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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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Its not maximizing outgroup hatred. Its establishment hatred.

There are tons of people who switched to supporting Trump who would have backed Ron Paul, or Bernie Sanders despite the three not overlapping in policy at all.

OP said he was worried Trump would "Break America" There are tens of millions who are just voting for whatever they think will make America break.

Lots of Americans would support basically anyone to rule the US as long as the first thing they did was put DC to the sword and Harvard to the torch.

Its not maximizing outgroup hatred. Its establishment hatred.

This is a distinction without a difference. Trump's base (and many others!) hates "the establishment"... because they think it's controlled by their outgroup.

Lots of Americans would support basically anyone to rule the US as long as the first thing they did was put DC to the sword and Harvard to the torch.

Agree on the "many Americans want to put DC to the torch", but that's simply because negative partisanship and media negativity bias creates a picture of a terrible amorphous political class that people love to rage against without concrete proposals for how to make it better.

Put DC to the Sword is a concrete policy proposal, dissolve the Union, destroy the political class, and make America 50 independent states.

Balkanization would be terrible, as it would almost certainly lead to foreign meddling and violence breaking out between states like it was a jumbo-sized Yugoslavia.

No reasonable person thinks this would be a good idea. It's shortsighted toxoplasma in its most extreme form.