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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29558 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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Once he's gone, many of us want nothing more to do with the Democratic party.

Once he's gone, the Democrats will invent a new threat that requires you vote blue no matter who to save democracy. You have no leverage.

I've heard that argument from the right a lot. And quite frankly, I think it's an attempt to rationalize away the fact that Trump is an exceptionally bad candidate. Will the Democrats come up with reasons why people should vote for them and not the Republicans? Of course, that's what they do. The Republicans do the same thing. Will everyone buy it? No.

This is certainly anecdotal, but the last time i voted for a Democrat at the top of the ticket was Obama. And frankly, were I to have the choice again, I would go with Romney. Not everyone is consistent.

You still voted for Obama at the time though. Why?

And why do you think you are immune from the same influences when you are making the same arguments today?

I think it's an attempt to rationalize away the fact that Trump is an exceptionally bad candidate.

But I can name a dozen reasons I want to vote for Trump. And by this point the idea that Trump is a bad candidate is growing stale: he significantly outpolls the modal generic Republican.

He isnt bad because republicans don’t like him sufficiently. He is bad because he is uniquely reviled by his opposition. The Democrats coalition is one of not-Trump.

Literally the current president and de-facto head of the Democrats told a primarily-Black audience that now-considered-milquetoast Mitt Romney would "put you all back in chains." The idea that whomever the Republicans field will get demonized as fascist and slavery-adjacent is not wrong, but you've also got a point that in many ways Trump is an exceptionally bad, although IMO not a guaranteed loss, candidate in 2024. I sometimes think that if the Republicans found a good candidate, someone Reagan-esque in all the right ways, that the DNC would be completely unprepared. But at this point it's not obvious who that would be in the next cycle.

Pray tell who this magical candidate is? We must contextualize this inquiry in light that the dumbest, most radical, possibly drunkest candidate of this century has been portrayed as normal and safe and not part of the administration she is literally the VP for successfully.

How would some governor of Nebraska change this?

I would vote for someone like that in a heartbeat. So would a lot of people I know. I really hoped that it would go more in that direction after the 2020 election. And I somehow still hope that it will go in that direction after this election. That may be unwarranted optimism. But I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibilities.

So you did vote against binders-full-of-women and you swear you won't get fooled again.

Has it occurred to you that, given the world didn't end under Trump, you might be getting fooled again right now? That any possible candidate with a R next to his name will always be so bad that you wish you could get the last one you also didn't want?

I think about that a lot, for what it’s worth. Asking Pence not to certify the election seems like a bright line though.

If not for the 2020 election shenanigans I’d probably agree that he’s just like the prior republican candidates and we’ll see him as tame in ten years compared to the New Threat.

I think about that a lot, for what it’s worth. Asking Pence not to certify the election seems like a bright line though.

So you voted Trump 2016? If not, this is clearly not the reason.

I did not, and I accept that nearly none of the “he’s the end of civilization” rhetoric was right. In 2016 I was all in on Bernie. I honestly don’t recall if I was alarmed about Trump. I think I wasn’t, more just very put off and pretty committed at that point to lefty policies.

But This Time Might Be Different.

I only started paying attention in 2012 or so, so I’ve had two occurrences now of seeing the anti-Christ turn out to not be that bad.

As I said, I struggle with it. Maybe I’m deluding myself but absent the election stuff I probably wouldn’t care at all about this election. As it stands I feel some unease about Trump.

I can’t see myself voting for him this time largely because 2016-2020 was so anti-climactic. There’s a real chance I will just make a protest vote.

I think about that a lot, for what it’s worth. Asking Pence not to certify the election seems like a bright line though.

If not for the 2020 election shenanigans I’d probably agree that he’s just like the prior republican candidates and we’ll see him as tame in ten years compared to the New Threat.

I struggle with this, too. I am anti-Trump for many reasons -- mainly that he's civically corrosive and ignorant of how to operate as president -- and I certainly think that he handled the aftermath of the 2020 election poorly. And I'm glad Pence stood up for order over chaos. However, I don't think that Trump (and the circle of hucksters that he attracts) being typically dumb in his reaction to a very fishy election negates that there was a lot of very fishy stuff going on with that election. IMO everything Trump did made it worse and not better, but the legitimacy of the gripe is still mostly unexamined and very concerning.

I'm still debating to myself whether or not he'll get the Dubya treatment. Leaning towards not, but it's not that clear cut.

How can he not? The dynamic seems less driven by re-evaluation and calming down and more due to needing to paint the current opponent as the end of the world. Whoever the 2028 republican candidate is will need to be portrayed as the worst yet, which necessitates “Trump wasn’t actually so bad.” It’s inevitable I think.

Name your odds, I'd put $200 up right now. Trump really comes off a uniquely bad for many reasons.

I think that he's enough of an outsider that they may want to hold onto making him an example. The temptation to paint the next person as even worse than Trump will be strong, but Trump has a unique disgust factor for these people. Again, I'm not sure where it lands.

I suppose it will depend on the next candidate’s relationship to Trump and his relationship to the party. If someone who disavows Trump can get to the general maybe it won’t work. Otherwise it seems an easy enough attack.

Bush also had a unique disgust factor, as did Romney, as did Reagan.

I am not persuaded that there is anything in the Blue response to Trump other than outrage over explicit resistance to their agenda. He was not the polite loser increasingly-extremist Blues expect from their Republican opposition.

Nah, it's been prophecy for years that one day Morning Joe will be telling us to vote for Eric Trump to protect the country from genetically modified Blake Masters.

That's not exactly a good faith interpretation, but I'll answer it anyway. 12 years ago I didn't have sufficient experience with the world to realize that human nature makes utopias impossible. I think that's the fundamental fallacy of the left. And I think that as people get older (assuming they are willing to consider new viewpoints), they tend to accept that. Hence the old adage about people becoming more conservative as they age.

So no. I didn't care about "binders-full-of-women". I believed at the time what I had been taught that leftist policies could make the world better. I no longer believe that. That being said, I would like to hold on to some of what we currently have in terms of a society. And subverting faith in democracy is one of the fastest ways to lose that.

Fair play. I'm not trying to sneer or anything, just to genuinely ask tough questions.

I don't see anything that's worth saving personally. Or rather, what few things are worth saving are what the system as it exists is precisely trying to destroy.

That said I no longer have any attachement to democracy at all, since it's revealed itself as mere justification to take my life and property away from me over the past decade. All the evil and none of the good that has been done to me was in the name of democracy.

I no longer believe Westerners have any significant level of control over their governments. If we are in agreement there (are we?) then I don't see what positive effect this faith may have that would be worth prolonging fiction that provides the maintenance of tyranny.

Given the difference between our current living situation in the US and that of a failed state like Somalia, I'd say we have a lot left to lose. Are the policies of the current administration chipping away at the foundations of society? Yes. Are they likely to cause its collapse in the next 4 years? Probably not.

As I said in the original post, I don't have any particular attachment to democracy. It's just the means that we chose to uphold the power of an aristocracy. What I do have an attachment to is the current system and everything that's been built on top of it. Is it long term stable? No. But nothing is long term stable. I'd like it to last as long as possible, since change to something new is likely to be violent and chaotic.

On a slightly more optimistic note, I don't agree that we have no control. The aristocracy is willing to grant the population a decent amount of say over cultural things in return for their economic hegemony. A lot of the idpol stuff on the left was selected for precisely because it doesn't interfere with the aristocracy owning things. So there's no reason to think they wouldn't be amenable to the culture moving in a different direction as long as they can still own everything.

I guess I'm either more of a pessimist about the ability of the ruling elite to manage current affairs or view collapse as a significantly larger category than a stuck civil war between marxists, nationalists and theocrats.

Things could get really bad for the common man in the next 4 years if there's no economic boom to bail the US out of their debt obligations. And likely much worse in most of Europe.

I really don't think our society can take 10 more years of neolib status quo without exploding in some way.

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