Republicans and Fascism

[LogGrad98]

I’ve said in the past that what we need is a truly unifying leader. Such leaders do not bring their countrymen together by appeals to hate, anger, bigotry. They bring people together by appealing to our higher natures(assuming we do have such!!), our better selves. They unite us by helping us feel good about ourselves. “People will never forget how you make them feel”. That is precisely the gift the very best orators possess, and it is such leaders we need now. I cannot see it coming from Republican ranks, in 2022, in 2024, but all must be involved. I agree with the author that what is needed is a pro-democracy movement that will inspire all of us and create a new and welcome chapter in our history.

Frankly I do not see that in the ranks on either side, but it is exactly what is needed. But we are so fueled by hate and bigotry all around (yes, democrats viewing "trumptards" as lower than human life is a form of bigotry, and causes the rift to increase as strongly as anything coming from the right), that I just cannot see anyone rising above this mess, or even capable of rising above this mess, in the current stable of candidates. And even if that person were somehow in the mix for the presidency there is a good chance they will not get the votes, because people want extremes right now, to feed their outrage. They do not want anyone moderate enough to do what is outlined here, and that is exactly what would be needed, a moderate, to bridge the gaps. But in a world driven by extremes, moderates are viewed as milquetoast and soft because they will not make a "hard stand" for every and all party-line issues, so they cannot be trusted to govern, even as we continually vote in Nero in different incarnations to simply watch the country burn, while the people argue over who is burning the most rather than coming together to put out the fires. Dark times ahead I am afraid.

 

[Deleted member 365]

Lot of truth in these simple words. It’s the reason why I have always felt the best orators are those who have the ability to speak straight from the heart, and to the hearts of their listeners. That is how you move people. That is how you inspire people. By speaking from the heart. Recall an observation, often attributed, correctly, to a Native American approach. I forget precisely which native leader first said this, but the truth of it is the very reason why native rhetoric, right from the start, meaning straight out of the native oratory recorded by the 17th century New England colonists, encapsulates this approach to reaching people: “the white man thinks with his head; the Indian thinks with his heart”. And, as noted, that ability to speak from, and think with, the heart, was noted early on by the Europeans. The last words of Narragansett sachem Canonchet, upon learning he was to be put to death during King Philip’s War: “I like it well. I shall die before my heart is soft, or I have said anything of which Canonchet shall be ashamed." From the heart, words that are difficult to ever forget.

I’ve said in the past that what we need is a truly unifying leader. Such leaders do not bring their countrymen together by appeals to hate, anger, bigotry. They bring people together by appealing to our higher natures(assuming we do have such!!), our better selves. They unite us by helping us feel good about ourselves. “People will never forget how you make them feel”. That is precisely the gift the very best orators possess, and it is such leaders we need now. I cannot see it coming from Republican ranks, in 2022, in 2024, but all must be involved. I agree with the author that what is needed is a pro-democracy movement that will inspire all of us and create a new and welcome chapter in our history.

I think we’re missing the mark here.

Americans have experienced so much wealth, peace, and success that those most vulnerable to Qanon and conspiracy aren’t the poor barely trying to make ends meet, it’s the bored and narcissistic middle/upper class looking for some excitement, identity, and direction in life.

Eric Hoffer documented this decades ago, the true believer isn’t the poor working class stuff. The true believer is the bored person who has achieved a relatively stable existence who wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves. It’s why folks like Tucker, Trump, and to a certain extent Bernie, are so successful with these folks; they offer them an enemy (immigrants, Jews, POC, liberals, globalists, etc) and provide them with direction (defy election results, attack schools and school boards, attack doctors, wage a campaign against women and the LGBT community, etc).

These folks aren’t hungry for Obama’s hope. They don’t want King’s dream. They don’t want the rights and freedoms of the enlightenment for everyone. They don’t want stability and economic prosperity (they already have that).

They want political leaders that make them feel like they’re at WWF. They want politics where their side kicks ***. They want their targeted enemies to pay. They want their tv and radio to tell them how great and righteous they are so it feeds their narcissism and sense of identity and value.

 

[Deleted member 365]

Frankly I do not see that in the ranks on either side, but it is exactly what is needed. But we are so fueled by hate and bigotry all around (yes, democrats viewing "trumptards" as lower than human life is a form of bigotry, and causes the rift to increase as strongly as anything coming from the right), that I just cannot see anyone rising above this mess, or even capable of rising above this mess, in the current stable of candidates. And even if that person were somehow in the mix for the presidency there is a good chance they will not get the votes, because people want extremes right now, to feed their outrage. They do not want anyone moderate enough to do what is outlined here, and that is exactly what would be needed, a moderate, to bridge the gaps. But in a world driven by extremes, moderates are viewed as milquetoast and soft because they will not make a "hard stand" for every and all party-line issues, so they cannot be trusted to govern, even as we continually vote in Nero in different incarnations to simply watch the country burn, while the people argue over who is burning the most rather than coming together to put out the fires. Dark times ahead I am afraid.

I’d just like to add, it’s not just outrage, it’s narcissism. A large segment of Americans want their narcissism filled. They’ve had so much peace, prosperity, and stability for so long that they no longer have identity or direction. Their identity comes through being the angry contrarian and their direction is merely a form of adult oppositional disorder; throwing sand into the gears of society.

 

[LogGrad98]

I think we’re missing the mark here.

Americans have experienced so much wealth, peace, and success that those most vulnerable to Qanon and conspiracy aren’t the poor barely trying to make ends meet, it’s the bored and narcissistic middle/upper class looking for some excitement, identity, and direction in life.

Eric Hoffer documented this decades ago, the true believer isn’t the poor working class stuff. The true believer is the bored person who has achieved a relatively stable existence who wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves. It’s why folks like Tucker, Trump, and to a certain extent Bernie, are so successful with these folks; they offer them an enemy (immigrants, Jews, POC, liberals, globalists, etc) and provide them with direction (defy election results, attack schools and school boards, attack doctors, wage a campaign against women and the LGBT community, etc).

These folks aren’t hungry for Obama’s hope and peace. They don’t want King’s dream. They don’t want the rights and freedoms of the enlightenment for everyone. They want political leaders that make them feel like they’re at WWF. They want politics where their side kicks ***. They want their targeted enemies to pay. They want their tv and radio to tell them how great and righteous they are so it feeds their narcissism and sense of identity and value.

We are the proverbial frog being boiled to death in the gradually heated water of prosperity, really. Prosperity has a way of getting people to shift their focus from truly important issues to frivolous ones, as we don't worry about survival anymore, so we have time to worry about vanity and false pride instead. The risks, although still truly existential in many ways, are just so esoteric most people cannot grasp the true gravity of it all, so they grab onto their soundbites and wave their flags, while the water gets hotter and hotter.

 

[fishonjazz]

You act like there are switches that can be flipped that turn the economy on and off. Yeah Biden has done some ****, but most actions take a few years to materialize in effects in the macroeconomy as a whole. The groundwork for this was set during the Trump admin. His war with China did not help anyone nor the world economy and the rampant spending and tax cuts removed the backbone. Now they want to cut SS and medicare, and why? More tax cuts? Deregulation and largely republican policies for the past 5 decades have lead to record levels of income inequality and severe wage stagnation never before seen in our country since before the depression. We are finally bringing wages into line with corporate progress, but only through state laws mandating higher minimums. Yes it is also helping fuel higher prices as companies pass that straight along to consumers, as predicted, but we haven't had wage growth and real income growth at all levels like this in decades. Right now we are in a downturn. We had them before, we will have them again. Short-term there are some things that can be done, but we still need a leader to put forth something that sticks for the long term instead of everyone just dismantling everything done before them to start over again. The cycle we have been in for the last decade will destroy us overall, as we are pushing the extremes too far and too fast. The economy should be steered as a ship, with slow gradual turns, and only react heavily against severe outside forces, such as the global supply crisis brought on by the pandemic, but it seems more and more they want to steer the thing like a race car. It just won't work that way. Trump rode the wave of a good economy when he got elected, then did all he could to help his cronies and billionaire pals while destroying our international image and setting the groundwork for destabilizing the world economy. Now we are seeing the fruits of those efforts, exacerbated by Biden's ****** decisions and ******** timing. Is is the worst case scenario right now where one destructive and short-sighted president was followed by an inept one during a period of global economic upheaval. And with public opinion on most anything that might unite us completely in the *****er, there is no sign this will get any better, as politicians will just follow the wind to what gets them the most votes. No one in the pack right now is capable of handling this mess realistically, or cannot be trusted to do so. More tax cuts and loopholes for the obscenely wealthy funded by cuts to social security and Medicare are NOT the answer.

Good post.
I would just add that americans are cry baby drama queens. Ya gas prices went up as did inflation. Yet people are still going on hella vacations, i see amazon trucks constantly stopping all over my hood, jobs are available like crazy, wages have went up a ton.

I bet my household makes less money than 80% of jazzfanz. I just got back from a park city resort vacation 2 days ago. I went on a cruise in april. Bought a brand new 2022 vehicle at the end of august.

I have all the food, clothing, shelter and any other necessities i could possibly want.

People act is if they are broke and starving to death. Yet go on facebook and look at the posts of your friends and families. You will see them going on trips, going to concerts and football games. Eating out at nice restaurants, etc.


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[LogGrad98]

Good post.
I would just add that americans are cry baby drama queens. Ya gas prices went up as did inflation. Yet people are still goong on hella vacations, i see amazon trucks constantly stopping all over my hood, jobs are available like crazy, wages have went up a ton.

I bet my household makes less money than 80% of jazzfanz. I just got back from a park city resort vacation 2 days ago. I went on a cruise in april. Bought a brand new 2022 vehicle at the end of august.

I have all the food, clothing, shelter and any othe necessities i could possibly want.

People act is if they are broke and starving to death. Yet go on facebook and look at the posts of your friends and families. You will see them going on trips, going to concerts and football games. Eating out at nice restaurants, etc.


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It is said the only thing the rich want for, is more money. As we all get richer, everyone's wants expand. Just like most people's expenditures rise to envelope their income, no matter how much more money they make. We always want more. If you are hungry, you want food. If you are well-fed, you want better food. If you have the best food, you want better houses or clothes, or cars. There is always another level up and everyone wants it. We live in an unprecedented time of prosperity that completely sucks perspective from daily life. When the biggest concern we have is that we cannot get the Jazz game for free if we choose not to have TV, well then what is our perspective really about?

 

[fishonjazz]

It is said the only thing the rich want for, is more money. As we all get richer, everyone's wants expand. Just like most people's expenditures rise to envelope their income, no matter how much more money they make. We always want more. If you are hungry, you want food. If you are well-fed, you want better food. If you have the best food, you want better houses or clothes, or cars. There is always another level up and everyone wants it. We live in an unprecedented time of prosperity that completely sucks perspective from daily life. When the biggest concern we have is that we cannot get the Jazz game for free if we choose not to have TV, well then what is our perspective really about?

This.

BTW right after making my last post i opened up facebook and no joke, literally the first “story” on there was of my co worker with the headline “vaca mode” opening up his hotel room door in cancun and giving a tour of it.
The first post on my newsfeed was of my cousin and her family arriving in orlando florida for their trip to disney world.

MSM got everybody pissed off and panicked and acting like biden is destroying the country as they sit on the beach with a cocktail and read about how the country is being destroyed.

Quite silly.


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[Deleted member 365]

This.

BTW right after making my last post i opened up facebook and no joke, literally the first “story” on there was of my co worker with the headline “vaca mode” opening up his hotel room door in cancun and giving a tour of it.
The first post on my newsfeed was of my cousin and her family arriving in orlando florida for their trip to disney world.

MSM got everybody pissed off and panicked and acting like biden is destroying the country as they sit on the beach with a cocktail and read about how the country is being destroyed.

Quite silly.


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But that’s how you get the clicks and the eyeballs. In today’s hyper competitive media environment, you can’t pay for in depth reporting. So you do the next best thing, you fire off as many stories as you can that’ll get people as angry as possible.

Let’s put two partisans together and have them yell at each other for 5 mins!
Let’s talk about how whites are being erased!
Let’s all be afraid of the brown horde coming from Central America and send them to a blue city (that’ll trigger someone for sure!) without interviewing any of them, stopping to ask why they’re coming here, or consider anything other than our own fear!

In the last two years, has any news agency interviewed asylum seekers? Has anyone gone over the history of seeking asylum?

In the last two years, has any news agency talked about global inflation? Or do we just talk about it in context with the horse race election we have coming up?

In the last two years, has any news agency gone into the history of demagoguery in America? Or do they merely flash the latest dumbass thing someone like MTG says and then move onto the next outrage? Wouldn’t be interesting to know that we’ve seen this type of thing before with Pat Buchanan, David Duke, Joe McCarthy, Father Coughlin, etc?

Today’s media, especially on tv, just doesn’t inform. They entertain so you’ll still plugged in. It’s doing our society a disservice.

 

[Red]

There is a reason the lower earning, rural parts of the country are generally favorable to Republicans while the higher earning coastal elites are more likely to elect Democrats.

Many reasons, really, and rural-urban divisions are part of our history. Let’s not make it too simplistic, however, because it’s not. One political scientist studying the rural-urban division in America is Will Wilkinson, he of the “Southernification of rural America” idea, links below. @The Thriller, if you’re not familiar with Wilkinson, you may find that idea interesting…

The Density Divide: Urbanization, Polarization, and Populist Backlash - Niskanen Center

In this new paper, I weave recent research in political science, economics, psychology and more into an account of political polarization and the rise of populist nationalism as a surprising and overlooked side-effect of urbanization. I claim that we’ve failed to fully grasp that urbanization is...

www.niskanencenter.org

Very interesting idea, the Southernification of rural America:



“In the Density Divide, I argued that the key to answering “Why did white ethnonationalism finally work to win the GOP nomination and then the White House when it didn’t even get close to working for Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul?” was that residential self-selection on ethnicity, personality, and education had made lower density parts of the country progressively more homogenously ethnocentric and socially conservative, which finally made it possible to unify and organize rural and exurban whites as a single constituency.

I’m confident that this is correct, as far as it goes. However, I think it’s an incomplete explanation without something like the Southernification thesis. Before it could be successfully organized politically, America’s increasingly ethnocentric non-urban white population needed to be consolidated first through the adoption of a relatively uniform ethnocentric white culture.

What I’m still groping for is solid empirical confirmation that the Southernification of white rural America did happen and, if so, how it happened. Now, I have few doubts that it did happen and is still happening. Indeed, it’s hard to think of better impressionistic evidence than the spread of Confederate flags far from the South into all parts of white rural America.”

 

[Al-O-Meter]

Many reasons, really, and rural-urban divisions are part of our history. Let’s not make it too simplistic, however, because it’s not. One political scientist studying the rural-urban division in America is Will Wilkinson, he of the “Southernification of rural America” idea

That race-baiting propaganda will rot your brain. In 2022, class is far more telling about your belief structure than is the color of your skin. Even biological sex is a better indicator of your political beliefs than is skin color. Bitter clingers hold on the old claims because they desperately want to paint the other side as evil or inferior, and believing the other side is racist does that.

If rather than seeking to reinforce your preheld beliefs, you looked at the data then you'd see there is no support for your claims. The strongest supporters of the Democrat party are educated women of all ethnicities including European ancestry. The biggest change in the political landscape in the past two decades is the voting patterns of Latino populations. The Black vote too is moving quickly to mirror the class divide seen everywhere else even if it does still have a decade or so before it reaches the levels of the Hispanic community. Those claiming conservatives are ethnonationalist are either trying to sell something or are deluded dinosaurs who are too set in their ways to see beyond their long-established prejudices. In 2022, those who are uneasy about the state of the economy and where it is headed are polling for Republicans while those who are more economically prosperous are still weighing, as LogGrad put it, more "frivolous" issues.

 

[One Brow]

There is a reason the lower earning, rural parts of the country are generally favorable to Republicans while the higher earning coastal elites are more likely to elect Democrats.

Buzzwords to disguise the reality. Coastal people are on the left overall, but the coastal elites strongly favor Republicans.

That race-baiting propaganda will rot your brain. In 2022, class is far more telling about your belief structure than is the color of your skin.

https://dasil.sites.grinnell.edu/2020/05/the-demographic-profiles-of-democrats-and-republicans/

Not only is this untrue (as you can tell from the width of the class bands graphs in the link), but it runs counter to your previous claim, where being from the lower-earning class makes you more likely to vote Democratic.

Bitter clingers hold on the old claims because they desperately want to paint the other side as evil or inferior, and believing the other side is racist does that.

Projection from a rabid anti-trans person. That's how you behave, so you see us as having the same behavior.

More on voter demographics: https://www.pewresearch.org/politic...ce-and-education-remain-stark-dividing-lines/

 

[Al-O-Meter]

Not only is this untrue (as you can tell from the width of the class bands graphs in the link), but it runs counter to your previous claim, where being from the lower-earning class makes you more likely to vote Democratic.

I find it interesting that all of your sources are out of date, and I don't believe I ever said being a lower-earning class makes you more likely to vote Democratic.