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After reading other replies, I’ll addthe key is memetic thinking and memetic believing. I’ve made a conscious effort, ever since reading Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie, to examine my thoughts for memes and, when found, deconstruct them into their logical and emotional components. This is how I can loudly declare myself both a libertarian and a Trump supporter, for instance; they’re memetically incompatible due to emotional dissonance, but I find these stances logically compatible .
I wouldn’t mind hearing more about that compatibility.
Trump has a couple standout policies (especially regarding the border) that don’t seem to fit. His foreign policy was a mixed bag. Everything else on his platform is non-unique, and basically just imports the RNC planks. Paternalistic on social issues, libertarian on regulatory issues.
But you don’t need Trump to do that. I think a block of wood could do an equivalent job, so long as you nailed a list of Federalist Society judges to it. It’d probably spend less money on golf, too.
There are three main aspects to every successful enterprises: production, logistics, and marketing. Trump is the loudest marketer of Republican policies and paleo-libertarian and republican ideals since Reagan and Limbaugh; his great accomplishment has been awakening the Republicans, conservatives, blue-dog Democrats, independents, class-conscious freedom-conscious liberals, and right-libertarians to the depth of the deep state and the breadth of its control.
The Republican Party has marketed itself to its voter base as “We’ve got clear perceptions of the world and the best policies. Vote us into power and we’ll fix everything.” But at the top levels of state and national politics, they’re all centrist blue tribers who read WaPo and watch CNN, and get their ideas of Republicanism from The Atlantic.
The Libertarian Party is a perpetual joke except when the progressives need a spoiler against the conservatives. Online, the anarchists have taken over from the lassaiz-faire advocates.
Trumpism as a movement is about trying to reinstall the republic as the power center of America, the constitution instead of the cathedral. His speeches and his foreign policy are about America as the last bastion of freedom from tyrannical governance, and tyrannical governments react to him and his as if this is true.
He succeeded at tax cuts toward the Laffer Curve until 2025, keeping America out of new wars during his term, and a historic shift in Supreme Court judgeships including keeping Merrick Garland out of office. He also exposed the suspicious voting irregularities and surprisingly legal election strategies which resulted in more votes being counted for Biden. He made it clear just how big the fight against communism-in-all-but-name is.
He’s done more publicly for marketing the cause of liberty (the purpose of America) through memes than most people with power over policy. That’s why I voted for him the second time.
He also perfectly embodies self-interest as a virtue, something libertarians have gotten away from since Ayn Rand. I trust him to work for his own best interests far more than any public-minded politicians, which is the primary reason I voted for him the first time.
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