toppling over right into Biden's lap.
Before voting Trump in 2020 (I did a write-in in 2016) I made a list. It refutes "clownish and incompetent" , e.g., the CNN-style portrayal. I was up to 36 good things, and my list is far from complete. Here it is:
Strong improvement in wages/jobs of working class.
Lowest Black, Hispanic, Asian unemployment recorded in modern times.
Opportunity zones for African Americans
Historically Black Collage & Univ. funding
Criminal justice reform - fewer in prison for low-level non-violent offenses
Trump favors gay marriage (no pretend opposition to it while running ala Obama in 2008)
Trump appointed the first openly gay person to the presidential cabinet.
Energy Independence for United States - no oil excuse for wars/dependence on oil from abroad
Dictators Putin, Maduro, weaker from low oil price
Economy stronger from fracking jobs, low gas price – provided many jobs
Pollution in US is lower now than in Obama years and exceeds Paris Accord goals
Did not take bribes (donations) from tech companies
Pro-Life: Only 4 out of 196 world nations allow abortion on demand at any stage, USA is one of them.
Began ending reliance on China, combating CCP (Chinese Communist Party)
Move w0rld away from Huawei & Belt & Road (30 countries banned Huawei, 12 left Belt & Road)
Alliance with India as counterbalance to China's CCP
Addressed Covid-19:
- Op Ward Speed to find vaccine
- Industrial production of PPE
- Lower death rates in USA than many similar countries
A better deal than NAFTA, the USMC agreement
Peace-start in Middle East - Israel, UAE, Bahrain
ISIS Caliphate defeated, Al-Baghdadi eliminated
Jerusalem capital
Left Iran Agreement (agreement allowed Iran to develop nukes, gave money then used for terrorism)
2nd Nobel nomination for Balkans peace
Release of over 50 hostages; multiple successful rescue operations
Corporate tax cuts to 21% - creating jobs (Sweden tax = 21%, Biden desired tax = 28%)
Re-built military and re-built Veterans Administration healthcare
Price transparency for medical procedures
Executive order to cover pre-existing health conditions
Most Favored Nations (MFN) - U.S. will pay the lowest drug price paid among other wealthy nations.
Right to try potential life-saving non-FDA approved drugs (saved lives)
School choice (vouchers) - this is strongly supported by inner-city families.
Gave university males the right to state a defense against sex related accusations
Korea negotiations (not great, but better than Obama admin.)
No Sanctuary Cities - i.e. opposed policy of non-deportation of convicted criminals in these cities
Remain in Mexico averted a major immigration crisis
1st Pres. in 39 years not to embroil U.S. in war
Air 7% cleaner, water, Collected twice as much in environ. penaltie, Reduced CO2 - no huge environmental policies but did not hurt and things got better.
Each part starts out with around 48% of the vote as election day approaches. Right both are at 43%-- a sign of the fact there are plenty of people who are not happy with another Trump vs Biden election.
"If the Ds wise up, dump Biden, and nominate a fresh, young face, no matter his/her politics, it will be a blowout."
Well, no one is dumping Biden. Like Trump, the only one able to deny him the nomination is God. For those apocalyptically inclined, perhaps God is using Trump and Biden to take down the US. In either event, who could that fresh, young face belong to? How fresh? How young? Who?
I'm not sure it is so much the gerontocracy as it is disinterest among the younger D's. And that itself is a strange phenomena. Buttigieg, Gutierrez, even the youngest Bush wannabe, didn't so much crash and burn as never catch fire among a young cohort of supporters.
The idea has existed since . . . well, forever that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac and will attract the young as well as continue with the addiction of the old. But that's not the only truism thats under attack in the new generation of Americans
Expect newly elected Maryland governor Wes Moore to make a play for the presidency in a few years. He's a progressive hack who sees himself as Obama: The Sequel. He even gives the same sorts of empty speeches in an Obama-esque style. He's shallow and he's about to squander eight solid but boring years of fiscally responsible state governance, but Democrats and the media will go gaga for him. Just not in 2024—too soon.
He's such a fraud. One of his first major initiatives was to cut millions from a private school voucher program for poor kids that has provided $3 million in tuition to black kids in Baltimore whose parents actually care about their futures. He's so transparently in the pocket of the teachers' unions, and everything he's saying and doing is meant to help burnish his national image when he decides to take the next step. I'm tired of Republicans sneering at pols like Hogan as "RINOS," because they don't seem to understand that jokers like Wes Moore are the only alternative.
I'm in Florida. I support DeSantis for president. I agree with RD that not making commitments to fully alienate the establishment is a big reason DeSantis is "dead in the water". However, I have an opinion on the biggest reason for loss of support: - - Large numbers of ads from the Trump PAC constantly blaring that DeSantis wants to hurt old people because of his record of voting twice to "cut" social security 8 years ago in the U.S congress hurt immensely, I believe.
The PAC ad damage is consistent with support for DeSantis falling, rather than rising or staying steady, with DeSantis now "dead in the water". (Ok, maybe he was always dead in the water...but...).
There are reasons, including the PAC ads, for DeSantis' falling support that must be connected to new or not widely known information about DeSantis. Other reasons for falling support vs support that was never there:
(1) Words out of context on the Stormy Daniels case, plus not outright proclaiming Trump innocent: " "I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair..." This saw great fury from so many on the right. Even some on the fence saw it as utter disloyalty.
(2) Signing Florida's six-week abortion ban saw some drop off. Why? Whereas some had thought DeSantis could win and Trump could not, they now think neither could win, so why not go with the one the like more. Additionally, some very rich doners want abortion banned at 15 weeks or even later rather than six weeks. Rich doners and their influence and ads do make a difference.
I would add that DeSantis really has run a poor campaign with entirely too much effort expended on the digital world.
It isn't just a handful of rich people who think fifteen weeks is a good cutoff for abortion-- most of the country, even a great many Republicans-- even Donald Trump-- would buy into that as acceptable standard
I'm in Florida as well, where DeSantis absolutely ran the table at the state level, getting every priority passed by the state Legislature in order to cement his bona fides as he runs for president. His leadership in Florida is one reason I'm in his corner at the national level - but his campaign has been terrible for a variety of reasons/
1. He waited too long to announce. He sat around, sat around, everyone knew he was running but he was being coy. Trump, you'll note, is never coy - he comes off as more forthright. GOP voters want forthright.
2. DeSantis's adversarial relationship with the press may serve him well with "the base," but the relentless press hostility and the very dishonest way in which they've reported on things like "Don't Say Gay" has hurt him. He pushes back but not hard enough; particularly with the in-state media, he could push back a LOT harder. But it's up to right-wing media to point out that, say, when people actually READ the "don't say gay" legislation a significant majority of them AGREE with it.
Bottom line, DeSantis has let the media set the agenda. Trump sets the agenda for the media.
3. I'm sorry, DeSantis has a whiny voice. That alone turns people off.
I think DeSantis figured, logically, that there are a heck of a lot of former Trump voters out there who are tired of the soap opera and who want a tough populist conservative without all the drama. But say what we will about Trump, he comes across at the Resolute Leader - DeSantis struggles to convey the same... "gravitas" isn't the word given we're talking about Trump, but you get what I'm saying.
Thing is, DeSantis's background - Yale and Harvard; veteran - are a huge plus. NOT being Trump is a huge plus. And with all the hatred his actual policies have generated from the left - like I said, once you actually READ them they're common-sense. The idea that we're not going to teach ender ideology in kindergarten - that's supposed to be "controversial?" Only in left-wing la-la land.
And then, Florida's economy is humming; this in turn is in large part because DeSantis was right on COVID, going lighter on the lockdown. Even today his enemies in the Florida press say he should have been tougher; they are wrong.
Yet even with all this, he flails. The electorate isn't ready to move on from Trump; and DeSantis just has zero personal magnetism. None of the affability of a Reagan. In the end that may be the biggest problem of all.
I'd add another factor: he's trying ti get to the Right of Trump. The problem there is that he's perforce wading in the fever swamps, and there be alligators and water moccasins. A better positioning would have been to pose as the (approximate) ideological clone of Trump, but a capable one with a record on solid results.
I agree. Positioning himself as a governor with a record of policy success (which subtly indicates and ability to work across the aisle though that hasn't happened here in FL with the GOP legislative supermajority) would have been/would be the better call.
On the other hand, DeSantis IS to the right of Trump, and he may be trying to make that distinction for the benefit of the "base"/primary voters.
Agreed; despite his rhetoric, Trump wasn't terribly "right wing" in his policies (though anyone to the right of McGovern is usually labeled that by the press).
But where DeSantis is to the right of Trump it doesn't help him: as Ahmari points out DeSantis is still suspect as the candidate of Randites and libertarians. He has done far too little to dispel that impression. And while Ahmari certainly doesn't like it, DeSantis' old-style SoCon moves, notably on abortion, are not helping either as the GOP base has moved on from those issues and is not foot stomping about banning abortion or tossing gays back in the closet. Trump is close to the sweet spot on those things. It's not 1980 any more.
Linda, you are absolutely right about Social Security. The modern Republican must get away from green-eyeshade politics- the late Robert Novak's phrase- and get away from Social Security and Medicare cuts. People of all political shades believe those two entitlements are earned benefits.
We're not going to see any blow outs either way. We remain a narrowly divided nation where 48% of the people will vote R and 48% will vote D even if the nominee they vote for is dumber than a box of rocks or more evil than Caligula. We are stuck in this rut and will remain so for the foreseeable future absent a catastrophe that kills off enough people to change the demographics.
Even McCain won 46 % although he was widely despised by his own party, supported the debacle in Iraq, and came on the heels of a failed Bush presidency and a stock market collapse. The days or Reagan and Johnson and Roosevelt are over.
Yeah I was gonna vote for McCain despite my misgivings over his overly interventionist foreign policy. But once I realized Sarah Palin was dumber than a box of rocks & proud of it, I bailed. If he’d picked someone else I probably would have stuck with him.
McCain was more dangerous than Palin or Obama, more eager for war and military shwashbuckling.. Had he been elected, the Republicans would have been trounced in 2010 and been relegated to a small block in Congress. Mrs. Palin was in over her head nationally but she was a rather good governor. Negotiating mineral and petroleum rights fees is the most important job of a governor in Alaska. She did a good job. I believe McCain picked her for two basic reasons. First, she was tribute to the conservatives of the Republican Party. Second, McCain was enchanted with Sarah Palin's good looks. McCain was always a lady's man.
Before the VP nod, Sarah Palin was the most popular governor in the entire country. The Dems were very, very scared of her, hence all the effort to smear her and make her look dumb.
"A very conservative friend of mine stated that he doesn't trust DeSantis because establishment Rs like Jeb Bush have endorsed him. Is this a commonly held view amongst the MAGAs?"
It's a meme. It's from the same crowd that doesn't like Giorgia Meloni because she's trying to like, you know, govern. With Giorgia the big guns are usually assumed to be her support for Ukraine. What these geniuses seem not to realize is that Italy's support or non-support of Zelinksy means zero directly and a lot with staying sweet with Brussels and Washington. Tough stuff like that.
I don’t really know what’s going on in Italy but the reports are that she is rolling over for the EU and changed her stance on immigration flooding the country. Basically doing a complete reversal of her promises. Ya know, like what standard republicans have been doing to their base for decades.
I was going to let this pass, but honest, you ought to wise up.
The story has a deadline of Aug. 10, 2022. Meloni did not become prime minister (in Italy it's called President of the Council) until more than 60 days later. So your citation is worthless.
Politicians running for office say things all the time. Like, "I'm going to build a wall."
Here's another pro-tip. Turn off the volume. Watch what they do, not what they say.
I remember hearing reports that if the laptop contents had been more widely known it was likely that trump would have won in spite of all the other democratic machinations to rig the election.
Instead of being like blacks in the Jim Crow south, Boers are more like Jews in 1920s-30s Europe: a minority hated because they're considered too well off
I was thinking the same thing, and pondering the fact that holier-than-thou NYT is totally blind to the fact they are in the role of running cover for the Third Reich. The lack of historical and moral perspective is stunning, as is their utter absence of self-awareness.
That scary craziness in South Africa immediately made me think of Tom Sharpe's masterpiece, "Riotous Assembly", which I first read in the early 80s. It's a satirical (and absolutely hysterical) takedown of apartheid and makes that system look as foolish and wrong as it deserved. Note that it's not a book for the prudish! But it seems apparent that apartheid's replacement isn't that great an improvement if you have people calling for the murder of others.
Some billionaire funded supranational organisations want to institute a global government. They can't achieve that aim without the destruction of our individual cultures and our nation states. It is a deliberate policy.
The uber-elite could have a global government with local cultures alive and well. They would need enough representative members in their cabal of the world's major cultures (Europe/America, China, India, Africa, Latin America, Islam...) and would have to mouth suitable bromides and pieties about the various world cultures while keeping a tight reign on on the actual levers of power. The Habsburgs and the Ottomans-- the competent ones that is-- pulled off the multi-national empire thing.
This gang of globalist overlords are 'anywheres'. They have no patriotic feelings or allegiance to their country of birth. They hop from London to New York to Tokyo. They regard the 'somewheres', the people with ties to community, land, family, ancestors, as outdated. They despise us.
Their vision is one of open borders and fluidity, where capital and labour can move around freely and interchangeably to where it is required.
No, no they couldn't--because there would be someone outside of their control, who calls you immoral and wicked and--what's worse--keeps you out.
Sure, the rest of the world would be open to them and any normal person would be satisfied with that. But they are not normal. They are corrupted with power, and continually thirst for more.
Re: No, no they couldn't--because there would be someone outside of their control, who calls you immoral and wicked and--what's worse--keeps you out.
People have cussed out their rulers for time immemorial. "The dogs bark but the caravan passes". The ruling class needs to develop thicker skins (a lot of people these days do!). As long as have money and power why should they care whether or not they are loved?
I think the aspect you're missing here is that the people of an Ottoman satrapy were zero threat to the ruling class of the Empire, as they had no ballot and no way to affect power—the best they could do would be to stir up some revolt and then get themselves massacred or maybe overthrow a certain satrap who would just then be replaced by a new satrap. But the Deplorables took (some) power in 2016 and this must never be allowed to happen again.
Also the god of our ruling elite is this nebulous crowd-sourced abstraction called the Right Side of History™ and as this is an anxious god for an anxious people, all other gods must either be erased or incorporated into a subservient position to their god. In their minds, all the old gods are guilty of sins against the Marginalized (and against the future) so they must be throttled for safety before they cause future "harms".
What we're living through is an internal colonization, and all new rulers make sure to knock all the old gods off their pedestals, so the new ruling gods can take precedence and get the worship they deserve.
These people so lack self-awareness that they don't realize how stupid they look jetting to Davos in private aircraft and decrying environmental damage. John Kerry. Leonardo DeCaprio. All are cultural nihilists.
The "Multiculturalism" of the elites means you can be of any color, language, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation (or any other way you can slice or dice people into groups)--but you must, simply *MUST*, think and act like a a western liberal consumer.
You want to have a nation that rejects international banking? The expansion of multinational corporations? Keeps out immoral movies, music, or television? Refuses the Rainbow flag?
Both sides love to portray bog standard opponents as radical extremists. This has the very bad side effect of desenstizing is to the real extremists when they come along.
Far-right isn’t extremism, though. What’s more, used to describe anyone who is vaguely critical of anything vaguely leftist. Ideology isn’t a neat sliding spectrum. Calling someone Marxist is very specific, whether it’s inflammatory or not, and Marxism is a concrete ideology that has very clearly influenced a lot of today’s left-wing politics. There is simply no such concrete equivalent to right-wing politics, much less far-right.
Fair enough, if that's as far as it goes. But remember, Marx was an economist by training and not a real politician, though he did resort to political polemics to advance his economic ideas. Thus, to call someone's social agenda "Marxist" misses the mark completely.
There is still no denying the impact his revolutionary ideas have had on culture and ideology today. Mostly due to what people have done with his ideas, sure.
His revolutionary ideas were economic, and to the extent that these economic ideas have come to be associated with socialism or communism - here I discount his Manifesto of 1848 as simple political polemic and not a systematic idea or thesis - you are correct. But to stretch that to cover the extension of economic or social programs under the cover of "socialism" or "socialist agenda" is a bridge too far.
A key element of Marx's impact is its groundedness in hatred. Read Leopold Schwarzschild's The Red Prussian. It has been easy for a critique of society grounded in hatred that focused on "class" to be adapted to a critique of society based on hatred between men and women, or between members of different ethnic groups.
Here's historian George Watson:
---It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Hitler and his associates believed they were socialists, and that others, including democratic socialists, thought so too. The title of National Socialism was not hypocritical. The evidence before 1945 was more private than public, which is perhaps significant in itself. In public Hitler was always anti-Marxist, and in an age in which the Soviet Union was the only socialist state on earth, and with anti-Bolshevism a large part of his popular appeal, he may have been understandably reluctant to speak openly of his sources. His megalomania, in any case, would have prevented him from calling himself anyone's disciple. That led to an odd and paradoxical alliance between modern historians and the mind of a dead dictator. Many recent analysts have fastidiously refused to study the mind of Hitler; and they accept, as unquestioningly as many Nazis did in the 1930s, the slogan "Crusade against Marxism" as a summary of his views. An age in which fascism has become a term of abuse is unlikely to analyse it profoundly.
His private conversations, however, though they do not overturn his reputation as an anti-Communist, qualify it heavily. Hermann Rauschning, for example, a Danzig Nazi who knew Hitler before and after his accession to power in 1933, tells how in private Hitler acknowledged his profound debt to the Marxian tradition. "I have learned a great deal from Marxism" he once remarked, "as I do not hesitate to admit". He was proud of a knowledge of Marxist texts acquired in his student days before the First World War and later in a Bavarian prison, in 1924, after the failure of the Munich putsch. The trouble with Weimar Republic politicians, he told Otto Wagener at much the same time, was that "they had never even read Marx", implying that no one who had failed to read so important an author could even begin to understand the modern world; in consequence, he went on, they imagined that the October revolution in 1917 had been "a private Russian affair", whereas in fact it had changed the whole course of human history! His differences with the communists, he explained, were less ideological than tactical. German communists he had known before he took power, he told Rauschning, thought politics meant talking and writing. They were mere pamphleteers, whereas "I have put into practice what these peddlers and pen pushers have timidly begun", adding revealingly that "the whole of National Socialism" was based on Marx.---
Source: "Hitler and the Socialism Dream," The Independent (UK), 22 Nov. 1998. Watson wrote a book on Marx-Nazi connections, The Lost Literature of Socialism.
Jim, what you miss in your conception of Marxism is it is like a virus. Marx spoke solely in economic terms but that was the paradigm for his particular place in history. Because Marx was wrong about how the revolution would start and with whom as its foot soldiers, violent Marxist revolutions only occurred in feudal societies, i.e. Russia and China. The workers in western countries were better off under capitalism compared to their previous lives and were not about to rock the boat. So, Marxists such as Gramsci and the members of the Frankfurt School reworked the ideology sort of like a virus mutating and Marxism turned to the method of spreading it by the "long march through the institutions" i.e. culture, as the way to implement a Marxist society/government. This took hold here in the U.S. when the Frankfurt School professors fled Germany in the 1930s. Unfortunately they got jobs at USC, Harvard etc. and spreading the virus here. The virus took hold in academia under the headings "Critical Studies" and has mutated into Critical Theory, Critical Social Justice, Queer Theory, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Antiracist movement, Intersectionality, Liberation Theology, ad nauseam. Marx said his ideology (really a religion) was, at its core, the merciless criticism of everything. The present crop of Social Justice proponents (such as Kendi, Tisby, DiAngelo, at al), are, whether they admit it or not, Marxists. Another slight difference is our present day Marxists don't emphasize the primacy of violence like the Leninist/Stalinists and Maoists did. They no longer preach the violent takeover of governments. They still see violence as useful in certain circumstances, such as the BLM/Antifa summer of love we were treated to after Saint George Floyd was martyred. Here is the textbook definition of "Woke" put forward by George Fredrickson: "An administered political economy, in which shares are adjusted, so that citizens are made equal." Now tell me what that sounds like. The difference between Marx's version and the present day version is the type of shares to be redistributed. They just have added social and cultural capital along with economic and material capital.
I don't disagree with much of what you say. HOWEVER, I still hold these are not Marx's ideas and so shouldn't be called Marxism. If "Marxists such as Gramsci and the members of the Frankfurt School reworked the ideology" and call it Marxism, I suppose I could rework the ideas you have and call it Dayism. And that would make me a Dayist. Aren't you glad that we, like Marx, won't be bothered by such stuff in 130 years or so?
I somewhat disagree. There may be nothing as specific as Marxism, but then today's Leftism has little to do with Marx. And there apologiae for fascist governance and white supremacy out there.
I think today's Leftism gets likened to Marxism because of its embrace of the false binary "Oppressors vs Victims." They just have different oppressors and victims.
It’s just the trajectory thought has taken from Marx and Freud to Marcuse to today’s critical theorists, whose ideas are everywhere and unrecognizable by the average person. It’s a broad but nonetheless very clean, straight line, though. Maybe it’s never what Marx intended, I don’t know, but his influence is inarguably massive.
Maybe, but Marxism is all about economics. Even legitimate "cultural Marxists" like Gramsci were firmly anchored in the ideology of class struggle. The New Left (I'll call it that) seems to have lost all awareness of class.
I have yet to hear "dirty commie socialist pinko" in anything other than a sarcastic context, in contrast to "far right", and I've been around a great many years now.
Hmmm...I googled "dirty, commie, socialist pinko": nothing. Then I googled "pinko", scrolling through the first hundred entries or so. Lots of definitions of "pinko" but nowhere being used to criticize the left. I then googled "commie". Again nothing in the first hundred entries I looked at using the term "commie" to criticize.
I then googled "Far-right". Some definitions. *Mostly* articles critical of the far-right.
I don't think far-right has a ways to go to catch up with "dirty, commie, socialist pinko"
"socialist" is used pejoratovely by some on the further right (eg. Glen Beck), and positively by the left. Most folks don't think of it negatively, and perhaps somewhat positively, likely having heard about it in a positive light at school.
"Far right" on the other hand, has zero positive association, and strong negative association. All righties distance themselves from the term, and often criticize those they consider far right, using the term.
What is more, most people use the terms "Far-right", "racist" and "fascist" as synonyms. Wrong.
the National *Socialist* Party(Nazis) were on the left and originally allied with Stalin. (They did disagree with some fellow leftists, just as Bolsheviks disagreed with Mensheviks.) Nazis were nationalist but on the left. The authoritarian left, with government hand-in-hand with big business though not officially owning every business. ( Like Democrats today.)
I cannot think of one person who self-describes as "far-right". The term is just, in my view, something the media started doing so youth would think all on the right are either racist or next-door to it and in sympathy with it.
There is nothing, nothing right wing about racism!!!!!!
You aren't going to find many historians who agree with your views on Nazism. And I doubt if you will find any that think Hitler's association with Stalin to be more than realpolitik.
I agree about historians, i.e., experts. Other than appeal to authority - which is legit but not always the final way to find truth - is there a way to refute what I am saying?
Or...how about this....could you agree that "Hitler was not right-wing". If you disagree, could you state a right-wing policy of Hitler's other than nationalism (I admit, associated with the right these days) and the false association of racism with the right?
Putin is certainly a nationalist. Is he right-wing? Heck Xi (pronounced "she") is a nationalist and a racist.
The Nazis were a blend of right and left. They were right on nationalism, militarism and racism. They were left in desire for state power and management of the economy by the central government.
I think this is wrong-headed, sorry. The Nazis were a rightist party. What Hitler is reputed to have said is, "There was no need to nationalize industry. I nationalized the people."
I would agree with the other posters, Nazism is fundamentally a fringe branch of conservatism. Let's look at many of Adolf's political positions:
-he felt, modern sexually explicit art was degenerate and should be shunned in deference to the old masters
-supported a strong pro-natalist movement
-hated prostitution, called it a disgrace upon humanity
-strongly against lgbt (which was rampant in Weimar germany)
-valued traditional society in particular familial ties
-loved Samurai honor society, wanted to enact it in Europe
In total, all these policies are right wing, plain and simple. I know it's tempting to try to distance the right from the Nazis, but it's more honest to admit that our side can commit genocide too
Well, Archibald Bunker of 305 Howser Street in Queens said "dirty, commie, pinko" often enough. And he was right. Meathead was a "dirty, commie, pinko."
OK, Woody Allen, from the left, over 50 years ago in 1971, played into the leftist stereotype that people often call others commie pinko, etc. by having someone say them in his script. Does not support the idea that those terms are not really used very often. Satire is not supposed to portray exact images of real life.
"A tweet from the account of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday used language that many observers say evokes the known Nazi hate symbol “1488.”
RFK said: "Typical turnaround time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days. After 88-days of no response and after several follow-ups by our campaign, "
BTW, this relates to the sad topic of Biden denying Secret Service protection to RFK, though every major candidate since 1968 has had it.
Re: Trump is the guy who has walked into the party, punched the host in the face and pissed all over the carpet. There's no going back for him, and everybody knows it.
And then he promptly passed out and woke up later with a screaming hangover complaining that someone put something in his drink. And meanwhile the party continued, and the drunk became the butt of jokes.
As for the Great Replacement it's bullshyte, well fermented. The cold reality we all need to face is that yes, we're all going to be replaced. It's called Death and our awareness of it is the fundamental problem of human consciousness. Our one true hope is in salvation in the Kingdom of Heaven-- but even so we will not be trundling around this Earth in, say, 2518 AD*. There's a paganistic notion that having kids is somehow a form of immortality but that's false: your kids are not you, and after sufficient generations have passed your descendants won't even know your name or care (well, maybe the odd genealogy hobbyist might). The lesson is just this; Seek the Kingdom of Heaven as far as your long term prospects go. None of us can rule the future.
* Well, maybe if you believe in Reincarnation. But of course you may then come back as anyone: A Nigerian guy, an Eskimo woman, a Mumbai slum dweller...
Your dismissal of the Great Replacement concept as bullshit only shows that you don't know anything about it. That's fine -- I thought I understood it too, which is why I dismissed it as a conspiracy theory. But I didn't get it, till I read Camus.
I plan to get the Camus book and thanks for the recommendation. I am contemplating that cities and suburbs are more apt for Great Replacements than rural areas. Think of Louisiana. West Feliciana is much the same as when you grew up. But Walker Percy's New Orleans of Binx and Aunt Emily is long gone and I think it's a damned shame. New Orleans once was civilized and it has been killed off since 1960.
Why should I care? I will shuffle off this mortal coil and at some point down the line the future, including what's now the US, won't just be different than I imagine but different from what I can imagine. And setting aside the fact that human beings are not like the Bene Gesserit of "Dune": they have no ancestral memories to call on and they are utterly incompetent at projects that require lifetimes to realize. Not to mention the fact that "Man proposes, God disposes" and even measly Five Years Plans go off the rails easily.
I know. You never care because you never think that any of the issues Rod presents affect you. If it hasn't happened to you or is unlikely to happen to you, then it doesn't matter and anyone else who is affected by whatever the issue is just making a mountain out of a molehill.
"And then he promptly passed out..." -- this is a really good extension of the metaphor. I agree entirely!
But the beauty of Trump was not in his governance, it was in getting elected. That's all he really had to do. It was the most useful possible thing he could have done. It was what he was built for. He's a blunt object, and he achieved his purpose, and I wish he would exit gracefully now, but he can't, that feature just does not come with this package.
He was never going to be able to do much more than get elected (once), and not only for his own limitations. It is unlikely that any other person passing through the gates of the primaries will have more efficacy. Trump having got past the bouncers once, that type of thing will not happen again.
A corollary to that is no one should wring their hands over too much over who to vote for in the general election. The general election is mainly a circus at this point. *Act* your conscience, don't vote your conscience, cast your vote in the manner your conscience tells you will do the most good.
Someone else said it best, I don't know who: Trump didn't drain the swamp, but he did lower it enough for everyone to have a good view of what's in it.
Being elected is useless if one cannot govern. In fact, worse than useless as it brings contempt and disdain on the cause one purported to serve. Trump led to the resurgence of the Left after all.
I don't care what color my children or grandchildren are (my kids are darker than me), or what language they speak. But I do want them to exist in a nation that does not hate them for that, and does not normalize hatred for those things (generally today against whites) against anyone.
And frankly, if our immigrants are more religious than those they replace (Muslim or Christian, frankly either one is better to me than current western anti-religiosity), it's a net gain as far as I'm concerned. HOWEVER, I fear that by the 2nd or 3rd generation, they'll be indoctrinated by thr schools and the culture at large to be simply wokists of a darker hue.
Something we all have to accept, just by plain comm,on sense and historical experience: One's descendants will not be one's ideological clones; they believe and disbelieve, support and reject things different from oneself. You yourself are a Muslim convert, which I suspect would deeply shock some of your ancestors. And so what? We ought honor our forbears, insofar as they were honorable people by the light of their own day (though yes certain atrocities are beyond the pale in any age). But there is no requirement on us to agree with the dead in everything under the sun.
I actually agree with you there, but that does not tie to any specific religion or theological doctrine. As I noted you became a Muslim. Rod (and myself) became Orthodox Christians. Absent strong legal (or social) sanctions conversions are always a possibility.
Agreed; and what it appears is that generally speaking, the religious reproduce at greater rates than the irreligious (when birth control is available). So long-term, I believe that eventually those more inclined to religion will outnumber those disinclined. The irreligious genes haven't been "bred out" since effective birth control and legal safe (for the mother) abortion is recent, but their effects will eventually be seen.
And yes, the *content* of that religion can and does change. Those who seek "Enchantment" find it somewhere, and if they try to plug into a system that doesn't encourage it (e.g., western secularism), they'll feel discontent until and unless they find it elsewhere.
Re: So long-term, I believe that eventually those more inclined to religion will outnumber those disinclined.
I don't think so. when people make these arguments they do so without understanding mutation and genetic drift. Mutation is more the rule than the rare exception, and genetic drift cancels all bets over the long haul. And we can't pretend there are no environmental and experiential factors involved in whether people are religious or not.
Before I read the rest of Rod Dreher's post, I had to get off a comment about David Brooks, who I am told is an amiable, humble man. The condescension in his writing how the higher classes should be more considerate of the lower working classes is pregnant with incomprehension of the type of people who have come to despise the elites. The average Trump voter is not a janitor or a fentanyl addict or a youngster frying chicken for Popeye's. Trump voters tend to be wealthier than Biden voters and much more often self-employed. They are much more likely to be small businessmen. I wonder if David Brooks has ever met a payroll. I bet not. It's not easy. Your average small businessman has it far tougher and has to be far smarter than some credentialed bureaucrat at the EPA or the Department of Labor or the Department of Agriculture. Bureaucrats not only don't have to produce anything for a profit, they virtually can't be fired.
Bureaucrats can and are laid off-- if you look at the figures on public employment, they bounce up and down with the economy. Though such layoffs must proceed according to overt standards: generally, with seniority as a major factor, as used to be true in the private sector where alas it is now the case that the longer you've been there the more likely you are to be pink-slipped since your salary is too tempting a target for the budget-cutters who can then turn around and higher some recent college graduate for a fraction of it.
I know it is an anecdote, but my wife was a biologist with the EPA in the 1990s. According to her, some of her fellow bureaucrats did nothing but sit in their offices reading the sports pages and staring into their computers. Secretaries couldn't be trusted to seal an envelope.
I read the Brooks piece and I think it's one of the first attempts to explain to New York Times readers in the elite what their failings and faults are. Brooks doesn't do a sterling job of it, but he's circling around a big and important point we don't often see addressed by the NYTimes toward the readers in its bubble.
I think you're right, though, that the NYTimes bubble readers need to hear more about why the small businessman, the sold proprietor, the guy who runs a plumbing business or an extermination business or a gutter cleaning company, also hates them too.
Sometimes people crack on Ross Douthat for not being harder line. I tell them, "Do you know the kind of audience he's writing to?!" That column from Brooks amounted to taking his readers by the shoulders and talking to them face to face about things they don't want to think about.
Your characterization of Brooks' column is likely correct, but I seriously doubt his audience of the best and the brightest will pay one whit of attention to it.
You are right. The urban credentialed left lives in a bubble. Every conservative is a troglodyte living under rocks armed to the teeth with guns, beating their wives, and attending reactionary churches that want to bring Savonarola's social policies to the whole nation. The urban credentialed left is actually parasitic. They receive cheap food that they don't produce themselves. They receive fairly cheap energy they don't produce. Their homes were built by others. Their cars were built by others. Fifty million of the urban credentialed left could simply vanish into thin air and America would be a better country.
I like where Brooks almost broke the conditioning:
"Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we've all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison."
David is literally a walking Principal Skinner meme
In a previous life, I administered millions in federal criminal justice grant money for the state (yes, I am a jack-booted bureaucrat). The thing that amazed me when having to deal with DOJ was just how ignorant the folks in DC are about the rest of the country. I had one official demand that we convene a stakeholders (I hate that word) meeting to decide how best to strategically (second most hated word) dole out the money in the state. I said it was impossible. The shocked DOJer asked me why. I explained that such a meeting would have to include 254 sheriffs, 5x254 county commissioners, around 200 district and county attorneys, 181 members of the legislature, and the 24 heads of the regional councils of government - and that was only the state and county level folks, it didn't include all the non-profits and city governments that we worked with. Thes best part was her reaction to what I explained- "That can't be true!"
I've been one of those "stakeholders." Their shock is palpable when the purse-string holders do a site visit and see that the money wasn't enough, and that the problem it was meant to address, which they had only pondered in the abstract, is our day-to-day reality, and still exists.
I think grant funding by the federal government is one of the most evil things that goes on with our government. Tax money is taken from people, sent to DC, where it's bundled up in some crazy federal program (which requires the feds taking 25% off the top for "administration"') which requires the locals to go beg for money with all sorts of often-times ludicrious strings attached. It makes no freaking sense. And I say this as someone who participated in the administration of lots of those programs. The net result is dependency and subservience.
Yeah—most of my experience is with state and county-level grants, but much of that money has inefficiently passed through the federal government. Right now an organization I'm involved with is learning to work the system by getting federal funds through our Congressional rep, which involves getting to know a bunch of paid legislative aides...and yeah, it's amazing how many people have to get paid just for a local government or a civic nonprofit to get a trickle of funding.
One of my local elected officials is super-excited about a wildly unnecessary aesthetic and infrastructure project. His defense of the project is that federal Covid stimulus money is paying for it, so it's "free" to locals. There's no awareness that this "free" money is part of the reason people are paying more for things like milk and eggs, why a tiny rotisserie chicken that my grocery store was just going to throw away anyway costs $9, and why some cheap-ass made-in-China lampshade at a discount store is priced (as my debit card and I learned tonight) at an insane $25....
If I had a nickle for every time I heard "free money", I would be a very very rich man! I don't think people realize how much of their states' government functions are actually paid for by federal dollars (with all the control and bureaucracy that comes with it).
I love it when people with a little education (like Brooks) view themselves as these great geniuses at the level of Kant, Dryden, and Newton because they went to college.
Kids today are worse, they get this sense of superiority because they answered some multiple choice tests well enough to get a BS in communications at State School U. These types are actually the most likely candidates for snobby, overeducated liberals
I have two separate comments. First, the whole Trump-Russia collusion was always a fraud but you have to be of an older age to understand it. When Russia became communist in 1917, many left-wing Americans supported communist Russia. The Great Depression brought more left-wing Americans to support communist Russia. When the Soviet Union was our ally of convenience in World War Two, many left-wing Americans came to support communist Russia. When Vietnam turned out so badly, more left-wing Americans became supporters of communist Russia. The Presidency of Ronald Reagan brought more left-wing American support for communist Russia. Left-wing Americans were supportive of Russia when it was communist but became enemies of Russia when it became authoritarian and nationalist.
As for South Africa, at least 2000 white farmers have been murdered in last twenty years, most of them old, vulnerable men and women. They were killed and brutalized by cowardly men much like the cowards that murdered Emmet Till in Mississippi. Political leaders of South Africa seem to encourage these murders. I wonder how it is to be a despised minority of 8% that owns most of the land and most of the wealth. America has a few counties in Mississippi that have similar characteristics. Fortunately, there are no black pograms of white landowners in Mississippi. Big Daddy is safe.
I've actually been to S. Africa, once, though I can't say I saw much of it. When I got to my hotel room at sunset there was a letter on the night table from security at my employer saying I oughtn't to leave the hotel after dark. Great. Nearly a solar day on an airplane I have to stay in my room watching CNN.
I went downstairs and there was a Nando's situation in the lobby. There was also a passage that let to a mall, and catty corner with the passage's end was a bookstore. I mean, how bad could it be?
The only people in the mall were the cleaning ladies and the clerks in the bookstore. VERY unfriendly. I bought a new translation of Turgenev's Smoke to read on the plane on the way back and got my pasty white ass back up to my room.
And this was well before things really began to fall apart.
My mentor who taught me herbalism is South African. She migrated to the UK and recently brought her elderly mother over. Her mother sold her huge house in South Africa for peanuts. But at least in rural England she doesn't have to be worried about getting murdered.
White South Africans with any sense at all ought to get out of that country fast.
>> The paper of record tells us that a stadium full of hardcore black nationalist Marxist-Leninists.....
>> In the spirit of Walter Duranty, the Times Moscow correspondent who was secretly spinning the news Stalin’s way, the paper lies to protect a liberal narrative.
Stop blaming it on Communists. Disingenuous deflection from what you know is the true and only matter. And far too many critics on the polite right spin narratives, won't name the name, so as to keep good company with their liberal friends/associates.
And no, we can't all get along. Lot and Abraham came to a reasonable settlement. The whites, blacks and coloreds in South Africa could have - and still could - come to a similar arrangement.
Trump voters are elites of a type. Now some of the MAGA within the Republican Party was a confabulation of prior fringe groups who used all kinds of methods to put themselves within the ranks of the party particularly when Tea Party activism proved impotent in running candidates or moving the party agenda. Going back a few years, some of the experimental or extreme ideological views of groups that were given a platform within the tea party like settings were pre-MAGA and hyper engaged. Some of those ideas belong to people who have been planted within the local Republican Party know as Republican Executive Committees. There’s been infighting to prevent people who don’t live in the area they claim to sign up for precincts, run for committees etc or fill long vacant precinct positions. There has been an insurgency push at different times to enter the party leadership to vote or make a scene at meetings etc. Some of these folks might be the type that believe in common law grand juries and sovereign citizen type movements so it is not a stretch that they could be more radical if someone was stoking their fantasies. There’s no unringing that bell especially in places where the takeover was so subtle that the party is something completely transformed. I don’t think anyone can have American values and be involved with any party so entrenched with sovereign citizen groups. It’s a rot that has taken hold most identifiably in rural parts of Florida. That our public intellectuals were not calling this out and evaluating MAGA properly! God have mercy on them. So-called populism as a blanket term does not cut it! We have Folk Marxism on the Right & Left. We have scammers and fakes like sovereign citizen groups doing chameleon things to institutionalize themselves within a legitimate organization and no one is calling it. If anything our public intellectuals have done mental and moral gymnastics to justify so much crazy and unbelievable nonsense instead of saying “I don’t know” or “the devil I don’t know…and I am too lazy and herd bound to find out” I swear the whole media is just repeating the campaigns because they don’t know how to find sources, chase stories etc. They know they will lose tips if they don’t help their friends in publicity office as if that’s the place you’re getting anything like breaking news. Trump was smart to find the must charged person in the room; the idiot we were embarrassed of and ignoring for years…Trump knows how much energy television and media requires to keep attention and look good the crank in person is the right temperature on the tube…and because he listens to that toothless hound he had a loyal dog for all of his life. I don’t think that Trump as a person is the least bit ideological. I think he is somewhat anachronistic if anything. He knows how to find the flamers and grab energy and make an impression on people that’s a bit dazzling. It’s called show business. I don’t know what kind of new world is trying to be born and I’m an optimistic person. At some point I’ll revisit Washington’s warning about parties when he left the his many years of service to our country. That governors and presidents have misunderstood and neglected the inner workings of the parties they ostensibly represent and lead is a remarkable neglect that has gone tremendously unexamined.
If what Renaud Camus ssys about France and the role of the French elite in displacing the French nation iis true how could the violent overthrow og the French state not be justified?
I tried reading the Brooks piece from The New York Times but I refused to pay to get by the firewall so all I got to learn was that I am a reactionary bigot. I'll accept that and I'm actually proud to be a receiver of Brooks' contempt. Which leads me to contemplate something Bill Clinton said a few years ago. Clinton, who has a fertile analytical mind when he wants to use it, said that if you thought all the social changes since the 60s were good, you are probably a Democrat. If you think the changes are for the worse, you are probably a Republican.
Those who support all the changes since the 60s have to accept all the changes. A high divorce rate. A very high illegitimacy rate. 60 million abortions. Increases in social diseases. Hundreds of dysfunctionally run cities, all bastions of the Democratic Party and many of them black-run. Multi-generational cycle of bastardy. Drug abuse. AIDS. Cultural rot. I could go on but I won't. The litany is too long.
My hypothesis: Less racism, more freedom to leave a marriage, freedom from unwanted pregnancy, less stigma for unwed mothers, less condemnation of homosexuality.
It is a little-known fact that more Republicans than Democrats voted in favor Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s. Oh....and most KKK members were Democrats. - Lest Democrats be given all credit "less racism".
"It is a little-known fact that more Republicans than Democrats voted in favor Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s. Oh....and most KKK members were Democrats. - Lest Democrats be given all credit "less racism"."
Almost all the Republicans who voted for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were Northern;
Re the 1965 Civil Rights Act, in the House the vote was:
Southern Democrats: 8 Yea–83 Nay(9–91%)
Southern Republicans: 0–11 Nay (0–100%) against
Northern Democrats: 145 Yea–8 Nay(95–5%)
Northern Republicans: 136 Yea –24 Nay(85–15%)
And in the Senate:
Southern Democrats: 1 Yea–20 Nay(5–95%)
Southern Republicans: 0–1 Nay (0–100%)
Northern Democrats: 45Yea –1 Nay(98–2%)
Northern Republicans: 27 Yea –5 Nay(84–16%)
The same happened with the Voting Rights Act: Southern Democrats in the House and Senate voted AGAINST it, Northern Democrats in the House and Senate voted FOR it.
After that, a large majority of white Democrats in the South switched to the GOP at the national level (House, Senate, President), although continuing to vote Democrat at the local level.
Glad you brought up your stats and they are true. But you should be totally honest regarding the North. In the South, people have a harder time moving away, especially in rural areas. In the North, if a certain city, town or neighborhood has an increase of blacks, the whites move because they can. There is more "white flight" in the North than in the South.
Quiz: Who said that mandatory busing to integrate schools would lead to his children growing up in a "racial jungle."?
Hint: his initials are JB.
Who said: "Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean.”
Who said: “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”
The same person - his initials are JB.
My point is that there are racists in all parties whether or not JB is racist. I suspect he is not , just racially insensitive,(but JB is insensitive to lot of things)
It is unfair and extremely hurtful to call Republicans racist. Again, there are racist in all parties and no party embraces racism.
Well, at the time of these votes, please remember that the South was fighting (in courts and in the Congress) to keep Jim Crow laws and segregation: George Wallace took his oath as Senator in 1963 saying, "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
Quote: "Almost all the Republicans who voted for the Civil Rights Act were Northern"
OK, and 91% of Southern House Democrats, plus 95% of Southern Senate Democrats voted against it, according to the figures above.
So - it was a geographic thing, never a party thing.
My point here is that racism should not be associated with Republicans. It should not be associated with Democrats except when they keep Asians out of top universities - spoiling the deserved careers of some beautiful young people - so that a non-Asian person with lower scores can get a place. But I think the average Democrat is not racist, same for Republicans.
Sure. And all the Democratic voters of the South who supported segregation moved on to the Republican Party and the liberal Republicans of the North who supported desegregation moved on to the Democratic Party. I am willing to bet that Rod Dreher's father was a registered Democrat for most of his life but voted Republican for president from Reagan in 1980 on to his last presidential vote before he died.
Sure. And all the Democratic voters of the South who supported segregation moved on to the Republican Party and the liberal Republicans of the North who supported desegregation moved on to the Democratic Party. I am willing to bet that Rod Dreher's father was a registered Democrat for most of his life but voted Republican for president from Reagan in 1980 on to his last presidential vote before he died.
All good? No. Nothing but the grace of God is 100% good. Everything else is some mix of good and bad. If nothing else, change is disruptive and contra the tech bro passion for disruption that in itself is a defect though there may be good reason to accept it in specific matters.
Excellent Article, Rod! Well balanced in understanding the MAGA movement and why they do not support DeSantis. Ramaswamy’s fierce speech against the latest Trump indictment shows principle, discipline, and keen character. Ramaswamy will bump DeSantis and we will be seeing this hopeful Millennial for a long time!
A huge number of Americans who could not bring themselves to vote for Trump in 2020 because he is extremely rude. Some who could not do it because of multiple marriages and affairs - it is not disputed that Trump has been a womanizer. DeSantis is not rude and no one thinks he is a womanizer.
Disclaimer: I voted Trump in 2020 and will again in 2024 if he is the nominee.
Add: Some think Trump did poorly with Covid and DeSantis did well.
I know people who voted for Trump in 2016 but not in 2020, as they were very turned off, even downright disgusted, by his clownish and incompetent presidency. We need to move on past the Karl Rove theory of elections: No, it's not the base that wins: neither party's base is big enough. It still is the fence sitters, and a Trump candidacy will send most of them toppling over right into Biden's lap.
Before voting Trump in 2020 (I did a write-in in 2016) I made a list. It refutes "clownish and incompetent" , e.g., the CNN-style portrayal. I was up to 36 good things, and my list is far from complete. Here it is:
Strong improvement in wages/jobs of working class.
Lowest Black, Hispanic, Asian unemployment recorded in modern times.
Opportunity zones for African Americans
Historically Black Collage & Univ. funding
Criminal justice reform - fewer in prison for low-level non-violent offenses
Trump favors gay marriage (no pretend opposition to it while running ala Obama in 2008)
Trump appointed the first openly gay person to the presidential cabinet.
Energy Independence for United States - no oil excuse for wars/dependence on oil from abroad
Dictators Putin, Maduro, weaker from low oil price
Economy stronger from fracking jobs, low gas price – provided many jobs
Pollution in US is lower now than in Obama years and exceeds Paris Accord goals
Did not take bribes (donations) from tech companies
Pro-Life: Only 4 out of 196 world nations allow abortion on demand at any stage, USA is one of them.
Began ending reliance on China, combating CCP (Chinese Communist Party)
Move w0rld away from Huawei & Belt & Road (30 countries banned Huawei, 12 left Belt & Road)
Alliance with India as counterbalance to China's CCP
Addressed Covid-19:
- Op Ward Speed to find vaccine
- Industrial production of PPE
- Lower death rates in USA than many similar countries
A better deal than NAFTA, the USMC agreement
Peace-start in Middle East - Israel, UAE, Bahrain
ISIS Caliphate defeated, Al-Baghdadi eliminated
Jerusalem capital
Left Iran Agreement (agreement allowed Iran to develop nukes, gave money then used for terrorism)
2nd Nobel nomination for Balkans peace
Release of over 50 hostages; multiple successful rescue operations
Corporate tax cuts to 21% - creating jobs (Sweden tax = 21%, Biden desired tax = 28%)
Re-built military and re-built Veterans Administration healthcare
Price transparency for medical procedures
Executive order to cover pre-existing health conditions
Most Favored Nations (MFN) - U.S. will pay the lowest drug price paid among other wealthy nations.
Right to try potential life-saving non-FDA approved drugs (saved lives)
School choice (vouchers) - this is strongly supported by inner-city families.
Gave university males the right to state a defense against sex related accusations
Korea negotiations (not great, but better than Obama admin.)
No Sanctuary Cities - i.e. opposed policy of non-deportation of convicted criminals in these cities
Remain in Mexico averted a major immigration crisis
1st Pres. in 39 years not to embroil U.S. in war
Air 7% cleaner, water, Collected twice as much in environ. penaltie, Reduced CO2 - no huge environmental policies but did not hurt and things got better.
I may not always agree with you but this is a nice summation.
Thank you!
If that's the case, why is Trump neck and neck with Biden on the latest polls?
Remember, Biden led Trump by 11 points in the Florida poll, and ended up losing by 4 points.
By that logic, Trump already has roughly a 10 point lead on Biden
Each part starts out with around 48% of the vote as election day approaches. Right both are at 43%-- a sign of the fact there are plenty of people who are not happy with another Trump vs Biden election.
Trump was clownish but not incompetent.
Actually, I see your point. I disproved - I think - "incompetent" but I did not disprove "clownish".
"If the Ds wise up, dump Biden, and nominate a fresh, young face, no matter his/her politics, it will be a blowout."
Well, no one is dumping Biden. Like Trump, the only one able to deny him the nomination is God. For those apocalyptically inclined, perhaps God is using Trump and Biden to take down the US. In either event, who could that fresh, young face belong to? How fresh? How young? Who?
I'm not sure it is so much the gerontocracy as it is disinterest among the younger D's. And that itself is a strange phenomena. Buttigieg, Gutierrez, even the youngest Bush wannabe, didn't so much crash and burn as never catch fire among a young cohort of supporters.
The idea has existed since . . . well, forever that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac and will attract the young as well as continue with the addiction of the old. But that's not the only truism thats under attack in the new generation of Americans
Which is a sign of just how played-out and bankrupt this whole thing has become
what "fresh, young face" do the Democrats have that they could run? surely not Buttigieg or Harris
Expect newly elected Maryland governor Wes Moore to make a play for the presidency in a few years. He's a progressive hack who sees himself as Obama: The Sequel. He even gives the same sorts of empty speeches in an Obama-esque style. He's shallow and he's about to squander eight solid but boring years of fiscally responsible state governance, but Democrats and the media will go gaga for him. Just not in 2024—too soon.
Wes Moore likely will be president some day. He's guaranteed a slavishly devoted press.
He's such a fraud. One of his first major initiatives was to cut millions from a private school voucher program for poor kids that has provided $3 million in tuition to black kids in Baltimore whose parents actually care about their futures. He's so transparently in the pocket of the teachers' unions, and everything he's saying and doing is meant to help burnish his national image when he decides to take the next step. I'm tired of Republicans sneering at pols like Hogan as "RINOS," because they don't seem to understand that jokers like Wes Moore are the only alternative.
Newsom's destruction of California is going to be his biggest problem if he runs
I'm in Florida. I support DeSantis for president. I agree with RD that not making commitments to fully alienate the establishment is a big reason DeSantis is "dead in the water". However, I have an opinion on the biggest reason for loss of support: - - Large numbers of ads from the Trump PAC constantly blaring that DeSantis wants to hurt old people because of his record of voting twice to "cut" social security 8 years ago in the U.S congress hurt immensely, I believe.
The PAC ad damage is consistent with support for DeSantis falling, rather than rising or staying steady, with DeSantis now "dead in the water". (Ok, maybe he was always dead in the water...but...).
There are reasons, including the PAC ads, for DeSantis' falling support that must be connected to new or not widely known information about DeSantis. Other reasons for falling support vs support that was never there:
(1) Words out of context on the Stormy Daniels case, plus not outright proclaiming Trump innocent: " "I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair..." This saw great fury from so many on the right. Even some on the fence saw it as utter disloyalty.
(2) Signing Florida's six-week abortion ban saw some drop off. Why? Whereas some had thought DeSantis could win and Trump could not, they now think neither could win, so why not go with the one the like more. Additionally, some very rich doners want abortion banned at 15 weeks or even later rather than six weeks. Rich doners and their influence and ads do make a difference.
Over on TAC Sohrab Ahmari, a very cogent writer though I disagree with some of his axioms, has a good but too brief take on DeSantis' fading prospects: Re: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/why-trump-is-winning-the-primary-so-far/.
I would add that DeSantis really has run a poor campaign with entirely too much effort expended on the digital world.
It isn't just a handful of rich people who think fifteen weeks is a good cutoff for abortion-- most of the country, even a great many Republicans-- even Donald Trump-- would buy into that as acceptable standard
I'm in Florida as well, where DeSantis absolutely ran the table at the state level, getting every priority passed by the state Legislature in order to cement his bona fides as he runs for president. His leadership in Florida is one reason I'm in his corner at the national level - but his campaign has been terrible for a variety of reasons/
1. He waited too long to announce. He sat around, sat around, everyone knew he was running but he was being coy. Trump, you'll note, is never coy - he comes off as more forthright. GOP voters want forthright.
2. DeSantis's adversarial relationship with the press may serve him well with "the base," but the relentless press hostility and the very dishonest way in which they've reported on things like "Don't Say Gay" has hurt him. He pushes back but not hard enough; particularly with the in-state media, he could push back a LOT harder. But it's up to right-wing media to point out that, say, when people actually READ the "don't say gay" legislation a significant majority of them AGREE with it.
Bottom line, DeSantis has let the media set the agenda. Trump sets the agenda for the media.
3. I'm sorry, DeSantis has a whiny voice. That alone turns people off.
I think DeSantis figured, logically, that there are a heck of a lot of former Trump voters out there who are tired of the soap opera and who want a tough populist conservative without all the drama. But say what we will about Trump, he comes across at the Resolute Leader - DeSantis struggles to convey the same... "gravitas" isn't the word given we're talking about Trump, but you get what I'm saying.
Thing is, DeSantis's background - Yale and Harvard; veteran - are a huge plus. NOT being Trump is a huge plus. And with all the hatred his actual policies have generated from the left - like I said, once you actually READ them they're common-sense. The idea that we're not going to teach ender ideology in kindergarten - that's supposed to be "controversial?" Only in left-wing la-la land.
And then, Florida's economy is humming; this in turn is in large part because DeSantis was right on COVID, going lighter on the lockdown. Even today his enemies in the Florida press say he should have been tougher; they are wrong.
Yet even with all this, he flails. The electorate isn't ready to move on from Trump; and DeSantis just has zero personal magnetism. None of the affability of a Reagan. In the end that may be the biggest problem of all.
I'd add another factor: he's trying ti get to the Right of Trump. The problem there is that he's perforce wading in the fever swamps, and there be alligators and water moccasins. A better positioning would have been to pose as the (approximate) ideological clone of Trump, but a capable one with a record on solid results.
I agree. Positioning himself as a governor with a record of policy success (which subtly indicates and ability to work across the aisle though that hasn't happened here in FL with the GOP legislative supermajority) would have been/would be the better call.
On the other hand, DeSantis IS to the right of Trump, and he may be trying to make that distinction for the benefit of the "base"/primary voters.
Agreed; despite his rhetoric, Trump wasn't terribly "right wing" in his policies (though anyone to the right of McGovern is usually labeled that by the press).
But where DeSantis is to the right of Trump it doesn't help him: as Ahmari points out DeSantis is still suspect as the candidate of Randites and libertarians. He has done far too little to dispel that impression. And while Ahmari certainly doesn't like it, DeSantis' old-style SoCon moves, notably on abortion, are not helping either as the GOP base has moved on from those issues and is not foot stomping about banning abortion or tossing gays back in the closet. Trump is close to the sweet spot on those things. It's not 1980 any more.
Linda, you are absolutely right about Social Security. The modern Republican must get away from green-eyeshade politics- the late Robert Novak's phrase- and get away from Social Security and Medicare cuts. People of all political shades believe those two entitlements are earned benefits.
We're not going to see any blow outs either way. We remain a narrowly divided nation where 48% of the people will vote R and 48% will vote D even if the nominee they vote for is dumber than a box of rocks or more evil than Caligula. We are stuck in this rut and will remain so for the foreseeable future absent a catastrophe that kills off enough people to change the demographics.
Even McCain won 46 % although he was widely despised by his own party, supported the debacle in Iraq, and came on the heels of a failed Bush presidency and a stock market collapse. The days or Reagan and Johnson and Roosevelt are over.
Yeah I was gonna vote for McCain despite my misgivings over his overly interventionist foreign policy. But once I realized Sarah Palin was dumber than a box of rocks & proud of it, I bailed. If he’d picked someone else I probably would have stuck with him.
McCain was more dangerous than Palin or Obama, more eager for war and military shwashbuckling.. Had he been elected, the Republicans would have been trounced in 2010 and been relegated to a small block in Congress. Mrs. Palin was in over her head nationally but she was a rather good governor. Negotiating mineral and petroleum rights fees is the most important job of a governor in Alaska. She did a good job. I believe McCain picked her for two basic reasons. First, she was tribute to the conservatives of the Republican Party. Second, McCain was enchanted with Sarah Palin's good looks. McCain was always a lady's man.
Putting a woman on the ticket was a sort of Hail Mary pass to nullify the gender gap.
So, you think Obama's VP pick was smarter?
I have trouble seeing that given the circumstances of 2008: McCain came across as being clueless on the economy as it was melting down.
Before the VP nod, Sarah Palin was the most popular governor in the entire country. The Dems were very, very scared of her, hence all the effort to smear her and make her look dumb.
She certainly played right into their hands by acting and sounding dumb.
"A very conservative friend of mine stated that he doesn't trust DeSantis because establishment Rs like Jeb Bush have endorsed him. Is this a commonly held view amongst the MAGAs?"
It's a meme. It's from the same crowd that doesn't like Giorgia Meloni because she's trying to like, you know, govern. With Giorgia the big guns are usually assumed to be her support for Ukraine. What these geniuses seem not to realize is that Italy's support or non-support of Zelinksy means zero directly and a lot with staying sweet with Brussels and Washington. Tough stuff like that.
I don’t really know what’s going on in Italy but the reports are that she is rolling over for the EU and changed her stance on immigration flooding the country. Basically doing a complete reversal of her promises. Ya know, like what standard republicans have been doing to their base for decades.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.eu/article/giorgia-meloni-im-not-a-fascist-i-like-the-tories-says-italys-far-right-leader/amp/
Liking the UK Tories is a really really really bad sign
I was going to let this pass, but honest, you ought to wise up.
The story has a deadline of Aug. 10, 2022. Meloni did not become prime minister (in Italy it's called President of the Council) until more than 60 days later. So your citation is worthless.
Politicians running for office say things all the time. Like, "I'm going to build a wall."
Here's another pro-tip. Turn off the volume. Watch what they do, not what they say.
I remember hearing reports that if the laptop contents had been more widely known it was likely that trump would have won in spite of all the other democratic machinations to rig the election.
https://thepostmillennial.com/revealed-obama-expressed-worry-about-president-trumps-political-strength-during-recent-wh-meeting?utm_campaign=64483
Obama still seems nervous about Trump. I think stories of Biden's coming victory in 2024 are greatly exaggerated
He’s probably just using a scare tactic to get out the vote
Instead of being like blacks in the Jim Crow south, Boers are more like Jews in 1920s-30s Europe: a minority hated because they're considered too well off
Exactly what I was thinking. And with rhetoric like this song, they have every reason to be terrified.
I was thinking the same thing, and pondering the fact that holier-than-thou NYT is totally blind to the fact they are in the role of running cover for the Third Reich. The lack of historical and moral perspective is stunning, as is their utter absence of self-awareness.
That scary craziness in South Africa immediately made me think of Tom Sharpe's masterpiece, "Riotous Assembly", which I first read in the early 80s. It's a satirical (and absolutely hysterical) takedown of apartheid and makes that system look as foolish and wrong as it deserved. Note that it's not a book for the prudish! But it seems apparent that apartheid's replacement isn't that great an improvement if you have people calling for the murder of others.
Some billionaire funded supranational organisations want to institute a global government. They can't achieve that aim without the destruction of our individual cultures and our nation states. It is a deliberate policy.
The uber-elite could have a global government with local cultures alive and well. They would need enough representative members in their cabal of the world's major cultures (Europe/America, China, India, Africa, Latin America, Islam...) and would have to mouth suitable bromides and pieties about the various world cultures while keeping a tight reign on on the actual levers of power. The Habsburgs and the Ottomans-- the competent ones that is-- pulled off the multi-national empire thing.
This gang of globalist overlords are 'anywheres'. They have no patriotic feelings or allegiance to their country of birth. They hop from London to New York to Tokyo. They regard the 'somewheres', the people with ties to community, land, family, ancestors, as outdated. They despise us.
Their vision is one of open borders and fluidity, where capital and labour can move around freely and interchangeably to where it is required.
They are fools, as they could easily enjoy a cosmopolitan life and dominance in the manner I suggested.
No, no they couldn't--because there would be someone outside of their control, who calls you immoral and wicked and--what's worse--keeps you out.
Sure, the rest of the world would be open to them and any normal person would be satisfied with that. But they are not normal. They are corrupted with power, and continually thirst for more.
Re: No, no they couldn't--because there would be someone outside of their control, who calls you immoral and wicked and--what's worse--keeps you out.
People have cussed out their rulers for time immemorial. "The dogs bark but the caravan passes". The ruling class needs to develop thicker skins (a lot of people these days do!). As long as have money and power why should they care whether or not they are loved?
I think the aspect you're missing here is that the people of an Ottoman satrapy were zero threat to the ruling class of the Empire, as they had no ballot and no way to affect power—the best they could do would be to stir up some revolt and then get themselves massacred or maybe overthrow a certain satrap who would just then be replaced by a new satrap. But the Deplorables took (some) power in 2016 and this must never be allowed to happen again.
Also the god of our ruling elite is this nebulous crowd-sourced abstraction called the Right Side of History™ and as this is an anxious god for an anxious people, all other gods must either be erased or incorporated into a subservient position to their god. In their minds, all the old gods are guilty of sins against the Marginalized (and against the future) so they must be throttled for safety before they cause future "harms".
What we're living through is an internal colonization, and all new rulers make sure to knock all the old gods off their pedestals, so the new ruling gods can take precedence and get the worship they deserve.
These people so lack self-awareness that they don't realize how stupid they look jetting to Davos in private aircraft and decrying environmental damage. John Kerry. Leonardo DeCaprio. All are cultural nihilists.
Here's the deal: they don't care how foolish they look. They've got the jets, see? And you don't.
Just like over here they stewarded with exquisite care Western Civ over the past 40 years.
In a word--no.
The "Multiculturalism" of the elites means you can be of any color, language, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation (or any other way you can slice or dice people into groups)--but you must, simply *MUST*, think and act like a a western liberal consumer.
You want to have a nation that rejects international banking? The expansion of multinational corporations? Keeps out immoral movies, music, or television? Refuses the Rainbow flag?
You'll be sorry if you do.
“Far-right” is one of the most abused terms in culture today
It's got a ways to go to catch up with "dirty, commie, socialist pinko" and its family of left wing adjectives, at least longevity speaking.
...whatever you say
Both sides love to portray bog standard opponents as radical extremists. This has the very bad side effect of desenstizing is to the real extremists when they come along.
Far-right isn’t extremism, though. What’s more, used to describe anyone who is vaguely critical of anything vaguely leftist. Ideology isn’t a neat sliding spectrum. Calling someone Marxist is very specific, whether it’s inflammatory or not, and Marxism is a concrete ideology that has very clearly influenced a lot of today’s left-wing politics. There is simply no such concrete equivalent to right-wing politics, much less far-right.
Fair enough, if that's as far as it goes. But remember, Marx was an economist by training and not a real politician, though he did resort to political polemics to advance his economic ideas. Thus, to call someone's social agenda "Marxist" misses the mark completely.
There is still no denying the impact his revolutionary ideas have had on culture and ideology today. Mostly due to what people have done with his ideas, sure.
His revolutionary ideas were economic, and to the extent that these economic ideas have come to be associated with socialism or communism - here I discount his Manifesto of 1848 as simple political polemic and not a systematic idea or thesis - you are correct. But to stretch that to cover the extension of economic or social programs under the cover of "socialism" or "socialist agenda" is a bridge too far.
A key element of Marx's impact is its groundedness in hatred. Read Leopold Schwarzschild's The Red Prussian. It has been easy for a critique of society grounded in hatred that focused on "class" to be adapted to a critique of society based on hatred between men and women, or between members of different ethnic groups.
Here's historian George Watson:
---It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Hitler and his associates believed they were socialists, and that others, including democratic socialists, thought so too. The title of National Socialism was not hypocritical. The evidence before 1945 was more private than public, which is perhaps significant in itself. In public Hitler was always anti-Marxist, and in an age in which the Soviet Union was the only socialist state on earth, and with anti-Bolshevism a large part of his popular appeal, he may have been understandably reluctant to speak openly of his sources. His megalomania, in any case, would have prevented him from calling himself anyone's disciple. That led to an odd and paradoxical alliance between modern historians and the mind of a dead dictator. Many recent analysts have fastidiously refused to study the mind of Hitler; and they accept, as unquestioningly as many Nazis did in the 1930s, the slogan "Crusade against Marxism" as a summary of his views. An age in which fascism has become a term of abuse is unlikely to analyse it profoundly.
His private conversations, however, though they do not overturn his reputation as an anti-Communist, qualify it heavily. Hermann Rauschning, for example, a Danzig Nazi who knew Hitler before and after his accession to power in 1933, tells how in private Hitler acknowledged his profound debt to the Marxian tradition. "I have learned a great deal from Marxism" he once remarked, "as I do not hesitate to admit". He was proud of a knowledge of Marxist texts acquired in his student days before the First World War and later in a Bavarian prison, in 1924, after the failure of the Munich putsch. The trouble with Weimar Republic politicians, he told Otto Wagener at much the same time, was that "they had never even read Marx", implying that no one who had failed to read so important an author could even begin to understand the modern world; in consequence, he went on, they imagined that the October revolution in 1917 had been "a private Russian affair", whereas in fact it had changed the whole course of human history! His differences with the communists, he explained, were less ideological than tactical. German communists he had known before he took power, he told Rauschning, thought politics meant talking and writing. They were mere pamphleteers, whereas "I have put into practice what these peddlers and pen pushers have timidly begun", adding revealingly that "the whole of National Socialism" was based on Marx.---
Source: "Hitler and the Socialism Dream," The Independent (UK), 22 Nov. 1998. Watson wrote a book on Marx-Nazi connections, The Lost Literature of Socialism.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/hitler-and-the-socialist-dream-1186455.html
About Watson:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Watson_(scholar)
Jim, what you miss in your conception of Marxism is it is like a virus. Marx spoke solely in economic terms but that was the paradigm for his particular place in history. Because Marx was wrong about how the revolution would start and with whom as its foot soldiers, violent Marxist revolutions only occurred in feudal societies, i.e. Russia and China. The workers in western countries were better off under capitalism compared to their previous lives and were not about to rock the boat. So, Marxists such as Gramsci and the members of the Frankfurt School reworked the ideology sort of like a virus mutating and Marxism turned to the method of spreading it by the "long march through the institutions" i.e. culture, as the way to implement a Marxist society/government. This took hold here in the U.S. when the Frankfurt School professors fled Germany in the 1930s. Unfortunately they got jobs at USC, Harvard etc. and spreading the virus here. The virus took hold in academia under the headings "Critical Studies" and has mutated into Critical Theory, Critical Social Justice, Queer Theory, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Antiracist movement, Intersectionality, Liberation Theology, ad nauseam. Marx said his ideology (really a religion) was, at its core, the merciless criticism of everything. The present crop of Social Justice proponents (such as Kendi, Tisby, DiAngelo, at al), are, whether they admit it or not, Marxists. Another slight difference is our present day Marxists don't emphasize the primacy of violence like the Leninist/Stalinists and Maoists did. They no longer preach the violent takeover of governments. They still see violence as useful in certain circumstances, such as the BLM/Antifa summer of love we were treated to after Saint George Floyd was martyred. Here is the textbook definition of "Woke" put forward by George Fredrickson: "An administered political economy, in which shares are adjusted, so that citizens are made equal." Now tell me what that sounds like. The difference between Marx's version and the present day version is the type of shares to be redistributed. They just have added social and cultural capital along with economic and material capital.
Thank you for this incisive comment!
I don't disagree with much of what you say. HOWEVER, I still hold these are not Marx's ideas and so shouldn't be called Marxism. If "Marxists such as Gramsci and the members of the Frankfurt School reworked the ideology" and call it Marxism, I suppose I could rework the ideas you have and call it Dayism. And that would make me a Dayist. Aren't you glad that we, like Marx, won't be bothered by such stuff in 130 years or so?
I somewhat disagree. There may be nothing as specific as Marxism, but then today's Leftism has little to do with Marx. And there apologiae for fascist governance and white supremacy out there.
I think today's Leftism gets likened to Marxism because of its embrace of the false binary "Oppressors vs Victims." They just have different oppressors and victims.
It’s just the trajectory thought has taken from Marx and Freud to Marcuse to today’s critical theorists, whose ideas are everywhere and unrecognizable by the average person. It’s a broad but nonetheless very clean, straight line, though. Maybe it’s never what Marx intended, I don’t know, but his influence is inarguably massive.
Maybe, but Marxism is all about economics. Even legitimate "cultural Marxists" like Gramsci were firmly anchored in the ideology of class struggle. The New Left (I'll call it that) seems to have lost all awareness of class.
I have yet to hear "dirty commie socialist pinko" in anything other than a sarcastic context, in contrast to "far right", and I've been around a great many years now.
Hmmm...I googled "dirty, commie, socialist pinko": nothing. Then I googled "pinko", scrolling through the first hundred entries or so. Lots of definitions of "pinko" but nowhere being used to criticize the left. I then googled "commie". Again nothing in the first hundred entries I looked at using the term "commie" to criticize.
I then googled "Far-right". Some definitions. *Mostly* articles critical of the far-right.
I don't think far-right has a ways to go to catch up with "dirty, commie, socialist pinko"
"socialist" is used pejoratovely by some on the further right (eg. Glen Beck), and positively by the left. Most folks don't think of it negatively, and perhaps somewhat positively, likely having heard about it in a positive light at school.
"Far right" on the other hand, has zero positive association, and strong negative association. All righties distance themselves from the term, and often criticize those they consider far right, using the term.
What is more, most people use the terms "Far-right", "racist" and "fascist" as synonyms. Wrong.
the National *Socialist* Party(Nazis) were on the left and originally allied with Stalin. (They did disagree with some fellow leftists, just as Bolsheviks disagreed with Mensheviks.) Nazis were nationalist but on the left. The authoritarian left, with government hand-in-hand with big business though not officially owning every business. ( Like Democrats today.)
I cannot think of one person who self-describes as "far-right". The term is just, in my view, something the media started doing so youth would think all on the right are either racist or next-door to it and in sympathy with it.
There is nothing, nothing right wing about racism!!!!!!
You aren't going to find many historians who agree with your views on Nazism. And I doubt if you will find any that think Hitler's association with Stalin to be more than realpolitik.
I agree about historians, i.e., experts. Other than appeal to authority - which is legit but not always the final way to find truth - is there a way to refute what I am saying?
Or...how about this....could you agree that "Hitler was not right-wing". If you disagree, could you state a right-wing policy of Hitler's other than nationalism (I admit, associated with the right these days) and the false association of racism with the right?
Putin is certainly a nationalist. Is he right-wing? Heck Xi (pronounced "she") is a nationalist and a racist.
The Nazis were a blend of right and left. They were right on nationalism, militarism and racism. They were left in desire for state power and management of the economy by the central government.
I think this is wrong-headed, sorry. The Nazis were a rightist party. What Hitler is reputed to have said is, "There was no need to nationalize industry. I nationalized the people."
Your text here is: https://www.amazon.com/Hitler-History-John-Lukacs/dp/0375701133
More rightist than leftist. But some elements of leftist thinking. Central economic planning and the rest.
I would agree with the other posters, Nazism is fundamentally a fringe branch of conservatism. Let's look at many of Adolf's political positions:
-he felt, modern sexually explicit art was degenerate and should be shunned in deference to the old masters
-supported a strong pro-natalist movement
-hated prostitution, called it a disgrace upon humanity
-strongly against lgbt (which was rampant in Weimar germany)
-valued traditional society in particular familial ties
-loved Samurai honor society, wanted to enact it in Europe
In total, all these policies are right wing, plain and simple. I know it's tempting to try to distance the right from the Nazis, but it's more honest to admit that our side can commit genocide too
I remember when liberals denied being socialists until they didn't.
It was always
"Obama's not a socialist"
"No really he's not"
"None of these policies are socialist"
...
"Capitalism is evil. This is why we support socialism"
I'm a RWNJ and proud if it.
I suppose you must be of a certain age and remember hearing Sen. McCarthy and his followers on (AM) radio.
Well, Archibald Bunker of 305 Howser Street in Queens said "dirty, commie, pinko" often enough. And he was right. Meathead was a "dirty, commie, pinko."
Astoria, Queens
Nice work, Linda!
Related, and just for fun, no one reads books any more ;) , a comparison of usage trends of the terms “commie” and “far-right” in Google books 1800-2019 : https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=“Commie”%2C“far-right”&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
https://youtu.be/8a3mk9sp0oE?t=46
OK, Woody Allen, from the left, over 50 years ago in 1971, played into the leftist stereotype that people often call others commie pinko, etc. by having someone say them in his script. Does not support the idea that those terms are not really used very often. Satire is not supposed to portray exact images of real life.
Bwohahaha - - This relates to the looney part of the left and their abuse.
It is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time, linking RFK to neo-Nazis:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/robert-f-kennedy-jr-tweet_n_64c3fab7e4b021e2f29310ba
Quick excerpts:
"A tweet from the account of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday used language that many observers say evokes the known Nazi hate symbol “1488.”
RFK said: "Typical turnaround time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days. After 88-days of no response and after several follow-ups by our campaign, "
BTW, this relates to the sad topic of Biden denying Secret Service protection to RFK, though every major candidate since 1968 has had it.
Here is an English book by Mr. Camus. It is excellent.
https://www.amazon.com/You-Will-Not-Replace-Us/dp/B07KCFYDZL
Re: Trump is the guy who has walked into the party, punched the host in the face and pissed all over the carpet. There's no going back for him, and everybody knows it.
And then he promptly passed out and woke up later with a screaming hangover complaining that someone put something in his drink. And meanwhile the party continued, and the drunk became the butt of jokes.
As for the Great Replacement it's bullshyte, well fermented. The cold reality we all need to face is that yes, we're all going to be replaced. It's called Death and our awareness of it is the fundamental problem of human consciousness. Our one true hope is in salvation in the Kingdom of Heaven-- but even so we will not be trundling around this Earth in, say, 2518 AD*. There's a paganistic notion that having kids is somehow a form of immortality but that's false: your kids are not you, and after sufficient generations have passed your descendants won't even know your name or care (well, maybe the odd genealogy hobbyist might). The lesson is just this; Seek the Kingdom of Heaven as far as your long term prospects go. None of us can rule the future.
* Well, maybe if you believe in Reincarnation. But of course you may then come back as anyone: A Nigerian guy, an Eskimo woman, a Mumbai slum dweller...
Your dismissal of the Great Replacement concept as bullshit only shows that you don't know anything about it. That's fine -- I thought I understood it too, which is why I dismissed it as a conspiracy theory. But I didn't get it, till I read Camus.
I plan to get the Camus book and thanks for the recommendation. I am contemplating that cities and suburbs are more apt for Great Replacements than rural areas. Think of Louisiana. West Feliciana is much the same as when you grew up. But Walker Percy's New Orleans of Binx and Aunt Emily is long gone and I think it's a damned shame. New Orleans once was civilized and it has been killed off since 1960.
This!!!!!!!!
The fun thing is that Jon will never bother himself to know anything more about it.
Dude seemingly reads nothing that anyone here recommends, including Rod.
Why should I care? I will shuffle off this mortal coil and at some point down the line the future, including what's now the US, won't just be different than I imagine but different from what I can imagine. And setting aside the fact that human beings are not like the Bene Gesserit of "Dune": they have no ancestral memories to call on and they are utterly incompetent at projects that require lifetimes to realize. Not to mention the fact that "Man proposes, God disposes" and even measly Five Years Plans go off the rails easily.
I know. You never care because you never think that any of the issues Rod presents affect you. If it hasn't happened to you or is unlikely to happen to you, then it doesn't matter and anyone else who is affected by whatever the issue is just making a mountain out of a molehill.
What are you so afraid of? Whatever it is it's almost certainly a propagandist phantom devised by clever frauds to manipulate you.
Please give a reminder when it comes out. I could see what was happening 23 years ago.
"And then he promptly passed out..." -- this is a really good extension of the metaphor. I agree entirely!
But the beauty of Trump was not in his governance, it was in getting elected. That's all he really had to do. It was the most useful possible thing he could have done. It was what he was built for. He's a blunt object, and he achieved his purpose, and I wish he would exit gracefully now, but he can't, that feature just does not come with this package.
He was never going to be able to do much more than get elected (once), and not only for his own limitations. It is unlikely that any other person passing through the gates of the primaries will have more efficacy. Trump having got past the bouncers once, that type of thing will not happen again.
A corollary to that is no one should wring their hands over too much over who to vote for in the general election. The general election is mainly a circus at this point. *Act* your conscience, don't vote your conscience, cast your vote in the manner your conscience tells you will do the most good.
Someone else said it best, I don't know who: Trump didn't drain the swamp, but he did lower it enough for everyone to have a good view of what's in it.
Being elected is useless if one cannot govern. In fact, worse than useless as it brings contempt and disdain on the cause one purported to serve. Trump led to the resurgence of the Left after all.
I don't care what color my children or grandchildren are (my kids are darker than me), or what language they speak. But I do want them to exist in a nation that does not hate them for that, and does not normalize hatred for those things (generally today against whites) against anyone.
And frankly, if our immigrants are more religious than those they replace (Muslim or Christian, frankly either one is better to me than current western anti-religiosity), it's a net gain as far as I'm concerned. HOWEVER, I fear that by the 2nd or 3rd generation, they'll be indoctrinated by thr schools and the culture at large to be simply wokists of a darker hue.
Something we all have to accept, just by plain comm,on sense and historical experience: One's descendants will not be one's ideological clones; they believe and disbelieve, support and reject things different from oneself. You yourself are a Muslim convert, which I suspect would deeply shock some of your ancestors. And so what? We ought honor our forbears, insofar as they were honorable people by the light of their own day (though yes certain atrocities are beyond the pale in any age). But there is no requirement on us to agree with the dead in everything under the sun.
True, but the propensity for religious belief (or even political inclination) does seem to have a heavy genetic component. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-genes-of-left-and-right/
I actually agree with you there, but that does not tie to any specific religion or theological doctrine. As I noted you became a Muslim. Rod (and myself) became Orthodox Christians. Absent strong legal (or social) sanctions conversions are always a possibility.
Agreed; and what it appears is that generally speaking, the religious reproduce at greater rates than the irreligious (when birth control is available). So long-term, I believe that eventually those more inclined to religion will outnumber those disinclined. The irreligious genes haven't been "bred out" since effective birth control and legal safe (for the mother) abortion is recent, but their effects will eventually be seen.
And yes, the *content* of that religion can and does change. Those who seek "Enchantment" find it somewhere, and if they try to plug into a system that doesn't encourage it (e.g., western secularism), they'll feel discontent until and unless they find it elsewhere.
Re: So long-term, I believe that eventually those more inclined to religion will outnumber those disinclined.
I don't think so. when people make these arguments they do so without understanding mutation and genetic drift. Mutation is more the rule than the rare exception, and genetic drift cancels all bets over the long haul. And we can't pretend there are no environmental and experiential factors involved in whether people are religious or not.
Now Rod, you should know Marxists cannot commit genocide. Just like Blacks can't be racist. /sarc
Before I read the rest of Rod Dreher's post, I had to get off a comment about David Brooks, who I am told is an amiable, humble man. The condescension in his writing how the higher classes should be more considerate of the lower working classes is pregnant with incomprehension of the type of people who have come to despise the elites. The average Trump voter is not a janitor or a fentanyl addict or a youngster frying chicken for Popeye's. Trump voters tend to be wealthier than Biden voters and much more often self-employed. They are much more likely to be small businessmen. I wonder if David Brooks has ever met a payroll. I bet not. It's not easy. Your average small businessman has it far tougher and has to be far smarter than some credentialed bureaucrat at the EPA or the Department of Labor or the Department of Agriculture. Bureaucrats not only don't have to produce anything for a profit, they virtually can't be fired.
Bureaucrats can and are laid off-- if you look at the figures on public employment, they bounce up and down with the economy. Though such layoffs must proceed according to overt standards: generally, with seniority as a major factor, as used to be true in the private sector where alas it is now the case that the longer you've been there the more likely you are to be pink-slipped since your salary is too tempting a target for the budget-cutters who can then turn around and higher some recent college graduate for a fraction of it.
Very few Federal bureaucrats get laid off. Very few. For most of them, that job is a sinecure, one they will hold until retirement.
I know it is an anecdote, but my wife was a biologist with the EPA in the 1990s. According to her, some of her fellow bureaucrats did nothing but sit in their offices reading the sports pages and staring into their computers. Secretaries couldn't be trusted to seal an envelope.
"Office Space" is a must watch. It sounds like it may relate just as well to your wife's job as to mine.......and I didn't work in an office.
I read the Brooks piece and I think it's one of the first attempts to explain to New York Times readers in the elite what their failings and faults are. Brooks doesn't do a sterling job of it, but he's circling around a big and important point we don't often see addressed by the NYTimes toward the readers in its bubble.
I think you're right, though, that the NYTimes bubble readers need to hear more about why the small businessman, the sold proprietor, the guy who runs a plumbing business or an extermination business or a gutter cleaning company, also hates them too.
I think it was a really good column, of the kind you rarely see these days.
Sometimes people crack on Ross Douthat for not being harder line. I tell them, "Do you know the kind of audience he's writing to?!" That column from Brooks amounted to taking his readers by the shoulders and talking to them face to face about things they don't want to think about.
Your characterization of Brooks' column is likely correct, but I seriously doubt his audience of the best and the brightest will pay one whit of attention to it.
You are right. The urban credentialed left lives in a bubble. Every conservative is a troglodyte living under rocks armed to the teeth with guns, beating their wives, and attending reactionary churches that want to bring Savonarola's social policies to the whole nation. The urban credentialed left is actually parasitic. They receive cheap food that they don't produce themselves. They receive fairly cheap energy they don't produce. Their homes were built by others. Their cars were built by others. Fifty million of the urban credentialed left could simply vanish into thin air and America would be a better country.
I like where Brooks almost broke the conditioning:
"Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we've all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison."
David is literally a walking Principal Skinner meme
In a previous life, I administered millions in federal criminal justice grant money for the state (yes, I am a jack-booted bureaucrat). The thing that amazed me when having to deal with DOJ was just how ignorant the folks in DC are about the rest of the country. I had one official demand that we convene a stakeholders (I hate that word) meeting to decide how best to strategically (second most hated word) dole out the money in the state. I said it was impossible. The shocked DOJer asked me why. I explained that such a meeting would have to include 254 sheriffs, 5x254 county commissioners, around 200 district and county attorneys, 181 members of the legislature, and the 24 heads of the regional councils of government - and that was only the state and county level folks, it didn't include all the non-profits and city governments that we worked with. Thes best part was her reaction to what I explained- "That can't be true!"
I've been one of those "stakeholders." Their shock is palpable when the purse-string holders do a site visit and see that the money wasn't enough, and that the problem it was meant to address, which they had only pondered in the abstract, is our day-to-day reality, and still exists.
I think grant funding by the federal government is one of the most evil things that goes on with our government. Tax money is taken from people, sent to DC, where it's bundled up in some crazy federal program (which requires the feds taking 25% off the top for "administration"') which requires the locals to go beg for money with all sorts of often-times ludicrious strings attached. It makes no freaking sense. And I say this as someone who participated in the administration of lots of those programs. The net result is dependency and subservience.
Yeah—most of my experience is with state and county-level grants, but much of that money has inefficiently passed through the federal government. Right now an organization I'm involved with is learning to work the system by getting federal funds through our Congressional rep, which involves getting to know a bunch of paid legislative aides...and yeah, it's amazing how many people have to get paid just for a local government or a civic nonprofit to get a trickle of funding.
One of my local elected officials is super-excited about a wildly unnecessary aesthetic and infrastructure project. His defense of the project is that federal Covid stimulus money is paying for it, so it's "free" to locals. There's no awareness that this "free" money is part of the reason people are paying more for things like milk and eggs, why a tiny rotisserie chicken that my grocery store was just going to throw away anyway costs $9, and why some cheap-ass made-in-China lampshade at a discount store is priced (as my debit card and I learned tonight) at an insane $25....
If I had a nickle for every time I heard "free money", I would be a very very rich man! I don't think people realize how much of their states' government functions are actually paid for by federal dollars (with all the control and bureaucracy that comes with it).
Two miles from where I live the bridge at Capon Bridge is being renovated fully by federal funds thanks to our two senators.
I love it when people with a little education (like Brooks) view themselves as these great geniuses at the level of Kant, Dryden, and Newton because they went to college.
Kids today are worse, they get this sense of superiority because they answered some multiple choice tests well enough to get a BS in communications at State School U. These types are actually the most likely candidates for snobby, overeducated liberals
I have two separate comments. First, the whole Trump-Russia collusion was always a fraud but you have to be of an older age to understand it. When Russia became communist in 1917, many left-wing Americans supported communist Russia. The Great Depression brought more left-wing Americans to support communist Russia. When the Soviet Union was our ally of convenience in World War Two, many left-wing Americans came to support communist Russia. When Vietnam turned out so badly, more left-wing Americans became supporters of communist Russia. The Presidency of Ronald Reagan brought more left-wing American support for communist Russia. Left-wing Americans were supportive of Russia when it was communist but became enemies of Russia when it became authoritarian and nationalist.
As for South Africa, at least 2000 white farmers have been murdered in last twenty years, most of them old, vulnerable men and women. They were killed and brutalized by cowardly men much like the cowards that murdered Emmet Till in Mississippi. Political leaders of South Africa seem to encourage these murders. I wonder how it is to be a despised minority of 8% that owns most of the land and most of the wealth. America has a few counties in Mississippi that have similar characteristics. Fortunately, there are no black pograms of white landowners in Mississippi. Big Daddy is safe.
I've actually been to S. Africa, once, though I can't say I saw much of it. When I got to my hotel room at sunset there was a letter on the night table from security at my employer saying I oughtn't to leave the hotel after dark. Great. Nearly a solar day on an airplane I have to stay in my room watching CNN.
I went downstairs and there was a Nando's situation in the lobby. There was also a passage that let to a mall, and catty corner with the passage's end was a bookstore. I mean, how bad could it be?
The only people in the mall were the cleaning ladies and the clerks in the bookstore. VERY unfriendly. I bought a new translation of Turgenev's Smoke to read on the plane on the way back and got my pasty white ass back up to my room.
And this was well before things really began to fall apart.
I hope you were able to get a bottle of South African wine or at the very least a six-pack of Bud Light to pass the night.
The minibar took a hit, or two.
My mentor who taught me herbalism is South African. She migrated to the UK and recently brought her elderly mother over. Her mother sold her huge house in South Africa for peanuts. But at least in rural England she doesn't have to be worried about getting murdered.
White South Africans with any sense at all ought to get out of that country fast.
>> The paper of record tells us that a stadium full of hardcore black nationalist Marxist-Leninists.....
>> In the spirit of Walter Duranty, the Times Moscow correspondent who was secretly spinning the news Stalin’s way, the paper lies to protect a liberal narrative.
Stop blaming it on Communists. Disingenuous deflection from what you know is the true and only matter. And far too many critics on the polite right spin narratives, won't name the name, so as to keep good company with their liberal friends/associates.
And no, we can't all get along. Lot and Abraham came to a reasonable settlement. The whites, blacks and coloreds in South Africa could have - and still could - come to a similar arrangement.
Name the name? Am I missing something?
Trump voters are elites of a type. Now some of the MAGA within the Republican Party was a confabulation of prior fringe groups who used all kinds of methods to put themselves within the ranks of the party particularly when Tea Party activism proved impotent in running candidates or moving the party agenda. Going back a few years, some of the experimental or extreme ideological views of groups that were given a platform within the tea party like settings were pre-MAGA and hyper engaged. Some of those ideas belong to people who have been planted within the local Republican Party know as Republican Executive Committees. There’s been infighting to prevent people who don’t live in the area they claim to sign up for precincts, run for committees etc or fill long vacant precinct positions. There has been an insurgency push at different times to enter the party leadership to vote or make a scene at meetings etc. Some of these folks might be the type that believe in common law grand juries and sovereign citizen type movements so it is not a stretch that they could be more radical if someone was stoking their fantasies. There’s no unringing that bell especially in places where the takeover was so subtle that the party is something completely transformed. I don’t think anyone can have American values and be involved with any party so entrenched with sovereign citizen groups. It’s a rot that has taken hold most identifiably in rural parts of Florida. That our public intellectuals were not calling this out and evaluating MAGA properly! God have mercy on them. So-called populism as a blanket term does not cut it! We have Folk Marxism on the Right & Left. We have scammers and fakes like sovereign citizen groups doing chameleon things to institutionalize themselves within a legitimate organization and no one is calling it. If anything our public intellectuals have done mental and moral gymnastics to justify so much crazy and unbelievable nonsense instead of saying “I don’t know” or “the devil I don’t know…and I am too lazy and herd bound to find out” I swear the whole media is just repeating the campaigns because they don’t know how to find sources, chase stories etc. They know they will lose tips if they don’t help their friends in publicity office as if that’s the place you’re getting anything like breaking news. Trump was smart to find the must charged person in the room; the idiot we were embarrassed of and ignoring for years…Trump knows how much energy television and media requires to keep attention and look good the crank in person is the right temperature on the tube…and because he listens to that toothless hound he had a loyal dog for all of his life. I don’t think that Trump as a person is the least bit ideological. I think he is somewhat anachronistic if anything. He knows how to find the flamers and grab energy and make an impression on people that’s a bit dazzling. It’s called show business. I don’t know what kind of new world is trying to be born and I’m an optimistic person. At some point I’ll revisit Washington’s warning about parties when he left the his many years of service to our country. That governors and presidents have misunderstood and neglected the inner workings of the parties they ostensibly represent and lead is a remarkable neglect that has gone tremendously unexamined.
If what Renaud Camus ssys about France and the role of the French elite in displacing the French nation iis true how could the violent overthrow og the French state not be justified?
I tried reading the Brooks piece from The New York Times but I refused to pay to get by the firewall so all I got to learn was that I am a reactionary bigot. I'll accept that and I'm actually proud to be a receiver of Brooks' contempt. Which leads me to contemplate something Bill Clinton said a few years ago. Clinton, who has a fertile analytical mind when he wants to use it, said that if you thought all the social changes since the 60s were good, you are probably a Democrat. If you think the changes are for the worse, you are probably a Republican.
Those who support all the changes since the 60s have to accept all the changes. A high divorce rate. A very high illegitimacy rate. 60 million abortions. Increases in social diseases. Hundreds of dysfunctionally run cities, all bastions of the Democratic Party and many of them black-run. Multi-generational cycle of bastardy. Drug abuse. AIDS. Cultural rot. I could go on but I won't. The litany is too long.
But what did Clinton "think" the changes were?
My hypothesis: Less racism, more freedom to leave a marriage, freedom from unwanted pregnancy, less stigma for unwed mothers, less condemnation of homosexuality.
It is a little-known fact that more Republicans than Democrats voted in favor Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s. Oh....and most KKK members were Democrats. - Lest Democrats be given all credit "less racism".
"It is a little-known fact that more Republicans than Democrats voted in favor Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s. Oh....and most KKK members were Democrats. - Lest Democrats be given all credit "less racism"."
Almost all the Republicans who voted for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were Northern;
Re the 1965 Civil Rights Act, in the House the vote was:
Southern Democrats: 8 Yea–83 Nay(9–91%)
Southern Republicans: 0–11 Nay (0–100%) against
Northern Democrats: 145 Yea–8 Nay(95–5%)
Northern Republicans: 136 Yea –24 Nay(85–15%)
And in the Senate:
Southern Democrats: 1 Yea–20 Nay(5–95%)
Southern Republicans: 0–1 Nay (0–100%)
Northern Democrats: 45Yea –1 Nay(98–2%)
Northern Republicans: 27 Yea –5 Nay(84–16%)
The same happened with the Voting Rights Act: Southern Democrats in the House and Senate voted AGAINST it, Northern Democrats in the House and Senate voted FOR it.
After that, a large majority of white Democrats in the South switched to the GOP at the national level (House, Senate, President), although continuing to vote Democrat at the local level.
Glad you brought up your stats and they are true. But you should be totally honest regarding the North. In the South, people have a harder time moving away, especially in rural areas. In the North, if a certain city, town or neighborhood has an increase of blacks, the whites move because they can. There is more "white flight" in the North than in the South.
Quiz: Who said that mandatory busing to integrate schools would lead to his children growing up in a "racial jungle."?
Hint: his initials are JB.
Who said: "Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean.”
Who said: “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”
The same person - his initials are JB.
My point is that there are racists in all parties whether or not JB is racist. I suspect he is not , just racially insensitive,(but JB is insensitive to lot of things)
It is unfair and extremely hurtful to call Republicans racist. Again, there are racist in all parties and no party embraces racism.
True.
Well, at the time of these votes, please remember that the South was fighting (in courts and in the Congress) to keep Jim Crow laws and segregation: George Wallace took his oath as Senator in 1963 saying, "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
Quote: "Almost all the Republicans who voted for the Civil Rights Act were Northern"
OK, and 91% of Southern House Democrats, plus 95% of Southern Senate Democrats voted against it, according to the figures above.
So - it was a geographic thing, never a party thing.
My point here is that racism should not be associated with Republicans. It should not be associated with Democrats except when they keep Asians out of top universities - spoiling the deserved careers of some beautiful young people - so that a non-Asian person with lower scores can get a place. But I think the average Democrat is not racist, same for Republicans.
Sure. And all the Democratic voters of the South who supported segregation moved on to the Republican Party and the liberal Republicans of the North who supported desegregation moved on to the Democratic Party. I am willing to bet that Rod Dreher's father was a registered Democrat for most of his life but voted Republican for president from Reagan in 1980 on to his last presidential vote before he died.
Sure. And all the Democratic voters of the South who supported segregation moved on to the Republican Party and the liberal Republicans of the North who supported desegregation moved on to the Democratic Party. I am willing to bet that Rod Dreher's father was a registered Democrat for most of his life but voted Republican for president from Reagan in 1980 on to his last presidential vote before he died.
Translation: freedom from the natural consequences of sex. For that is the most important thing for democrats and boomers in general.
All good? No. Nothing but the grace of God is 100% good. Everything else is some mix of good and bad. If nothing else, change is disruptive and contra the tech bro passion for disruption that in itself is a defect though there may be good reason to accept it in specific matters.
Excellent Article, Rod! Well balanced in understanding the MAGA movement and why they do not support DeSantis. Ramaswamy’s fierce speech against the latest Trump indictment shows principle, discipline, and keen character. Ramaswamy will bump DeSantis and we will be seeing this hopeful Millennial for a long time!