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The Inevitability of Impeachment

Taking a page from Donald's book, now Chaffetz is brushing off that angry town hall crowd at Brighton High as "paid out of state protestors." Apparently he's even denying reality. Similar outrages are occurring across the nation as repubs who couldn't go one minute without fishing for controversy in the obama admin are now mere lapdogs for the very unpopular trump regime.

Just how long can the GOP keep this charade up of ignoring all of the trump warts and denying the anger of Americans, even those who lean right?
 
♪alt13 said:
I would say that democracies are susceptible to producing populism but I wouldn't say that they are the same thing. In my view the degree to which an ideology or a movement is populist is equal to the degree it depends on uninvestigated popular opinion. By the degree to which it's willing to debate. By the degree to which it dismisses experts and facts facts without even attempting to make a rational argument for doing so. The experts are elitists and the facts are lies. We're always going to have this problem to some degree elevating our opinions and ignoring evidence but it does seem to me that it's fair to say that recently we seem to be doing it more.

I know it's not a very good definition but it's the best I got right now.
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Kind of true, but it's an unsatisfying outlook. The shift we're currently experiencing is not simply toward uninformed opinions and mistrust of expertise. If that was the case, then the move would be much more heterogeneous. You would find places where the populace are backing a socialist revolution (which maybe can be seen a bit in Sanders' populism). Or libertarian government minimalism. But that's not what we're seeing. The populist push goes -mostly- in a certain direction, and that direction is to the "right". As in, it is nationalist (and largely ethno-nationalist) and traditionalist. I think we're seeing a backlash against neoliberalism and progressivism. It is not simply the rise of the ordinary person against the elites. After all, Trump and his people are elites too.
 
Siro said:
Kind of true, but it's an unsatisfying outlook. The shift we're currently experiencing is not simply toward uninformed opinions and mistrust of expertise. If that was the case, then the move would be much more heterogeneous. You would find places where the populace are backing a socialist revolution (which maybe can be seen a bit in Sanders' populism). Or libertarian government minimalism. But that's not what we're seeing. The populist push goes -mostly- in a certain direction, and that direction is to the "right". As in, it is nationalist (and largely ethno-nationalist) and traditionalist. I think we're seeing a backlash against neoliberalism and progressivism. It is not simply the rise of the ordinary person against the elites. After all, Trump and his people are elites too.
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Yeah I knew it was a really bad definition. Beyond what I said above populism uses government strongly to enforce those opinions. Populists are going to take care of you they're going to use government to fix your problems both socially and economically.
 
DutchJazzer said:
simple question where you also such an activist when the democrats had mind boggling conflicts of interest. or does that not bother you!

what I've known so far is Donald trump is gonna Donate Foreign Government Hotel Payments. the article does not state action. the article is speculating. so i wonder why it boggles your mind. you wait and see i suspect trump will either let em use it for free, or donate the money. but this is just speculation and i might be wrong!
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fair enough
 
@alt.... well, it seems like I was just incoherent the way you took it. I don't think more than 20% of folks seriously accept the labels dem or rep, and "Populism" in the present situation seems more like people just sticking up for their own interests. Trump is not really the personality people will idolize, they just vote for him if he represents some hope for a change towards what people consider is needed. There will be no "Trump Party" downstream.

I think it's just wrong to characterize people voting their interests or wishes with a new contemptuous hate term.
 
babe said:
@alt.... well, it seems like I was just incoherent the way you took it. I don't think more than 20% of folks seriously accept the labels dem or rep, and "Populism" in the present situation seems more like people just sticking up for their own interests. Trump is not really the personality people will idolize, they just vote for him if he represents some hope for a change towards what people consider is needed. There will be no "Trump Party" downstream.

I think it's just wrong to characterize people voting their interests or wishes with a new contemptuous hate term.
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Creating any term about some people or ish they think is discriminatory in itself, but it helps us move faster and keep us more organized - and even helps to record history better! What a dilemma! Humans fatally err in their inability to answer questions such as this!!
 
babe said:
@alt.... well, it seems like I was just incoherent the way you took it. I don't think more than 20% of folks seriously accept the labels dem or rep, and "Populism" in the present situation seems more like people just sticking up for their own interests. Trump is not really the personality people will idolize, they just vote for him if he represents some hope for a change towards what people consider is needed. There will be no "Trump Party" downstream.

I think it's just wrong to characterize people voting their interests or wishes with a new contemptuous hate term.
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It's not a new term. I got a little hung up in how I view populist when I described it. I do have contempt for populism. My contempt seems to be the only thing that actually came through.
Really I can only laugh at myself for rambling incoherently. I'm fairly upset about the populist Awakening so you will have to forgive me.

Most people won't accept the label Maybe but they do vote for one or the other parties 90% of the time. Most independent voters are going to vote pretty reliably one way or the other. For instance you yourself may not accept the label Republican but I bet you don't vote for Democrats very often.
Iirc pew defines populists as the group that is socially conservative and economically liberal. I tend to think that this group is worse than both conservatives and liberals on both counts. I find them to be economically liberal in an antitrade way and socially conservative in the hey f*** you brownie kind of way. I don't like their views and I don't think that they can defend them inany rational way. They used to largely makeup a mostly ignored constituency with in the Democratic Party. During this election they teamed up with the scum in the Republican Party to morph into a full-fledged ****show. Together they've made each other even more stupid . The big problem is that now they sit in the center of our f****** politics. They only make up about 15% of the voting population and I have some faith that they will be knocked from their perch without a real fight in the next election. I do however have some fear that the Democrats will just start pandering to them in an attempt to get them back. Going bat**** crazy on trade and f****** our economy over for a very long time.
 
fishonjazz said:
What is the NSA? National security agency?
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Yes, they run a lot of the data collection programs in the states. Like the cell phone info and that data storage site they built in SLC not to many years ago.
 
Siro said:
Kind of true, but it's an unsatisfying outlook. The shift we're currently experiencing is not simply toward uninformed opinions and mistrust of expertise. If that was the case, then the move would be much more heterogeneous. You would find places where the populace are backing a socialist revolution (which maybe can be seen a bit in Sanders' populism). Or libertarian government minimalism. But that's not what we're seeing. The populist push goes -mostly- in a certain direction, and that direction is to the "right". As in, it is nationalist (and largely ethno-nationalist) and traditionalist. I think we're seeing a backlash against neoliberalism and progressivism. It is not simply the rise of the ordinary person against the elites. After all, Trump and his people are elites too.
Click to expand...

You've also got to consider the weakness of the organised left, not so much in the US cause it has been dead there for some time but in the rest of the west. The defeat of the Soviet Union and subsequent retraction of the hard left causes a ripple effect through left politics. If you study the history of ideas and political movements, its especially true in my country, so many of the ideas that moved and influence organised labour came from the Socialist and Communist parties. Without these focal points for activists people tend to drift and become disengaged.

Social democratic parties throughout the west have almost uniformly collaborated with neo-liberals, it is impossible to be socially progressive while adhering to a conservative economic idiom, that at its heart has a negative view of humanity. It is, as Marx would call it, a contradiction. I think this tends to explain why there has not been a reaction on the left to the rise of the far right, the traditional organs of resistance to the right are either tarnished by their participation in the exploitation of their own constituents or in the case of the hard left, they are not longer the potent and organised organisations they once were.
 
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