United States Politics Thread 46

[Nortaneous]

In addition to being cartoonishly evil, it's monumentally stupid of them to hitch their entire national brand to nonsense that no reasonable person would ever endorse in response to total non-issues, especially after the 2016 election when they ran a moderate who didn't even go in for the bathroom bill thing the apparatchiks were pushing, although unfortunately once Trump was in office he appointed the same repulsive insects voters were hoping he'd obliterate.

Nort, while I agree that Trump was a moderate on social issues and probably still is in his heart, the fact is that Trump could not have won the election without social conservatives. He really, really needed Mike Pence on the ticket and it would have sunk his campaign if he had chosen Pence and then gone on to flatly contradict Pence's own positions on topics such as abortion and LGBT issues. I think that remains true today, and that the Republican party cannot win elections by simply conceding defeat to the Left on social issues ... what exactly would there be left to stand for ?

Opposition to the policies of the financial and managerial classes. Which would be socially conservative insofar as corporations push progressive messaging to appeal to their ideal target demographics: single women who live in cities, gay men, and Redditors. (That is, people who don't have kids and aren't planning to.) But which would also entail a dramatic reduction in unskilled immigration, H-1B reform, destruction of the college credential system and the undischargeable debt that enables it, some kind of coherent industrial and developmental policy, etc.

There are other policies that could be added to that platform: an international cultural strategy of the sort we had in the early days of the Cold War, reindustrialization, deurbanization, affordable family formation, etc.

And the Republicans also have the Roe v. Wade football to hold out. If Charlie Brown kicks it someday, whatever. But a lot of social conservatism is just pica: when people are malnourished, sometimes they start eating dirt. Why feed them dirt? Let Peoria hear the lamentations of its enemies - they'll drop the silly shit then.

[Nachtswalbe]

https://www.amazon.com/Nationalism-Radi ... sr_1_1?cri

[Moose-tache]

Opposition to the policies of the financial and managerial classes.

Sometimes I skim threads without reading the usernames. I think we all do that sometimes. And when I do, I often come across a comment that makes sense, until I see the username and realize it's Nort, and that he's talking about exactly the opposite people I think he's talking about.

[zompist]

I think that remains true today, and that the Republican party cannot win elections by simply conceding defeat to the Left on social issues ... what exactly would there be left to stand for ?

Opposition to the policies of the financial and managerial classes.

Why would they oppose themselves?

You seem to hanker for a populist GOP and think Trump was its harbinger. Most of us here would agree with your anti-megacorps shtick in some way. But the GOP ain't with you. Let's look at the 2020 election by income level:

Under $30K - 15% of voters - Biden 54-46
$30-50K - 20% of voters - Biden 56-43
$50-100K - 39% of voters - Biden 57-42
$100-200K - 20% of voters - Trump 58-41
$200K up - 7% of voters - split 44-44

Households under $100K in income-- the working class and the poor-- went for Biden in a landslide. All those think pieces about Trump voters in diners were wrong; these people knew that Trump wasn't on their side. They were much more split in 2016, but Trump lost them.

The "managerial classes"-- the $100-200K slice-- was Trump's bedrock support and they loved him. He actually solidified his support here over four years-- they went slightly for Hillary in 2016.

People's picture of the elite tends to be wrong: you think they're all libruls, the Democratic Socialists think they're all fascists. In fact they're evenly split between the two parties. (This is not an accident in a two-party system-- it's exactly as political scientists would predict.)

It would be interesting if Trump's occasional 2016 populism had been real. But it's not, and 2021 Trump sure isn't pushing that way.

Matt Yglesias, ever the contrarian, likes to praise Trump for getting the GOP out of its suicidal obsession with ending Social Security and Medicare. I think that's overblown-- if that tendency was really killed, it was killed by the 2018 midterms, not by Trump. But the GOP has decided instead to go all-in on the culture wars-- what you call "the silly shit". Where are they actually pushing populism?

[Ares Land]

Re: libertarians.

I think libertarians (as in, the US Libertarian Party) were very different from then-conservatives in the 70s. There were still differences in the 90s and the early 2000s.

It seems to me, now, that there are very close to each other. They may be more conservatives than most Republicans, really. Check out Hans-Hermann Hoppe: I'm sure most conservatives here would find the guy way too far right for their tastes.

Re: the main discussion.

I'm European and not aware of the finest nuances of American politics. But isn't anti-intellectualism part of the brand image of American conservatives? (I mean, Republicans as in 'I'm from Missouri' salt-of-the-Earth types, and Ivy-League liberals seen as hopelessly lost in study of their own navels?) It's sad, but not terribly surprising that it would register as 'uneducated' on the left.

We liberals and left-wingers in general are pretty scared by what we see as existential threats: climate change, the rise of fascism, the pandemic. Right-wingers seem entirely oblivious to these. Understandably, the gut reaction to this is 'but what is wrong with you people?'
(Intellectually, I know the gut reaction is counterproductive. But it's pretty hard to shake.)

[Moose-tache]

But Zompist, you don't understand. The GOP's anti-immigrant rhetoric is actually heroically standing up to the predatory rich! Because it's rich people who profit from immigration, you see. So if you want to stop them, you have to target their most vulnerable employees and threaten to deport them, or just brutalize them until they leave. Then eventually those darn pesky rich people will have to profit off of white labor instead. Read a damn book, geez.

[Raphael]

"There are no celebrity leftists!"
"But Raphael, what about..."
"I am, of course, speaking about people I personally know, and know well. I'm not talking about people whom I don't know well personally. So, there are no celebrity leftists!"

[zompist]

I'm European and not aware of the finest nuances of American politics. But isn't anti-intellectualism part of the brand image of American conservatives? (I mean, Republicans as in 'I'm from Missouri' salt-of-the-Earth types, and Ivy-League liberals seen as hopelessly lost in study of their own navels?)

US politicians all try to be salt-of-the-earth types. Everybody vows to fight for "workers" against big business and the ivory tower elites. All the more reason to take these poses with a truckload of salt.

[bradrn]

Some general thoughts on the discussion here:

• Pabappa’s argument is weird, but actually does make a certain amount of sense. Basically, I understand him as simply asking that normal rightists not be judged by the opinions of insane extremists who end up on TV. For an alternate perspective, this is the same as asking for normal leftists not to be judged by the opinions of insane extremists who end up in universities and on Twitter.
• Almost everyone thinks they understand the other side. Almost no-one actually understands the other side.
• Corollary: people tend to act as lumpers with the other side, and splitters with their own side. (This is possibly a re-statement of Pabappa’s argument.)
• Further corollary: arguing about whether ‘libertarians’ are ‘conservative’ or not is a mug’s game.

[Nachtswalbe]

To prevent political extremism or to at least draw potential future-extremists away, can the government subsidize subcultures with official ambassadors of a subculture as a sort of legally regulated and properly internally-policed (with members of the subculture given police/security training) alternative to mainstream society, to avoid crazy shit like Zizianism or missing stairs.

This stems from discourse over whether
1) home or outside-of-home is worse for children
2) whether institutions are more biased than individuals
3) subculture abuse (Ziz, Leverage)

[Nachtswalbe]

https://mobile.twitter.com/spiderfoods/ ... 3243757575

[Linguoboy]

For funsies, I googled "Libertarian Socialist Party" to see if such a beast existed in the USA. It does. Their Facebook page has 16 likes.

Then I went to the Facebook page of the Libertarian Party (United States). It has over 760,000 likes.

So I stand by my statement that, in the USA, ""libertarian" [has] come to be identified primarily with a right-wing political philosophy".

Oh, certainly, in the Anglosphere "Libertarian" has come to mean a right-wing political philosophy. The thing about your little google search, though, is that libertarian socialists don't normally form parties.

That's a fair point.

linguoboy: you didn't insult Pabappa, but you know that a smarmy argument in the second person is going to come across as hostile. You certainly didn't violate any board rules, but you would talk to your nan that way either. Or maybe you would, if she's a total bitch.

If you're attempting a righteous critique of my "hostile" debating tone, maybe don't drag my nan into it? But I do appreciate the considerate attempt to meet me at my own level, cheers.

"There are no celebrity leftists!"
"But Raphael, what about..."
"I am, of course, speaking about people I personally know, and know well. I'm not talking about people whom I don't know well personally. So, there are no celebrity leftists!"

Careful there, Raphael; I know the last you want is for someone to take you to task for being too "smarmy"!

[Linguoboy]

I'm European and not aware of the finest nuances of American politics. But isn't anti-intellectualism part of the brand image of American conservatives? (I mean, Republicans as in 'I'm from Missouri' salt-of-the-Earth types, and Ivy-League liberals seen as hopelessly lost in study of their own navels?)

US politicians all try to be salt-of-the-earth types. Everybody vows to fight for "workers" against big business and the ivory tower elites. All the more reason to take these poses with a truckload of salt.

I still think there's some light between "salt of the earth" and full-on anti-intellectualism--and I think the pandemic response highlighted that pretty well. US Conservatives (from mainstream Republicans to the lunatic fringe) really do seem committed to making "But what do SCIENTISTS know about SCIENCE?" their rallying call.

But what do I know anyway, I'm just a simple boy from Missourah.

[Nachtswalbe]

Apparently pro-Blob types may have a hardon for genocide, especially if it's 'retaliatory' and nuclear:
https://twitter.com/Theophite/status/14 ... 9511420930

speaking of folk beliefs common among the Blob, "planning to kill a significant fraction of the world's population isn't a crime against humanity" and "planning to kill everyone in a particular country isn't genocide" are pretty widely accepted

In context he is speaking about American Blob approval of Israel hypothetically nuking the Aswan Dam, Damascus etc. in the event of another Arab-Israeli war

[Nachtswalbe]

Thought experiment:
What if a radically socially liberal but anti-identity politics movement emerges, a hard center analogue of the Claremont institute, advocating for the following policies:

• Official ban on the use of ethnic and racial identifiers e.g (Black, Asian) and a One-Nation policy that "refuses to strengthen the social fiction of race" or "cultural division"

• Bans on all identity group celebrations and heritage months

• Requiring public English fluency as a conditiion for staying in the US for immigrants

• Prohibitions on gendered garments (skirts, dresses, heels) and gendered makeup as a means of 'freeing women from gender norms'

• State subsidized creches so no one has to stay at home to take care of the kids

• The creation of an openly irreligious political class

• Placing all pastors/priests/imams on the govt payroll (and monitoring)

• Combatting superstitions like creationism, anti-vax and faith healing

• Promoting scientific education and rational thought

• A phonetic American alphabet a la Dewey

• A candidate competency board so only "rational candidates" a certified to run

• Sponsoring space colonization and a 2,000 person space wheel in orbit around the lagrange point

• Support for transhumanism as the means of "strengthening America", "every man a Superman"

Drawing inspiration from the 1900s Progressive Movement, Kemalism and "radical-republic" France and radical transhumanism

[kodé]

Thought experiment:
What if a radically socially liberal but anti-identity politics movement emerges, a hard center analogue of the Claremont institute, advocating for the following policies:

• Official ban on the use of ethnic and racial identifiers e.g (Black, Asian) and a One-Nation policy that "refuses to strengthen the social fiction of race" or "cultural division"

• Requiring public English fluency as a conditiion for staying in the US for immigrants

• Prohibitions on gendered garments (skirts, dresses, heels) and gendered makeup as a means of 'freeing women from gender norms'

• State subsidized creches so no one has to stay at home to take care of the kids

• The creation of an openly irreligious political class

• Placing all pastors/priests/imams on the govt payroll (and monitoring)

• Combatting superstitions like creationism, anti-vax and faith healing

• Promoting scientific education and rational thought

• A phonetic American alphabet a la Dewey

• A candidate competency board so only "rational candidates" a certified to run

Drawing inspiration from the 1900s Progressive Movement, Kemalism and "radical-republic" France

I’d be shocked if this kind of policy got even 1% of support from the American electorate. It’s unworkable, unconstitutional, and anyone on the American political spectrum is guaranteed to get pissed off by at least three items. It makes no sense at all.

[Pabappa]

Thank you to Moose and to bradrn for defending me, though, honestly, it hasnt changed my mind. All I see is more talking over my head, speaking for me, and looking for cloaked interpretations of my words, as though I were a 5-year-old barely able to get a coherent sentence out and, at best, given the choice of which adult's interpretation i prefer, since no one will take my own words literally.

Thank you again for being polite, but frankly this help is help I dont need. I know what my opinions are, and I shouldnt need to pick from a list of choices written by people who disagree with me.

Yet again this discussion underscores my original point, ....that Leftists cannot and will not understand the Right, .... and at best see the need to forever interpret conservative arguments in a way that makes more sense from a leftist point of view, as though conservatives were just liberals wearing blinders. At worst, again, the conservative position is so grossly misrepresented that it's unrecognizable.

This television argument, for example, comes nowhere close to what I said. I don't think it even qualifies as a straw man. I felt it was plain in my original post that I was comparing left-leaning communities to right-leaning communities of the same kind, but even if it were not, I wrote a second post explaining clearly what i meant. To keep pushing the television thing at this point is disingenuous, and, predictably as always, illustrates my point that you feel the need to stick manufactured opinions in my mouth instead of using the ones I've stated on my own.

If you want me to defend myself, you can use the quote button and show me my own words .... but I'm not going to be roped into defending an argument that I never made and which I don't agree with. If I don't see my own words on the screen, then it's not really my opinion that's being questioned.

[Travis B.]

Thought experiment:
What if a radically socially liberal but anti-identity politics movement emerges, a hard center analogue of the Claremont institute, advocating for the following policies:

• Official ban on the use of ethnic and racial identifiers e.g (Black, Asian) and a One-Nation policy that "refuses to strengthen the social fiction of race" or "cultural division"

• Bans on all identity group celebrations and heritage months

• Requiring public English fluency as a conditiion for staying in the US for immigrants

• Prohibitions on gendered garments (skirts, dresses, heels) and gendered makeup as a means of 'freeing women from gender norms'

• State subsidized creches so no one has to stay at home to take care of the kids

• The creation of an openly irreligious political class

• Placing all pastors/priests/imams on the govt payroll (and monitoring)

• Combatting superstitions like creationism, anti-vax and faith healing

• Promoting scientific education and rational thought

• A phonetic American alphabet a la Dewey

• A candidate competency board so only "rational candidates" a certified to run

• Sponsoring space colonization and a 2,000 person space wheel in orbit around the lagrange point

• Support for transhumanism as the means of "strengthening America", "every man a Superman"

Drawing inspiration from the 1900s Progressive Movement, Kemalism and "radical-republic" France and radical transhumanism

As kodé stated, you do realize how practically the entire American public no matter where they sit politically would be pissed off by this?

[Nachtswalbe]

Thought experiment:
What if a radically socially liberal but anti-identity politics movement emerges, a hard center analogue of the Claremont institute, advocating for the following policies:

• Official ban on the use of ethnic and racial identifiers e.g (Black, Asian) and a One-Nation policy that "refuses to strengthen the social fiction of race" or "cultural division"

• Bans on all identity group celebrations and heritage months

• Requiring public English fluency as a conditiion for staying in the US for immigrants

• Prohibitions on gendered garments (skirts, dresses, heels) and gendered makeup as a means of 'freeing women from gender norms'

• State subsidized creches so no one has to stay at home to take care of the kids

• The creation of an openly irreligious political class

• Placing all pastors/priests/imams on the govt payroll (and monitoring)

• Combatting superstitions like creationism, anti-vax and faith healing

• Promoting scientific education and rational thought

• A phonetic American alphabet a la Dewey

• A candidate competency board so only "rational candidates" a certified to run

• Sponsoring space colonization and a 2,000 person space wheel in orbit around the lagrange point

• Support for transhumanism as the means of "strengthening America", "every man a Superman"

Drawing inspiration from the 1900s Progressive Movement, Kemalism and "radical-republic" France and radical transhumanism

As kodé stated, you do realize how practically the entire American public no matter where they sit politically would be pissed off by this?

That's why it's called "hard-center" because it's extreme, just not right or left

[Nachtswalbe]

Also the actually existing Transhumanist Party under Zoltan Istvan is a shitshow, but I'd really like to see the NSF set aside money for mechanical augmentation (healthy individuals replacing their body parts with superhuman mechanical equivalents)