The wealthy want us to fight a culture war to distract us from the class war we should be having.
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In any war the only winner is the rich. If the rich lose, then it’s called a revolution instead.
It was the bourgeois that win in France, not the peasants.
No they did not. Napolean was not the bourgeoisie that ruled a decade prior. The French Revolution ended their monarchy and feudalism. The Bourgeoisie lost.
No, the Revolution got rid of the monarchy and neutered the clergy and nobility, but it was an urban revolution of the Parisian middle class, or bourgeoisie. The situation of the peasants changed little through the revolution, and it was persistent efforts of the bourgeoisie to impose Parisian culture on the countryside. It took until WW1 to construct a coherent French nation. Weber (not that Weber) showed that in Peasants into Frenchmen in the 70s.
And Napoleon had family connections in the Italian nobility. His uncle was a cardinal. His father was a lawyer and inherited a fair chunk of change. Napoleon was hardly any sort of peasant.
I think most revolutions just lead to a new ruling class that is just as bad as the old. It didn’t take Stalin long to become just as bad as the Czar. After fighting a war to stop taxation from Britain, one of the first things Washington did was put down a rebellion to enforce a federal tax on whiskey.
The thing is the American revolution wasn’t about taxation itself. The taxation without representation bit was more of a minor component over how society should be organized. The question was whether the inherited aristocratic titles or ownership of land(later means of production) determined your social power. There’s nothing about the ideology of the American revolution that is about the levying of taxes, it is about who gets to collect them.
With the soviets, the problems and successes are significantly more nuanced than “Stalin was bad dictator”(although that is a true statement). Which on one hand makes a lot of western criticism of the USSR questionably true, but also makes the actual issues(which there were) harder to address because they happened not because of one guy being bad.
Taxation was the main reason for the war. Britain had levied some new taxes to recoup the cost of the French and Indian war. It put a significant strain on the economy.
Kinda chilling in that format tbh
The rich waged wars on democracy since the beginning of European colonization in North America. They’ve been winning steadily, with few losses since the beginning of money in society.
Democracy is good for the oligarchs. Trump is a populist. The oligarchs definitely don’t like him. Even the Koch family is against him.
You’re being down voted, but you’re correct.
So do the russians and chinese.
Yes. The rich control both of them
This is part of the GOP strategy.
Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri has openly acknowledged that the GOP strategy is to make it so miserable for Democrats in red and purple states that they will move to blue states. That would, in turn, cement Republican power in the White House, Senate and thereby the Supreme Court.
It won’t work for long, since they’re making people so poor they can’t afford to move.
Well their goal is to make them too poor to vote as well
And you don’t even have to be poor. We live in Indiana. Our house is worth far less than any blue state houses. We couldn’t afford to buy a house in a blue state. I hate it here, but I’m here to stay until the housing market collapses.
High COL also means high income. You are expressing a sunk cost fallacy.
High income if you have a job lined up already. Having been jobless in California, I don’t wish to repeat that.
Agree, Definitely recommend having job lined up before any major change like that.
Or just be willing to hustle? Being young helps too.
I got the job before heading to SF. But another friend of mine in tech sold everything he owned in Ohio, and rented a room in a house for like 800/month and lived with 4 other dudes in a huge house in the inner Richmond. Got by on app hustles until he found a gig coding.
He’s back in Ohio now bc he decided to breed and be closer to family because of it. But he had a solid couple of years more in SF than I did. I kind of regret not just going for it sooner like he did.
Wages haven’t kept up with increases in CoL for years, and the pandemic skyrocketed the latter while barely budging the former.
For real. I live in Texas currently. If I could afford it, I would move tomorrow. This place is Hell, in every sense.
Right? I’m also in Texas because Uncle Sam sent me there. The moment my contract is up, I’m fucking OUT of here.
Wish I hadn’t changed my state of record to be Texas, but that just means I’ll keep voting there until I can bounce. Right now I’m mad favoring Allred to unseat Cruz in 2024.
Me too. I’m a clinical social worker here, and so many of my LGBTQ+ patients have been struggling with suicidal ideation with the politics here, especially with the most recent legislative session. I’m gonna stay here as long as possible and vote in every fucking election possible. Lately I’ve even been voting in the Republican primaries against the extremist candidates. It’s so sad, because it wasn’t this bad here when I was growing up in the 90s. We even had a Dem governor.
LGBTQ+ patients have been struggling with suicidal ideation with the politics here
This is exactly what Abbott wants. Makes me want to plant more trees.
How “Christian” of him, eh? It’s disgusting. We are human souls who deserve safety and to not live in fear. I have hope that many Gen Z Texans feel disgusted as well, won’t move, and can turn Texas blue. Once more and more are able to vote, we can transform this state. Maybe that is too idealistic, but it keeps me sane while I am unable to move.
This is only a viable strategy as long as the electoral college exists.
It’s not going away.
This argument needs to die. The EC is never going away, so stop pinning various strategies and hopes on it somehow magically disappearing. If people spent 1/2 as much time on actually voting and campaigning for center and left candidates as they do complaining about the EC, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today.
I have worked on campaigns and studied politics for years. With the EC, the current SCOTUS, and the voter suppression and gerrymandering tactics of the last few decades , there is no reasonable long-term path to left, or even center, power. People are allowed to complain. People have been organizing, for years. Nothing has worked, and basic human rights are now being violated in ways and for groups that they hadn’t been before. You’re right that with our current governmental structure, the EC isn’t going anywhere. But democracy’s not about elections alone; it’s about the consent of the governed. A whole lot of us don’t consent, and I don’t think the current institutional infrastructure’s going to survive the blast when that pressure gets too high. And if anything (other than a Constitutional Convention based on the same principles as the EC) happens to the current arrangement, the EC goes too. No one in an underrepresented state would willingly accept those conditions.
HALF the population can’t be bothered to vote in most elections. The country is being dragged to the Right and has been for years now and election after election a massive percent of the population doesn’t seem it is worth going out to the polls. In presidential elections it is higher, but still - there are a LOT and I mean a LOT of elections that could have swung the other way if only a few hundred more people got off their butts and voted. We could have gotten rid of that blowhard Lauren Boebart (however it is spelled) last cycle. She won by only a few hundred votes in an election where less than 60% of the population of that district voted. Apparently Colorado is a mail-in state, so these people didn’t even have to go drive anywhere.
The situation is even worse if you look at demographics. No one had more to lose than the youth of this country and their voting numbers are pitiful. What’s worse is that they have the numbers to change elections. They are a massive group that at this point in time have more people than the dreaded Boomers. Yet their numbers are abysmal.
So when I hear about people complaining about the EC or gerrymandering or a host of other roadblocked set up by the Right for them to get their way on election day, I just think back that these are mostly just excuses. I am not saying that gerrymandering isn’t real - it absolutely is - but even some of the most gerrymandered districts could swing the other way if enough people voted.
If you’re overwhelmed by the enormity of the threat the right poses, and you see structural change is impossible, I sympathize. But blaming people who are struggling for not doing something they see as unlikely to produce positive change and that the state is simultaneously actively making it hard for them to do isn’t helpful. I’ve been politically involved since 2000 (academic study, campaign volunteering/work); Barring major disaster, I’m not seeing voter numbers going up from here significantly without legistative changes. You can yell at clouds all you want, but that’s not the point of leverage you’re looking for.
Making everyone a victim who is on some pre-determined path and they have no control over the things that happen to them is exactly the nonsense that I see the youth are falling for. I see posts by Zoomers all the time that essentially boil down to “we’re screwed, so fuck it” or “I give up” or some such. That’s not the America that I grew up in and I refuse to buy into this idea that change is impossible. Americans need “tough love” - coddling them in this idea of “IF ONLY so-and-so was different” then we could fix the environment/housing crisis/healthcare. Be the change you want to be. Expecting that it will simply be handled to you leads to this apathy and tuning-out that far too many Americans already fall into.
I don’t think you understand. No one in my position thinks things will he handed to/handled for us. (Your word choice is unclear.). I think we’re on the Titanic and we’ve struck the iceberg, we just haven’t done the horrible dying in the North Atlantic part. And if I wanted boomers who’ve probably studied our political structure less closely, spent less time doing actual campaign work, and seen less of the way things work than I have, telling me I’m entitled, I’d have asked one of those guys who likes talking about millennials like we’re children whose biggest problem is not laying off the avocado toast. “Kids today are weak, entitled whiners playing the victim card, and I know better because I’m older” may pass for discourse some places, but not here.
Ok. I think people’s actual lives are more important than a 250-year-old document that can’t differentiate between a flint-lock pistol and a machine gun. Don’t you?
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I love living in L.A. because while we do have our right-wingers, seeing a Trump flag even in my semi-conservative pocket of the city is rare.
I’d say it’s a valid strategy, abhorrent though. Because of the rural bias in GOP there will naturally be more counties, states etc that run gop if Dems move to denser blue areas.
Had to scroll too far to find this! I also read that it was totally about strategy in those purple or starting to lean purple states as more young people lean liberal, and the older, evangelical crowd is not being replaced enough with young people to keep a good footing for the Republicans. If the liberal people leave, the states turn solid red, and then they don’t need new people so much to keep power.
Of course no one wants to live in a place that is contrary to their beliefs so you can’t blame anyone for moving somewhere else… but the implications of that are scary for the country as a whole.
Yeah, but the strategy’s multi-pronged, so even if you stay and suffer for your suffrage, they can find new reasons to prevent you from voting/discount your ballot. And then you’ve put your life and happiness in jeopardy for nothing. Not a great recruitment pitch for the Stay Put Brigade.
When one group became openly hostile to multiple populations of people based on things like race and sexuality, it’s no longer ‘voting with your feet’, it becomes ‘go somewhere they’re not gonna shoot my son’
“People want to live where they know their neighbors don’t want to wipe them from the face of the earth. More at 11.”
Exemplified by the fact that we have started having free states again like during the civil war. The Maryland governor has been very clear and direct that the state of Maryland will take in political and social refugees from Florida and Texas. Where transpeople are being forced to die or pretend not to exist in Florida, Maryland is codifying their right to be and live as who they are.
You can’t blame lefties and progressives for wanting to escape to freedom when their other option is death or hiding.
There is a real threat of harm to various minority groups living in red states. Hell, there’s a real threat of harm to women who can fall pregnant living in red states. I’d certainly not want to live there if my accidentally falling pregnant (which would likely be ectopic in my case) would result in a very high chance of my death.
Both sides?
My generally open minded historically liberal friend called me the other day.
He moved to a very conservative area a few years ago, and the other night in a phone call he was saying “I’d feel far safer being a liberal at a Trump rally than wearing a Trump hat at a BLM antifa rally”.
It is very much perceived on the right that the left is a violent mob waiting to burn down your neighborhood at the smallest slight. While the right is a bunch of friendly Sunday school help thy neighbor types.
I tend to lean towards this is all bot farm propaganda trolling, and that only a very small percentage of either side are actually bad people I would want to avoid.
The problem is, this is how people are getting their information now days, and the idea that “Oh that’s just people on the internet” is no longer valid. Social media and algorithmic rage bait driven content are having a very real impact on the “real” world.
Since he is an old friend, I was able to get him to pause for a breath in this talking point fueled screed he was on, and point out “Dude, I just want the same simple things you do, abortion access, religion out of schools and politics, reasonable gun ownership, healthy air/food/water, a strong national defense, etc”.
When one of the first arguments you bring up is the “violance” of drag people reading books to kids, well shit, I just don’t think we’re having the same conversation.
liberal at a Trump rally than wearing a Trump hat at a BLM antifa rally
So in the discussion of red states vs blue states, the ‘both sides’ examples are:
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Trump, a member of the republican party (Red) who rose to presidency as the republican candidate, still has many followers and is part of the republican mainstream
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BLM antifa, fringe movements which have no official part in the democratic party (Blue) and have never held any political power
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I’m sure both sides are actually doing this. It’s just that only one side is actually being persecuted and forced to leave their homes.
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The problem comes when conservatives see the rainbow flag (or any of the other numerous pride flags) as a direct attack on their religion. I grew up in a very conservative area of a very red state, and I can tell you from personal experience that an attack on their religion will feel like a personal attack against them. They might be flying the thin blue line flag as a “fuck your feelings” flag, but it’s likely because they see any pride flag as a “fuck your religion” flag.
This really stems from the larger issue of tying religion and politics together; now they can view any challenges to their political views as a challenge to their religious views. One thing Christianity is very good at is building a victim complex and that Jesus/ the church is the most important thing in this life or the next, and that preconditions their followers to believe that they will have to dig in harder in the face of adversity.
I think the real key is to make everyone realize that freedom of religious is the same as freedom from religion as well. Once we can all get on the same page that making something legal and available (like women’s healthcare) is not the same as a government endorsement and still allows people to not use the service. Getting over that hurdle might take away a huge arm of the right-wing propaganda machine (allowing priests and ministers to give political messages from the pulpit) and might help the wheels of government to turn a little smoother.
Conservatives will breathlessly tell you that we’re a christian nation and that they dont want separation of church and state. They actively want yallqueda. They don’t care about facts, logic, or moral consistency, and they will kill you dead rather than change their viewpoint the slightest bit.
Yep, so reasoning with them is, and always will be, a trap. You have to legislate against them
I just wish the “blue states” could stop funding the “red states” utter stupidity. It’s just more privatize gains and socialize losses for the rich.
Edit: fixed an autocorrect word to clarify what I was saying
What does this mean exactly?
Red states are, across the board, severely lacking in the education department
I think they meant to say “funding” not “finding”
That does make more sense in context
The argument is that blue states make more money and pay more taxes. Those taxes are then used to prop up red states’ economy. But that said, based on what I’ve researched in the last 10 minutes, it appears to be more of a mixed bag than I thought and the answer as to which “side” is more dependent on federal funding is murky. This is the best resource I’ve found that breaks it all down.
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700
That’s a better study honestly. I won’t be trusting an article written by a journalist with a mononym, thanks … that article you listed puts California as the single most dependent state, and that’s absurd. There’s no study there, it’s just the mononym journalist’s very poorly organized citations…
And the study I linked does demonstrate that red states are more dependent on the federal government than blue states, by ten ranks on average.
Edit that’s actually just a crappy blog and that journalist isn’t a journalist at all, she’s a video game blogger. Yeah.
Unreal. You must have gone to like page 12 of Google results to find one that gave you California as the worst owner, and without any irony at all that blog you linked is called “balancing everything”. FFS talk about disingenuous “sharing a source”.
Information literacy ftw.
Autocorrect got me.
They tend to receive more in FUNDING than blue states do. Some exceptions like FL and TX happen though.
That’s by design. The right-wing Wall Street caste doesn’t want an educated populace. They want an indoctrinated populace.
Conservative terrorism is out control. It breaks out specifically across racial and socioeconomic lines.
Moderates and liberals are trying to protect themselves, while conservatives are hell-bent on tearing everyone down.
My hope is that these are the death throes of the Republican party. A loud gasp for air before the party croaks and shatters.
This is a good thing. The only way the red states will change is by getting worse and worse. They will have no doctors, teachers, nurses, lawyers, or corporations that will purposefully live or do their work there if they can help it. If you are a woman, a person of color, a migrant, an LGBTQ person, a child, or anything other than an old white man, the red states are no longer safe for you.
I basically refuse to go to most of those states if I can help it. Florida? You couldn’t pay me to set foot in that state. I feel they same about Texas and many others.
I want conservatism to thrive. It does have a place in a healthy political system. But, my friends, the conservatives are the moderate Dems now. I don’t know what else to call the Republicans, other than fascists or cult members. It is a sickness that any person in their right mind should run as fast as they can from.
The truly upsetting part about this is that there are people that are desperate to leave those fascist states, that can’t for a variety of reasons outside their control. I wish things were different. This is just insanity.
I want conservatism to thrive. It does have a place in a healthy political system.
What place is that? Conservatism at it’s core is about maintaining the aristocracy/hierarchy. That’s what it started as, and it’s never wavered from that mission. All of the claims towards ‘conserving what is good’ or ‘fiscal responsibility’ or ‘protecting individual rights’ are just that: claims. They have never acted in ways that would back those claims up unless their actions also helped maintain/promote the aristocracy. The rest is just noise and propaganda designed to make their positions sound palatable.
I don’t see any place for that in a healthy political system.
I disagree with you, but respectfully. Conservatism is basically just people who, for a variety of reasons (not all of them bad), generally vote for the status quo. This is human nature. Progressives are willing to push forward but also sometimes without regard to some of the consequences. Also human nature. Some people are bold and some people are timid. Having both around in a balanced way helps us all move forward with careful thought. That system is good overall.
The problem is that conservatives are really moderate democrats now. The modern Republicans are not conservatives. They are fascist cultist morons. I believe I explained myself fairly well in my first post. You might want to read the whole thing next time :)
I disagree that it is “good” overall. Conservative policies have always stood in the way of any movement to treat all people equally because the status quo benefits a sections of the population. Slavery. Racism. Sexism. Etc. None of these needed to be “conserved” and we would be a better society if we had been able to address them sooner. Also, conservative power structures when threatened by progress default to authoritarian in brutal fashion. The Holocaust. The Civil War. The Inquisition. Etc. And this is just in the West.
The modern Republican is not an aberration. It is the final form of Conservatism.
I have seen no proof that the consequences of rampant Progressivism are in any way equal to the horrors of rampant Conservatism. The idea that we need to validate Conservativism to “balance out” Progressivism seems to me to be a dangerous myth that is paid for with the blood of oppressed people.
I have seen no proof that the consequences of rampant Progressivism are in any way equal to the horrors of rampant Conservatism.
There have been many cases in history where the forces in society seeking positive change have caused untold damage to their societies. The French Revolution started out with the oppressed peasantry seeking liberation from a decadent and constrictive nobility, but ended in hundreds of people getting their heads cut off before the pendulum swung back and Napoleon took control, and briefly created one of the biggest empires in European history. Napoleon was less conservative than the Ancien Regime but he certainly wasn’t a revolutionary.
Another example is the Bolsheviks, who started out as oppressed workers in Russia who wanted liberation from an exploitative and authoritarian tsar, but as soon as they actually gained power, were usurped by a complete megalomaniac who sent thousands of people to labor camps, destroyed most of Russia’s social institutions in order to subsume them into the state, committed numerous genocides (some more direct than others), and destroyed Russia’s demographics and long-term economic prosperity with a breakneck-pace industrialization. Joseph Stalin’s ideological offshoot, Mao Zedong, also did similarly horrible things in China, like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, despite starting out as the leader of a peasant rebellion seeking liberation from literal feudalism.
Apart from the Nazis, who can only debatably be considered “conservative” considering they didn’t really wanna conserve much of anything about society, conservative insanity doesn’t tend to be anywhere near as destructive to society in the short term as progressive insanity is. Instead, conservative insanity causes society to completely stagnate, remaining behind socially and technologically while other societies rush ahead, as happened to Tsarist Russia.
Seeing all this, you’d have to be either biased or stupid to deny the necessity of conservativism in society. Progress is often necessary, today included in many areas, but society must have a conservative wing to prevent the progressives from changing things which are better off left alone.
Nazis were “debatably” conservative my ass, fucking sad that this filth is already spreading on the fediverse
Fascism is linked to conservatism through an extreme form of it. The United States has had six Presidents whose policies and practices identify them as part of the Fascist wing of politics. William McKinley, Calvin Coolidge, Warren G. Harding, John Tyler, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump.
What did the Nazis want to conserve, exactly? They hated Christianity, they hated free-market capitalism, they wanted to wipe out half the continent and settle it with Germans, and they wanted to completely reshape every aspect of society around the state. They didn’t wanna conserve shit, except maybe the Junkers’ economic dominance.
They hated Christianity
Every German soldier had “Got mitt uns” (God is with us) on their belt buckles.
Most Nazis were Christians.
The idea that the Nazis hated Christianity is silly. Some upper-echelon Nazis might have, but the overall members of the Nazi Party were Christians. Including the participants in the Holocaust. They were doing it because Martin Luther said so.
Hierarchy. And reactionaries are still right wing, even if they want to recreate an imagined past of hierarchies rather than just conserving the existing ones.
What did the Nazis want to conserve, exactly?
The NAZI Party originally sought to conserve the right of white Germany (they didn’t view Jewish people as white) and their Roman Catholic religious power. Prussia was part of the Holy Roman Empire and the NAZI Party in part wanted to bring that back in their early days. Popes Pius XI (1922–1939) and Pius XII (1939–1958) led the Catholic Church during the rise and fall of Nazi Germany while the Catholic-aligned Centre Party voted for the Enabling Act of 1933, which gave Adolf Hitler additional domestic powers to suppress political opponents as Chancellor of Germany. Hitler and several other key Nazis had been raised as Catholics though they became more hostile to the Church in their adulthood. Article 24 of the National Socialist Program called for conditional toleration of Christian denominations and the 1933 Reichskonkordat treaty with the Vatican guaranteed religious freedom for Catholics.
Eventually, the alliance fell apart and Nazis sought to suppress the power of the Catholic Church in Germany. Catholic press, schools, and youth organizations were closed, property was confiscated, and about one-third of its clergy faced reprisals from authorities; Catholic lay leaders were among those murdered during the Night of the Long Knives.
Anti-Semitism was present in both German Catholicism, and anti-Semitic acts and attitudes were infrequent in Catholic areas. After the alliance’s failure, Catholic priests went on to play a major role in rescuing Jews. The Catholic church rescued thousands of Jews by issuing false documents to them, lobbying Axis officials, and hiding Jews in monasteries, convents, schools, the Vatican, and the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo. The Reich Security Main Office called the Pope a “mouthpiece” for the Jews and in his first encyclical (Summi Pontificatus), he called the invasion of Poland an “hour of darkness”. In his 1942 Christmas address, the Pope denounced race murders, and in his 1943 encyclical Mystici corporis Christi, the Pope denounced the murder of disabled people.
Even so, in the post-war period, false identification documents were given to many German war criminals by Catholic priests such as Alois Hudal, frequently facilitating their escape to South America. Catholic clergy routinely provided Persilschein or “soap certificates” to former Nazis in order to remove the “Nazi taint”; but at no time was such aid an institutional effort. According to Catholic historian Michael Hesemann, the Vatican itself was outraged by such efforts, and Pope Pius XII demanded the removal of involved clergy such as Hudal.
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An apple is a fruit but not all fruits are apples. So stupid.
What did the Nazis want to conserve, exactly? They hated Christianity, they hated free-market capitalism, they wanted to wipe out half the continent and settle it with Germans, and they wanted to completely reshape every aspect of society around the state. They didn’t wanna conserve shit, except maybe the Junkers’ economic dominance.
Also I can tell you have absolutely nothing of value to add since you defaulted to calling me a Nazi because I made a pretty clear observation. Nah, don’t bother explaining shit on the political discussion sub, just say everyone you don’t like is evil. It’s like I’m back on Reddit
Dude, word roots are often far from their eventual meanings because language evolves. No one with a clue thinks of conserving when they say conservatism. If you want an argument over semantics, maybe there’s a linguistics sub? If you want to talk politics, you don’t just get to decide a word must only literally reflect its etymological root, rather than taking into account the actual actions of people and parties who have called themselves conservatives for the past 50+ years.
The nazis are reactionaries which means they want to go back to feudalism. If you knew about how horrible feudalism was you would have supported the french revolution and the october revolution.
The nazis are reactionaries which means they want to go back to feudalism.
Although it can be said that the Nazis coopted the aesthetics of feudalism in much of what they did, and that people like Heinrich Himmler actually did wish to return to that kind of society, I don’t believe it can be said that the Nazis actually wished to return to a legitimately feudal society. The main difference is that under Nazism, the most important thing in one’s life was meant to be the Aryan race and the state, while under feudalism, the most important thing in one’s life was religion.
If you knew about how horrible feudalism was you would have supported the french revolution and the october revolution.
The things the revolutionaries did to the people of France and Russia were straight up evil. Committing mass murder and establishing a cult based around yourself is just plain evil, doesn’t matter what your intentions are or who you’re rebelling against. Revenge against oppressors isn’t a valid thing to base your policies on and destroying the fabric of society in order to rebuild it based on your ideal always has completely horrifying outcomes.
Fascists shared many of the goals of the conservatives of their day and they often allied themselves with them by drawing recruits from disaffected conservative ranks, but they presented themselves as holding a more modern ideology, with less focus on things like traditional religion, and sought to radically reshape society through revolutionary action rather than preserve the status quo. Fascism opposed class conflict and the egalitarian and international character of socialism. It strongly opposed liberalism, communism, anarchism, and democratic socialism.
MAGA Republicans today practice Fascism, Donald Trump was a Fascist Conservative by definition. The NAZI Party was a Fascist Party that modern Fascists idolize. That doesn’t mean that MAGA Republicans are equal to members of the NAZI Party, they are not. It is better to call them by the type of politics they practice, which is Fascism, a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
Fascists shared many of the goals of the conservatives of their day and they often allied themselves with them by drawing recruits from disaffected conservative ranks, but they presented themselves as holding a more modern ideology, with less focus on things like traditional religion, and sought to radically reshape society through revolutionary action rather than preserve the status quo.
Yes, this is true, just like communists share many goals with Bernie Sanders. You wouldn’t call communists liberal or call Bernie Sanders a communist though. They are completely different things with some overlap.
Fascism opposed class conflict and the egalitarian and international character of socialism. It strongly opposed liberalism, communism, anarchism, and democratic socialism.
Being anti-communist is a characteristic of every ideology to the right of communism and being opposed to anarchism is a characteristic of every ideology above anarchism. Opposing class conflict is also a characteristic of any ideology which doesn’t advocate socialism. None of this really narrows fascism down very well.
MAGA Republicans today practice Fascism, Donald Trump was a Fascist Conservative by definition.
By what fucking definition?
It is better to call them by the type of politics they practice, which is Fascism, a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
While MAGA Republicans are certainly populists, definitely believe the nation to be above the individual, and their leaders act like they want a dictatorship, they are not expansionist enough to be anything like the original fascists (In fact, they actually tend to believe the US needs to stop involving itself in foreign affairs) and they’re also not very totalitarian, often wanting the state not to interfere in economic matters. By contrast, old-school fascists wanted private enterprise to be subordinate to the state, in a system designed as an alternative to both capitalism and socialism which they called corporatism. Calling MAGA Republicans fascists is not true, nor is it very useful, and throwing that term around only lends credence to their assertion that we’re just a bunch of snowflakes who can’t handle people disagreeing with them. It is more useful and more accurate to call them by the more broad term “right-wing populist” instead.
MAGA Republicans’ policies and ideals match fascism on every level. They have nothing in common with traditional Republican values. There isn’t a political ideology called populists, that is the nickname for extremist politicians be they communists or fascists.
You won’t win this argument here though. These people don’t know the difference between conservativism and US Republicanism.
I think you bring up very good examples. The communists in China with their cultural revolution is another example of progressive policies gone wrong. Children undergoing sex change operations and later regretting it could possibly be viewed as one in a few decades. (Examples of these do exist and their stories are heartbreaking.)
Children undergoing sex change operations and later regretting it could possibly be viewed as one in a few decades.
While I do agree that handing out hormone treatments like candy is a bad idea and we need to do more unbiased research into how best to treat children with gender dysphoria without potentially making their lives worse, please stay real here. Nobody allows or advocates for children to undergo actual sex change operations. I also wouldn’t consider this to be on the same level as what communists did in Russia and China, or what the revolutionaries did in France.
I strongly suggest reading Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind. He makes an excellent case that, from Edmund Burke to now, conservatism has been about preserving historical hierarchies. Men over women, straight over gay, white over Black, religious over not, etc. The status quo just tends to be full of hierarchies we haven’t rooted out, so their claim seems believable even though it’s false.
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The only way the red states will change is by getting worse and worse. They will have no doctors, teachers, nurses, lawyers, or corporations that will purposefully live or do their work there if they can help it. If you are a woman, a person of color, a migrant, an LGBTQ person, a child, or anything other than an old white man, the red states are no longer safe for you.
ah so if you’re poor, taking care of loved ones, or otherwise unable to move, then your life is acceptable collateral damage? accelerationism has victims.
Yes I totally agree. this sucks. What would you have us do? I already vote blue. That is probably the best thing we can all do. I will not set foot in a bright red state for any reason at this point. That is self preservation and protecting my own family.
ah so if you’re poor, taking care of loved ones, or otherwise unable to move, then your life is acceptable collateral damage? accelerationism has victims.
People who’ve never been to those states don’t realize they’re literally a trap.
The rent and cost of living is lower, sure, but so is the pay, and so even if you want to leave you just don’t nake enough money to save up. Moving is expensive, and a lot of blue states cost a lot more than red, so it’s extremely difficult to not only put money aside to move, but also enough to cover the higher cost of living.
And then what if you can’t find a job right away? A lot of folks in the south couldn’t afford an education, so we get stuck as unkilled labor which makes it harder to find a living wage.
Meanwhile you have well off people who’ve never really struggled in the same way aaying it’s their fault for not moving sooner, or in a lot of cases accuse them of “refusing help” somehow.
It’s tiring and extremely frustrating.
I hear this a lot. If you have a better solution that protects the safety and rights of people leaving, while helping those who can’t? Because if not, you’re not helping. “Stay and suffer because not everyone can leave” is a broken idea. And if you think the current institutional infrastructure is capable of solving this problem, I have a lovely bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
That is NOT what I said. I’m not going to criticize people leaving, and I think it’s the best option GIVEN an option. It’s a very exclusive strategy that I don’t want to be endorsing. Obviously electoral politics are broken. Maybe we can use our imagination tho
Florida Republicans are working reeaally hard to kill their state’s entire economy right now. Attacking Disney (the state’s biggest employer) and undocumented immigrants (the backbone of the state’s agricultural industry and a key part of the labor force for various others such as construction and hospitality), driving away teachers by taking away their right to actually teach, etc.
Not to mention denying climate change, as the states is getting ready to spend the next thousand years covered in seaweed 25 feet high.
I wholeheartedly disagree. We need to wake up to a more refined political system. A two party system will not sustain a future. We are in a lull due to the previous 6 years being a total shit show.
However, a healthy political system represents the constituents. Our system represents the representatives. Europe has the right idea and has been doing it a lot longer. Having 12 candidates elected on merit makes the country more productive and satisfied with their choice.
I totally agree. I don’t like a two party system, nor did I advocate for one. We need to separate progressive, moderate, conservative, etc from party affiliation. All of those European candidates running all fall on that spectrum regardless of their party. In the US Democrats have progressives, moderates, and conservatives in the same party. The GOP does not, but they used to have much more diversity of beliefs 40-50 years ago. Post civil rights and especially since Nixon, the Republicans have continually devolved into the total fascist shit show that we see today.
If the US would move away from the two party system for elections like Alaska has recently done, we would end up with much better candidates. Ranked choice voting for whoever the best candidate is regardless of party. I would love that.
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They don’t care.
Drive through WV and let me know how much further it has to fall for them to get it.
Go to full red states and listen to them complain about issues that are 100% state legislature and governor issues. But they find a way to blame Obama, Biden, and still fucking cry about Clinton. Both of the Clintons.
The brainwashing is 100%
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I wish there was some kind of fund that we could setup to help relocate the vulnerable in red states (aka everyone but straight white men) but I’m sure they’d figure out a way to mess with it.
There kinda is actually:
https://www.rainbowrailroad.org/
It’s limited to LGBTQ+, and I’m not sure how active they are in the U.S., but as the demand for it grows here I’m sure the help they’ll allocate towards getting people away from fascists will grow as well.
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This cannot be good for the stability of the nation.
I heard it put something like this once:
We used to all live around each other, and on the weekends we’d go to the bowling alley and have to listen to each other. It didn’t matter if I agreed with who was talkin, and it didn’t matter if they agreed with me. We talked. We argued. And then we bowled and had fun.
Today, we talk, we argue, and, after the “fuck off”, we get angrier at each other.
Anecdotes are fun, but the reality is this:
State are taking action to eliminate abortion, severely restrict voting rights, alter the state constitution (like in my home state ohio), and gut programs that support poor individuals while giving tax breaks and incentives to the rich.
Outside of the way your neighbors view politics, when your state says “your worthless get out, were looking for someone else” does that really make you want to stay? Is political tension in this country a factor for the comfort that makes people choose a home? Yes. That doesn’t mean that where you live in today’s day and age significantly defines your rights as a human being.
You’re right — my SO and I were just discussing how different states are alienating different parts of the populace. It’s driving people away from each other. It tears apart seams in the social fabric. It violates some of our social contracts, even.
I don’t think that voids the anecdote, though. The more that we can come together and “bowl it out”, if you will, I think the better off we could be. Compassion can come from exposure. Then, maybe, we could get some of the power back from those using policy to divide.
Or, maybe not.
I don’t think such a time ever existed, at least not for the groups currently taking the most heat.
People have been getting publicly harassed for their race, gender, sexuality for as long as this country has existed. They could not “just bowl”. The opportunity never existed for them.
It’s nostalgia for a unity that never existed.
This. The more inclusive this country has slowly gotten. The more the people who were always included have been constantly gaslit to believe that their problems and difficulties. Stem from the newly included groups.
This isn’t true. There was always hate but with social media bad people find more bad people. Hell, when the first issue of captain America came out, it had a picture of Cap punching Hitler. They received death threats, not just on the phone but in the street.
The main difference in my childhood was that I never heard from people of hate because i grew up in a very liberal area. There wasn’t a good way for them to organize.Social Media has turned propaganda into a weapon of mass destruction. People want to seek out friend groups. When social media wasn’t a thing, people would have to find a way to make nice with the people around them or be an outcast.
Now people don’t have to be nice to anyone around them because a group of “people” online are encouraging them to be an asshole. Who knows how many are actual people and how many are bots and trolls.
People were bullies long before social media. Your position is revisionist.
No. We talked, got argued at, and whichever side was louder or more numerous bullied the others into stop talking. Then the dominant side laughed at the others and the others left, or shut up or stewed privately. People were ostracized for being different. There were countless sitcoms and tv shows in the 80s-90s that showcased this exactly and tried to fight it, ideologically.
Now, like-minded people can actually find communities they feel safe in. That’s true for LGBT as well as Nazis, so it’s a double-edged sword there. I’m not going to say the past was better. Look at gay and trans communities: they were closeted or didn’t exist in the past because bigots shouted them down, bullied them and murdered them.
I think this analysis completely misses the why.
The why being that America is a racist country that would rather have less prosperity than social cohesion.
That white Americans would rather close pools than share them with black people.
That white Americans rather the government let them starve than get over their “racial resentment.”
American history is written in genocide, bondage, and fear of the other. This is always where it would lead because we culturally refuse to deal with or acknowledge it.
That describes white suburbanites whose main differences were how much they should fund parks and drive away undesirables. Things in which they agreed on wanting to do, but not how.
This rose colored look at history only makes sense if you were straight, white, american.
I think the issue isn’t that people can’t tolerate each other, and most people I think don’t have as extreme views on the issues as we hear about.
The issue is that the vocal minority seized their chance and have the opportunity to actually make the things they want come to be.
People are flying Trump flags in every state, and this dumb fuck is afraid of flying his blue line bullshit. That’s not a news article, it’s astroturfed crap that AP should be ashamed to publish.
That’s a very alarming sign. Polarization of that caliber means we’re on a hard Stage 6 on the Ten Stages of Genocide, and everything that follows it is… bad. Very, very bad. You do not want to see what happens at Stage 7 and beyond.
TBF considering red states want to make my existence illegal and send me to jail for being me(Trans) it does make sense for me to go to a place where I’m not threatened. Pennsylvania is more of a purple state but at least I know they aren’t going to turn on me for some political points.
From a political perspective, moving to purple states (e.g. PA, GA, AZ, NV, NC, WI, MI) makes much more sense than sorting into blue and red states, which would give Republicans disproportionate power at all levels.
These states also have a high cost of living compared to some blue states like NM (Where I moved to from Florida) Besides Florida was a purple state until it was gerrymandered.
Florida is different because so many older, more conservative retirees move to Florida. And they vote. If it wasn’t for that, Florida would probably have been pretty solidly blue at this point.
On the other hand, that has opened up other states for Democrats, e.g. Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Plus it was made the q-anon COVID conspiracy haven. I haven’t seen hard numbers in terms of relocation but I’ve heard tell it’s statistically significant.
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Oklahoma here and am ready to get the fuck out
There are a good number of Okies on here and Mastodon. Welcome!
I actually think Oklahoma is a few years away from a blue tipping point, similar to the effect Denver has had on Colorado, where the urban majority has rapidly tipped things blue.
The awful superintendent is low key the best thing to ever happen to education here—there is a bubbling reaction even within the right to react to him and Stitt’s policies. And turning around education is the only thing needed to stop “blue” families from declining job offers here. Which would cascade the social landscape rapidly.
I hope Stitt opens people’s eyes a bit. Guy is the sludge at the bottom of a sewer pipe.
Northern Michigan is about to have the same temp as Tennessee in the next decade. Blue states won’t be frigid for much longer and red states are about to swim in the humidity. Still, it varies quite heavily more by terrain than by lat/long.
Thank you for the welcome :). I really hope you are right, but definitely hard to be optimistic.
Rapid urban growth is always the antidote.
Our weak link is schools. Either people react to this bad superintendent, and schools finally improve—or some geniuses go the opposite way, and exploit this move to charter/private schools as opportunity to somehow make the first ultra-affordable private schools, which would relieve pressure from overcrowding and fix the public schools by proxy.
I just escape that jail, moved to California, it’s actually shocking how much nicer it is.
There’s a streep aweaper that comes through the neighborhood once a week, so the streets are extremely clean, and like, the roads are actually well maintained. Just from the like, extremely surface level things.
Transplant now residing in Oklahoma. I wish things would get better. It’s honestly almost an embarrassment to live here.
Its not too bad, its just the people and the weather. And the police. And the politics
Funny, I just moved to Oklahoma from Seattle and it’s been a nice change of pace.
But why are all the blue states cold?
My husband and I thought about Arizona, or Virginia to get away from one of the highest CoL areas in the country… but eventually decided to focus on Connecticut instead, because we don’t want to be in a red state. With the exception of CA, none of the liberal states are sunny and all of them are expensive!
Because warm states were better for a slave-based agriculture economy and the liberal/conservative divide (whose relationship to political parties has changed over time) comes, in large part, from cultural differences that emerged before the Civil War.
That’s dark, but it makes sense.
It’s likely also due to the populations living in southern states, another big part of the population in southern states are those who had jobs in the mining industries or people retiring, the biggest things the republicans are pushing are bringing back mining and making sure that people get to keep their money(such as lower taxes) where as democrats are pushing for a cleaner environment(so miners blame them for losing their jobs), and major infrastructure plans that could take a while to pan out(so people retired see that and don’t want higher taxes as they already got their grain and don’t want to pass it on).
This is an over generalization and there is other major factors but these two groups are significant sections that the republicans are appealing to where as democrats aren’t such. Democrats might be able to get big wins if they could campaign on programs to help mine works get new jobs and revitalize the economies in mine towns and maybe some more programs for people that have retired so they feel they are getting more then what they’re putting in.
Because all of the red people are retirement age… 😂
Virginia isn’t really a red state.
It is “blue leaning” but they keep threatening abortion access.
It has a Republican governor and house but the Senate is Democrat. I’m sure Republicans are trying to enact restrictive abortion laws but calling Virginia a red state is inaccurate.
I was seriously considering a move from Nashville to Minneapolis last year, but after a lot of soul searching about it, I realized that the length of winter there would mean giving up most of my favorite hobbies, especially motorcycles, for a substantial portion of the year, and I’m not willing to do that.
Colorado is sunny! The warmest parts are also redder, so I think you’re on to something though.
What are you talking about? Colorado has 300 days of sun a year, mild winters (depending on area. Mountain towns see the snow longer than Denver). Also Eastern WA and Oregon are hot as shit and sunny as well.
Maybe you missed the part about trying to find a lower cost of living area? Unless you go to the highest crime, poorest areas of those states, real estate is insane. We did consider Pueblo, CO, but it’s trumpville and actually more expensive than most parts of CT.
Haha actually wanting to move to the washington area.
I wanted to in 2017 when I first went there, it just changed so much while I was there I really wish I could have bailed a year sooner.
Tbh, I prefer to live in a purple state.
I am in a battleground state, in a pretty rural area, filled with a decent amount diversity, including trump crazies.
I feel I’m doing more good here than living in the city.
I like to get down and dirty, pushing.
(Tbf I am a straight white male, so I can totally see getting out of dodge if that wasn’t the case)
I totally respect the stay-and-fight position. Godspeed.
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