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this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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From what I see, Trump is indicative of a growing trend, generally by conservatives to bring religion and their beliefs into government.
Trump is more absolutist and authoritarian than many other political candidates that I have seen.
To my best understanding of the current climate of the people who support him, they want more authoritarian control over what other people do. Partly in an effort to make themselves more comfortable in their own social interactions with others. So their assumptions of things like, women have curves, and men wear pants and have beards, and men like women and women like men, etc, are always correct, despite the fact that reality disagrees with them.
They're always on the lookout for any way for them to improve their socio-economic standing as well, with the basic concept of more for me, less for everyone else.
I believe that to them, Trump is a means to an end. Less for everyone else, more for them. More of their rules, and values, imposed on others, whether others want it or not.
Take for example, gay marriage. IMO, it's just marriage, eg. Two people who love eachother pledging their intention to continue to love and support eachother. My view is starkly contrasted by their view of "marriage is between a man and a woman before God!" (Or similar). Something something, the sanctity of marriage.... Blah blah. Nobody seems to care about divorce rates though the writings they're imposing on others pretty clearly state that marriage before God is a joining of souls in permanent matrimony and cannot and will not be broken. Ever. But I digress. Since they're opposed to gay marriage, they don't want it to be allowed, though it's clearly discrimination. Arguing about "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" and whatnot. The authoritarian, bull headed, my way out the highway mindset of someone like Trump, can actually achieve such goals. He's absolutist. Whether he believes in the prohibition of gay marriage or not.
On a personal note, I hope all the LGBTQ+ people get all the same rights to be as happy or as miserable as the cis/straight people. You're all fabulous and I love you all as brothers/sisters/siblings (for the gender ambiguous). I personally will continue to support you and fight along side all of you for equality.
Circling back to the point, this viewpoint can be copied and pasted on a number of issues that the right may not feel that they are properly represented on. Another good example is abortion; but that has mostly played out with the whole roe v. Wade thing, so I won't go into more detail there, despite the fact that I have a lot of things to say about it.
I think that demonstrates the point. They don't value him for what/who he is, they value him more for what he can do for them... To accomplish their goals and impose their ideals on everyone else. His ethical deficiencies and disregard for anyone's opinion, well-being, and opinion, are desirable features for them.
They're pushing for oppression of anyone who is different from them, trying to move up their capitalist ladder of success. Trump is just the latest tool that they're trying to use to accomplish that goal.
Ummm.. but what about all the men in the bible with many wives. There was no one man one wife thing in almost the entire Bible. Almost all of the people who are touted to be amazing examples of God's peopel... were polygamists... and since that wasn't enough, they would have the concubines on the side. Point that out and they run away.
There's several points in the Gospel where Christ points at a departure from this though, right, like in Matthew 19 and Matthew 22, but the most poignant passage is 1 Corinthians 7:
The purpose of getting married is the relief of sexual lust - and since we are talking about just relieving it, the idea of having multiple wives or concubines on the side is a perversion of this. We can even look at the story of King David and Bathsheba as an example of why you shouldn't covet moaaarr wamen. It has been pointed out before that, like, adultery and lust are so powerful and pertinent that 2 of the 10 commandments are about it...
So i would say that one of the clarifications that exist, and one of the new usherings in of Christianity, is strict monogamy, and also praise for monasticism...
I think it's simpler than that. Conservatism, at its core, has always been a purely reactionary opposition to liberal and progressive politics. In the modern era, it has felt the need to wrap itself in something resembling a positive ideology which presents thinly falsifiable policy positions, regardless of how narrow and mutable those ideological boundaries might be. Because until recently, abject, reactionary nihilism has been seen as a losing position.
Trump has freed conservatives from that burden. No longer do they need to create and defend any flimsy intellectual basis for their reactionary stances - Trump has presented a completely liturgical basis for conservative nihilism, and in doing so, he has freed millions of anti-intellectual CHUDS from the burden of thinking, and they love him for it.
Well, there's two major divides within conservatism as it plays out today, right?
Classical liberalism, we can call one, and then populist conservatism...
Classical liberal Republicans/Libertarians are highly principled and highly progressive with very positive, engaging values - think about these old guys like Paul Findley who were fundamentally isolationist, anti-war, pro-Palestine conservatives, that truly believed in Hayek's Constitution of Liberty and that the key to bettering humans is through decentralization of power, minimal government, and human freedom.
And then there is conservatism that goes back to, like, tradition or populism.
Of course, these things often combine, but I think you need to treat conservatism with a lot of nuance because otherwise you are just dismantling a strawman.
Revolutionary nihilism is how radical liberalism was portrayed by Dostoevsky in the Devils - a great book - and it does make sense, because we see at its root that some of these radical movements actually were about reinventing all of society around totally new principles and annihilating what has hitherto been normalized in Western civilization...
Yes, there is like the Nietzschean reactionaries who want to build the New Man, but yeah, it's still a losing position. I do not even think that guys like BAP are even on that level - like some of the hardcore neopagan LARP squad certainly envisions a completely new basis to muh Western civilization. But it's not like Varg Vikernes is a viable option - in spite of how wildly popular Black Metal became after hipsters getting into blackgaze and shit after ironic Pitchfork album reviews, not even one of the most seminal figures in the genre can be anything much more than a joke for having these beliefs.
I think one of the problems we have is the paranoia about this stuff - you act as if the right is really some monster that is rising to swallow the country in a wave of Fascism, but it's not the right who are anywhere near successfully removing their opponents from ballots.
I think it's simpler than that--life was just better before Biden and after Obama.
I mean, unless you were one of the several hundred thousand people who died or lost loved ones to COVID for entirely preventable reasons. Or someone who's not a complete shit human being who actually cares about their country being a democracy. But yeah. If you are a shit human being and you believe that COVID was caused by 5G networks or something, then sure. Trump was a great president.
You mean to say that at the end of his term, a deadly virus hit the whole world and he couldn't get a vaccine created in time to save everyone? Come on man, what could anyone have done in that timeframe? Does he get credit for the vaccine that Joe Biden and Democrats said they would NOT take because Trump recommended it? But when Biden took office was recommending it all day every day.
Secondly, our country is a republic, not a democracy--please lookup the Pledge of Allegiance.
Are you saying saying the Jan6 fiasco--where no one died (by the rioters), Democrats refused Trump's requests for National Guard, and no one was convicted of treason or insurrection--was worse than the summer of love--where cops were murdered, businesses and government buildings destroyed, all in the name of George Floyd, who died from a drug overdose?
Come on man!
I'm going to respond to this first, because I think it's the most succinct example of the point I'm about to make:
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think it's very unlikely that you know what either a republic or a democracy is. Because you seem to think that they're mutually exclusive, when in fact they are very much not. America, my slow friend, is a democratic republic. A republic is a political system in which a representative is given executive authority for a particular period of time. The "particular period of time" bit is what differentiates it from, say, a monarchy. Presidents in the US are elected every 4 years. This makes it a republic.
A democracy is a political system in which the populace as a whole is invested with the authority to vote on things. This can, and often does include representatives, such as a president.
So you see, America is both a Democracy AND a Republic, and the two are not mutually exclusive. There. Now that you've had the most basic of civics lessons that you as a potentially functional adult SHOULD HAVE ALREADY FUCKING KNOWN... let's get to the meat of what you replied with.
No. That would be stupid. Trump had no control over the virus any more than anybody else in the world did. And yet, he was the figurehead of the nation, and wielded executive authority that allowed him to take steps to mitigate its impact. This is the same for every other head of state in the world. So one has to ask why America did so poorly in its response to the virus compared to most of the rest of the world.
For starters, it's probably not a good thing that he routinely poo-pooed life saving measures, such as social distancing and masking. And it's also not a good thing that he promoted things like hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that has zero proven benefits in relation to COVID. Additionally, I would argue that it was a bad thing that members of his administration sought to divert life-saving medical equipment such as ventilators from blue states.
The truth is, at every turn, Trump did the dumbest, most harmful thing possible. Remember that time he speculated openly on the mic about whether you could inject bleach or shove a light bulb up your ass to kill COVID? Good times. Or that time when he caught COVID, was rushed to Walter Reed where he received treatments not available to the rest of the public, and then he ordered his secret service guys to drive him around (while not masked) to show the world that "hey - COVID's no big deal!"
I could go on with more, but I doubt you're going to read anything I've written anyway. Your last paragraph is somehow dumber than the ones before it, which is impressive. You have shown yourself to have very little in the way of critical thinking skills, which means you'll believe even the dumbest lies out there. Like your idiotic belief that the Democrats refused the National guard when there is video of Nancy Pelosi urgently requesting National Guard support. Or your even more idiotic belief that George Floyd died of a drug overdose only after being choked for 9 minutes.
I mean, my god man. How stupid can you possibly be? Have you never been taught how to examine things critically? Just, for the love of fuck, pull your head out of your ass and look at the real world around you once in a while. You have been repeatedly lied to by the people you're defending, and you're too dumb to see it.
I know what both are, but if we are to define what our government is, it would surely be a republic over a democracy. For example, if I said I ate an orange apple, I'm eating an apple, not an orange, even if it has some characteristics of an orange. Same could be said for democratic republic. Does it has democratic characteristics, yes, but it is a republic.
I don't luke how Trump handled the virus in every way, I'll give you that one. Depends on the study, but hydroxychloroquine has been effective for some, with all the variants and specific combinations of factors, it won't work for all, just like Tylenol or Motrin isn't a one stop fix for a headache.
With hundreds being put in jail for non-insurrection charges while Left media also claiming it was an insurrection for years, you can't belive that at all. Even before that the Russia election interference.
Critically think about it, do you really think Trump is the only one to do anything sketchy in politics? It's all a media and government circle jerk to make him unlikeable and ruin his name.
The good thing is that It's really is backfiring in a big way too because folks who can think critically see it's the Democrats so scared of corrupt, vile Trump they need to talk about him even when Biden won. They sure can't talk about Biden's efforts on immigration, economy, or war efforts, or even just walking and talking.
There is no confidence in our nation as soon as Trump left office. Stock markets plunged, inflation went up, used up our oil reserves, botched Afghan exit, wars popping up all over. I understand d you can be critical of both sides, and I do see Trumps flaws, but it is undeniable life during during Trump's presidency was better than now.
Bro. It's both. It's literally just both. It is a republic AND a democracy. They don't cancel each other out or anything. Dying on this hill is really not helping your case that you're not an idiot.
Right. Nor does anybody with a shred of common sense who didn't want hundreds of thousands of Americans to die for no good reason.
They stormed the capitol, assaulted police officers, and tried to stop the transfer of power of the government. They are all traitors, every single one of them. Stop defending them.
If I'm a district attorney, and I have someone on assault and treason, and assault is easier to prove, then I'm going to charge them with assault. Especially when there's hundreds of cases to process. That's just common fucking sense, something you apparently lack.
He's the only president we've had who was an actual traitor. So that's notable.
Yes, those pesky media and their recording devices that accurately record the things he says and does. It's their fault he's unlikable and his name is ruined.
He's a fucking traitor, you idiot. And he's the front-runner for the Republican party. He could be president again. It's fucking terrifying. Of course people are talking about him. If you motherfuckers had any sense of civic pride or patriotism, Trump would have zero chance of ever coming near any position of authority again for the rest of whatever remains of his life. But, of course, the Republican party is a hive of scum and villainy, and you would rather elect an actual traitor who has systematically grifted you for years than someone who thinks that trans people and gay people deserve civil rights.
Yes. That was definitely Joe Biden's doing, and not the global fucking pandemic that lasted for several years and caused enormous financial impacts on every country in the world. You fucking idiot.
Do you? Because I don't think you do. You seem totally cool with having a woefully unqualified, incompetent con artist who has already committed treason against the United States becoming president again. Seems to me like you wouldn't know critical thinking if it walked up and shoved its fist up your asshole.