Voting for Republicans is Voting for Fascism
Photo by Brad Fagan, CC BY-SA 2.0
For many, the current political climate seems to have taken a distinct turn. The media has been ablaze with rulings that have come out of the Supreme Court concerning the rights of kings, I mean presidents – in regard to the rule of law as well as sweeping changes to how policy can be interpreted by different branches. SCOTUS has also determined that prosecuting people for being homeless is not “cruel and unusual” and right here in Iowa, the state Supreme Court ruled that people with uteruses are not full citizens and, after six weeks of pregnancy, no longer have a right to their own bodies the same way that non-uterus-having folks still maintain.
This may seem like an onslaught of bad news, or if not bad news, at least noteworthy and worth paying some attention to. For the first time, many are becoming a bit more carefully tuned-in to the goings on and the headlines now that democracy and basic human rights are at a serious risk of being eroded away. Yes, democracy is under threat and yes we should all be paying attention.
However, for those of us who are tuned in to what the political Right has wanted since its existence as a pro-monarchist political realm, it is so clearly not new, it was a long time coming, and it is genuinely and utterly at the feet of the Republican party and those who support them.
Behind every plea for “small government” there is a cadre of right-wing administrators less interested in access to the ballot box, food, or healthcare, than they are interested in access to the uteruses of our nation’s young people.
With every wave of the flag and rhetoric about peaceful transfers of power, behind these gestures lies a threat of insurrection backed by partisan gerrymandering and threats of violence to those who do not comply.
Inside every court decision from right wing idealogues – appointed by presidents that had never won the popular vote, another undemocratic staple of the US – we see a form of legal Calvinball where the rules don’t have to make sense, evidence or consequences do not matter; they just must be ascribed to vociferously by people purportedly beyond reproach so as not to have any kind of legal questioning applied to them.
In essence, this has been their goal the whole time and it’s never been a secret. We can see the seeds of this with the Southern Strategy which attempts to win not with ideas or dialogue and more citizen engagement, but with less. We saw this with the Moral Majority who was less interested in making things better for citizens as they were, but making specifically making white Christians feel better about themselves at the expense of other citizens.
Even in recent memory, the Swift Boating of John Kerry (something found to be made up entirely) has been tied directly to the Republican party and the right wing ideology of: “Our way at any cost, even if we have to lie about something we care about to do it.”
Even if that cost is democracy itself.
This brings us to today and the rulings we are seeing come down from the Supreme Court regarding presidential powers, the right to your own body, the right to have representation in congress, and even the right of the executive or legislative branch to regulate commerce in any way. These are not new ideas nor are they coming to us out of left field unaccounted for; these are the fundamental goals of a right wing, theocratic, monarchist world view that has a top-down approach to governance and culture.
Project 2025 has been used as a moniker for the plans of right wing organizations to subvert the rule of law, or change it by fiat where they can, and install a theocratic monarchy that is answerable not to the people of the country they represent, but to an all powerful executive that cannot even be investigated for wrongdoing. Such a move would lead to the end of democracy as we know it.This is the stated goal of one of the major political parties in the United States via their major candidate who is running for the highest office in the land.
The time for “both sidesism” has come and gone. This is not a Democrat problem. The Democratic Party has its issues, many of the same issues as the other major party. This is more a result of our political system than any few bad actors. Our election systems are old and stagnant with first past the post voting and the inevitable two party system that emerges from such a system. We’re still citing laws from hundreds of years ago for things that were invented in the last 20 with no serious revision to how we do regulation and distribute governmental power. For some reason, there is still a legitimization of a bucolic yester-year that depended on slave labor and disenfranchisement of women for our election cycles and electoral counting. We’re at a point where over 90% of voters support certain initiatives, but because of our voting system – and the dishonest actors that staff them in some cases- they aren’t even brough to the floor for debate.
It should also be noted that “the right” doesn’t mean the Democratic party is immune from these critiques. Often times some of the worst actors on these grounds are Democrats as they can often cling to an outdated status quo that benefits the Democrats directly by painting their Republican opposition as loyal opposition instead of active saboteurs of the democratic process, as the Republican party has continuously been. Democrats can at times be seen willing to sacrifice democracy in the name of decorum and that needs to stop immediately when you’re not dealing with someone interested in democracy.
All of these things work to create a system that doesn’t represent the people whom it is supposed to represent. This is not a Libertarian problem. This is not even a Green or some other spoiler party problem; this is a Republican problem. I think it is time for all of us, our media, or culture, and even our leaders to start calling this what it is: fascism.
It is not the fault of any major opposition party for losing a vote to fascists if the people who win are put there by folks who want fascism; that is the fault of the voters that advocate for fascism. No longer can we say that these folks are being bamboozled by a shiny new headline or that they’re just getting swept up in some kind of frenzy. The right has been telling us what they want since it was known as “the right” and we’re simply seeing the result of decades of work towards that goal. When democracy, equality, secular government, and fair play aren’t on the list of things to be championed, but nationalism, theocracy, authoritarianism, and revisionist jingoistic history are, it is inevitable that a casualty of their drive is going to be the very structure that they purport to support.
This is exemplified in the continued actions of the Republican party. There has never been an expansion of liberty, an expansion of democracy, an expansion of the electorate and the word “citizen” that the Republican party hasn’t immediately attempted to undermine and demonize through dog whistles, legal end-runs around process, or outright violence as we see celebrated by these Republican groups today. Republicans don’t want to do government “differently;” they just want it either complicit with their pre-ordained theocratic goals or they want it gone entirely. This is very different than a party looking to represent a nation of diverse citizens.
It is up to all of us to be honest and clear eyed about what it means to support such a party that doesn’t support democracy. This isn’t pointing out this unpopular policy or that political gaffe. This is about supporting the continued existence of the United States and equal rights under a secular constitution. Folks who continue to support a fascist party should be held socially accountable for such support.
A vote for the Republican party is a vote against equal rights under the law. It’s a vote against secular democracy. It’s a vote against the ability to have clean water and hold powerful entities to account. It’s a vote against the right to have a further vote. Voting for Republicans is, at this point, voting against democracy and voting for fascism, wrapped in an American flag, waving a shiny cross.
As Maya Angelou famously said “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time”. We should apply that here. The GOP has been showing us who they are from their opposition to the Civil Rights Act to supporting fascist foreign governments and coups to actively working to undermine the democratic process on January 6th 2021 and beyond. To demonstrate this point further, recently, a sitting Supreme Court Justice said “One side or the other is going to win….its difficult you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that can’t really be compromised”. That thing being democracy and the ability to have a secular constitution, two things key to the existence of a United States that has equal protection under the law.
Republicans have been telling us they don’t like equality; they don’t like democracy, they don’t like accountability, they don’t like a diverse nation that has more freedom for ALL citizens for the last 80 years. Rather than treating them as confused agents adrift on a media cycle, we should recognize that when they vote against the rights of women, the LGTBQ community, environmental and labor protections, against fair and open elections, and even if we should have a president that isn’t a king: they vote how they mean, and they mean how they vote.
Maybe we should believe them and start treating them and their supporters as such.
Our democracy may depend on it.
Citations: https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/07/roberts-court-hands-major-wins-to-trump-conservative-movement-in-2023-24-term/
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/trump-2024-supreme-court-immunity-ruling-be-afraid.html
https://www.history.com/news/how-the-party-of-lincoln-won-over-the-once-democratic-south
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swift-justice/
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-alito-conservative-secret-recording-c3943ef56442320f0940eb532fff624c
here here.Report
(you mean “hear, hear”)Report
The consequences of voting Republican (part umpteen million):
Florida is being ravaged by climate change, with flooding increasing even absent rainfall, threatening to make parts of Miami uninhabitable (and uninsurable).
In response, Gov. DeSantis has forbidden any state agency to use the term “climate change” and is ordering them to plan for the lowest estimates of future sea level rise, in an attempt to deny what is happening.
Project 2025 calls for FEMA to be privatized, and the costs of disasters such as flooding pushed onto the residents of Florida.
See, the thing about fascist states is not only are they repressive, but they are inevitably incompetent. No one suffers more from DeSantis’ policies than his own constituents. They can ferret out a book in library with a passage about gay people but can’t be bothered to notice that the library is underwater.Report
This is what they have planned, should Trump win in November:
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.” (P. 37)
And just to be clear, by “porn” they mean any media that shows queer people in a positive light. Even a drag queen simply walking down the street fully clothed and fabulous, is pornography which must be suppressed.Report
So, the party that openly supports; spying, censorship, political prosecutions, paramiltary mob violence and unlimited governmental power is against fascism? Gotcha.Report
What is this post?Report
A: written in bad faith.Report
Oh come on. I mean yeah, Joe’s comment is a drive-by one-liner snarkshot and those are not valuable commodities by any stretch.
But Christ, the OP is a cosplayer or a fcuking sociopath. For whatever reason if he can’t abide the political intentions of his neighbors or his fellow Americans, that’s his problem not theirs.
Bad faith indeed.Report
Cosplaying by citing history, precedent, and the results of republcian actions?
Or is it more important to be passive in the face of persecution to maintain decorum?Report
Actually, I think it’s more likely that you’re a sociopath over a cosplayer, but eh, could go either way I suppose.
It’s not a matter of decorum, it’s about a very fundamental level of accountability. Specifically, I am one of millions of American citizens and voters, you a lib activist/organizer, not _as many_ of them but still lots and lots.
But whatever the numbers, the fundamental reality is this: we, the citizens and voters of America, sit in judgment of you, the lib activists, and not the other way around.
If you want America to reinstall VRA pre-clearance, liberalize abortion policy, increase EPA regulatory actions against the private sector, (whatever was in the laundry list of the OP), it’s your job to convince the American people that’s what we ought to do.
Of course, the strong likelihood is that this November, my team is going substantially and deservedly asskick your team. But even that is kind of ancillary, nobody knows for sure the outcome of an election in advance.
What we do know is this: if we do win in November, it’s not us who has to adapt to the new way of doing things in America, it’s you.Report
Accountability? What do you mean by that? You don’t like what I said in the article and rather than cite any specific point or policy, you just say “libs are in judgement”. What does that even mean?
I literally post about how fascists want to subvert the rule of law, democracy, and empower the wealthiest and worst among us, and here you come and double down on what I said, proving my point.
I’m genuinely confused by the point of your post here. Can someone help me out?Report
Come the revolution, you will do as you’re damn well told.Report
Try reading again, I explained it well enough the last time.
We, the citizens and voters, we have some important decisions to make in the fall.
We will or at least can be taking a look at you, as lib, and everything you bring with that. Your intentions, your resumes, your history, your political associations, etc, etc. If the voters like what they see from you, they might vote your people into power. If they don’t, the other team will probably win. But win lose or draw, _you_ are accountable to _us_. That’s what democracy is about.
What’s important is what we think about you. What _you_ think about _us_ is not topical.Report
Who among us isn’t still basking in the warm glow of the red wave in ’22?Report
In a better world, more Republicans would have won in 2022 than actually did.
Maybe it will happen again this year. If it does, it will be because the voters made a mistake. But mistake or not, it’s still their mistake to make.Report
I think the greatest mistake the electorate on both sides in this country seem to like to make these days is to assume their side is infallible, simultaneously assuming those on the other side are completely wrong.
I lean mostly to the left, yet I can say that there are fair number of liberal officeholders who have no business holding the offices they do. (ahem, Brandon Johnson)
Would you be able to make the same statement?Report
The one thing I’m stuck on in this reply is its reliance on the number of voters, as though the number of voters were a sign that something is, or is not, fascism. Don’t get me wrong, I think there are meaningful discussions to be had about whether “fascism” is a productive label for America’s 21st century version of right wing authoritarianism, with its attendant (Christian) nationalism, racism and xenophobia, but it’s hard to quibble with all of that as a description as the mainstream American right, as represented in the Republican Party, right now, regardless of how many Americans (which, it must be noted, has for a long time been a significant minority, even in years in which they’ve won the White House or Congress) vote for it.
Personally, I find “fascism” a handy shorthand in casual speech, and a pretty good rhetorical one as well, though having spent a great deal of time reading about fascism historically and the American right today, I also have some issues with it as a strict historical comparison.
If any of this makes me or the OP a “sociopath,” so be it.Report
I mentioned before that there are four basic arguments made by bigots/ fascists:
1. “We’re bigots/fascists and we’re proud of it!”
2. “Oh, uh, wait, we’re not actually bigots/fascists but you see, the science says bigotry/ fascism is good.”
3. “Oh, OK, so the science doesn’t really say that, but uh, look how badly Those People are behaving- We need to keep them under control!”
4. “OK, so they aren’t really behaving badly…but…Look how popular bigotry is! None dare stand against it!”
#4 is always the final fallback position, the Helms Deep of mottes.
And note, they always have to retreat. No one has ever conjured up a science that defends bigotry, and no fascist state has ever produced prosperity and freedom and all of them eventually end in bloodshed and chaos.
So they always have to start out with this sort of triumphal bluster about inevitability but always end up cornered and relying on Steiner’s Army to come to their rescue.Report
Coincidentally, reading a piece in a new special issue (published today) of a journal dedicate to the American “New Right,” and read this quote that I think pretty much sums up my own views:
Can we identify what is happening as a return of the historical fascism? I don’t think so: fascism and nationalism are the rhetorics, the ideology, the postures and so on. But the psycho-political substance of this movement is far away from the bold aggressive Futurist stance.
Futurism was the aesthetic projection of a young population of aggressive males, conquerors, invaders, who pretended to be the bearers of civilization. Now the posture is the reverse: fear of being invaded by
hordes of migrants, fear of future, exhaustion. And panic.
It’s interesting, in this context, that so much of the imagery of the contemporary American far right is of the past, whereas historical fascism’s imagery was so obsessed with the future. Think trad wives, tradcaths, etc., but also the general conservative obsession with the time when the majority of today’s conservatives were young, and the conservative desire to make that nostalgic fantasy real.Report
It’s interesting, in this context, that so much of the imagery of the contemporary American far right is of the past, whereas historical fascism’s imagery was so obsessed with the future.
I think this is insightful.
The 20th Century fascist movements laid claim to “delivering the goods”, that is, promising prosperity and the good life.
MAGA doesn’t make even the most perfunctory moves in that direction.
Trump, Vance, DeSantis, Abbot, all the MAGA spokespeople and pundits…none of them even bother claiming that it will somehow bring about widespread prosperity and the good life for all.
Instead they have only a list of grievances and resentment to parade, and like we see here, sullen threats of retribution and fist shaking about “come the revolution”.Report
I think you could make an argument that characters like Elon Musk are carrying the obsessive Futurism banner for their candidate, with Trump acting as the figurehead/bridge. (“Make America Great *Again*” covers all bases). A Once and Future King.Report
Looking back in hindsight, we can see now that much of the Fascism had, just beneath the shiny surface, a dark side where the benefits of the future were intended only for a certain privileged group.
Mussolini claimed to want to Make Rome Great Again and explicitly positioned himself as an heir to the Caesars, even promising to rebuild Rome in the manner of its Imperial height, and Albert Speer drew up designs for Berlin that would have staggered Augustus.
But of course, those designs were pushed aside, and the *actual* energy and resources were expended on the punishment of their hated outgroups.
Even in the waning days of the Reich when fuel and manpower and other resources were stretched to the breaking point, they still found enough resources to keep the camps operating at full capacity.
We see that sort of thinking now.
Elon Musk for instance just announced he is moving his operations from California to Texas.
Why? His stated reasons are that the “last straw” is a new California law protecting trans students.
His decision-making has nothing whatsoever to do with business or efficiency. He is motivated primarily by spite and resentment, prioritizing that over the ostensible goals of making things.Report
I think Musk likes to talk about culture war stuff because he thinks it motivates his target audience, but there’s no doubt why he’s moving Twitter (X) to Texas (after already moving Tesla’s headquarters about 2 miles from my home): Texas is a much more “business friendly” state than California: not only are the taxes lower, but Texas basically gives out money to corporations (we have a whole fund for it), and as the Gigafactory just outside of Austin has shown, Texas environmental and transportation agencies treat regulations as more suggestions than rules when applied to large corporations (Tesla has been dumping waste water, and they built a tunnel under a major highway with a cursory TXDoT review and before the local permits had been granted, with no consequences, while Space-X has been an environmental disaster for parts of south Texas).
My hope with Twitter is that Musk will realize what some other Silicon Valley companies have learned when moving to Austin over the last few years: sure, the tax situation is great, but most of the best people you’d need to run such a company, much less to make it better, either don’t want to move to Texas, or find out quickly when they move here that they don’t want to stay.Report
Twitter is a better example of what I mean.
When he took it over, it was a thriving enterprise.
But he insisted on making it a haven for white supremacists and fascists.
Even after that caused an exodus of advertisers, he continues to boost them even when it is costing him billions.
The theory that the plutocrats are merely rube-running overlooks the fact that the plutocrats themselves are rubes.Report
“I think Musk likes to talk about culture war stuff because he thinks it motivates his target audience…”
He talks about culture-war stuff because he’s GenX and he grew up in a time when we were supposed to have moved past all that, gotten over it, and the internet was supposed to be just a freewheeling no-topic-too-weird-or-morally-wrong space of absolute acceptance, and he doesn’t understand why people want to turn it into High School Only Everywhere And Forever.Report
Well, he’s also motivated by all that unpaid rent X owes to its CA landlords.
To OP’s point and the debate in the comments, those who remember me from before may recall I considered myself fairly centrist, an independent that historically has voted both sides of the aisle and at times third-party, with a great deal of sympathy for what were then called “classical liberal” or “libertarian” positions (in particular, I often felt that those who called themselves “Left” were sometimes too quick to try to criminalize or compel speech, and I was never comfortable with that); yet I, no one’s definition of a “radical”, now find myself wondering when it becomes time to spit on one’s hands and hoist the black flag.
My registered-Republican friend, horrified at what “his” party has become, finds himself wondering the same. He says it’s become nothing but a party of lashing out over perceived grievances.
That the party has become hostile to democracy itself, and thus dangerous, is no longer IMO a non-mainstream view.
Granted that I live in my own bubble just like everyone else lives in theirs, but that’s how it looks from where I sit.Report
I am most likely in a tighter, more opaque bubble than most people — most of my offline social circle consists of people to the left of anyone currently writing for or commenting on this blog, and the only centrists or liberals I follow on Twitter (my primary online haunt) are former OTers and some Austin locals — but I still have a glimpse into the conservative world, and MAGA world in particular, on Facebook, because I grew up in a very conservative place, and most of my Facebook friends from back there are conservatives. Over the last 16 years, I’ve watched their demeanor, their rhetoric, in some cases, their entire online personalities change, to become increasingly hateful, increasingly fearful, increasingly invested in a cult of personality, increasingly openly racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic, increasingly open to the idea of a violent political conflict.
People I always thought were extremely nice and kind, and from whom I’d never heard a bad word about anyone, are now regularly posting incredibly racist and sexist memes about Harris, calling liberals groomers, posting incredibly racist anti-immigrant memes, obsessing over conspiracy theories (especially about the 2020 election), etc. It is incredibly disturbing.
By the way, the last few days, after the assassination attempt, have been something to behold on Facebook.Report
Hey, off-topic, but where’s Schilling? If anyone sees him, tell him I said hey.Report
He’s frequently on Twitter. I’ll tell him you said hi.Report
Hey. How are things?
The big news here is that I’m a grandpa (she’s five months).Report
HOLY COW CONGRATS!Report
I think I said congrats on Twitter, but just in case, congrats!Report
!!! Congrats!Report
Thanks, everyone.Report
That is amazing! Congrats!!Report
I started to write a thing about how there is a form of futurism on the right, among the Effective Altruists, and in particular a subtype of Effective altruists, the longtermists , but even that sort of futurism is a fantasy futurism, obsessed with fictional threats, as a way of avoiding any of the potentially terrifying, more realistic views of the future. Its’ a sort of anti-future futurism.
Obviously mid-20th century futurism had its own fantastical components (not just the Nazis; I’m still angry I don’t have a flying car from the Jetsons), but the longtermist futurism is a futurism that denies all of the possible futures in favor of imaginary ones.Report
Well yeah, it be like that.
On one hand, we have the collective opinion of the citizens and voters, the fundamental source to legitimately act in the name of the greatest Republic under the sun.
On the other hand, we have one random lib talking out of his asss.
It’s absolutely diabolical to pretend, as the OP does, that this lib brainstorm is just as compelling as the voters’ choice. Or God forbid, even more compelling.
“Well you didn’t actually show that it’s unfair to say the GOP is fascist.”
Yeah, that’s right. Ironically enough, this is the sort of situation where the wokes are actually right. It’s not my job (or GOP’s job collectively) to do the lib’s intellectual and spiritual work for him for free.
So if the OP (or you for that matter) actually wants to represent this pov legitimately, first of all you should be talking to the voters instead of a group masturbation exercise among libs.
And second, he (or you) should Do The Work to formulate an opinion based on a legitimate frame of reference that Real American voters will engage with.
And to that end, I think you’re already several steps ahead of the OP. I mean, I don’t follow it all that close but from my memory you have quite a bit of self-awareness that your political intentions are Left-fringy, idiosyncratic and out of the mainstream.
Whereas the OP also has fringe-Left politics (maybe the same as yours maybe not, you can speak to that) but seems to genuinely expect that we should be marching to his drum.
No, fcuk that sideways. he needs to get back in line before he hurts himself, or us.Report
Its interesting seeing the comments here from you and others. I see citations in the OP, from other commentors, comparisons, conclusions, examples from others.
From you, I’m seeing attempted character assassination and hand waving. You haven’t actually made any points other than saying some folks are “libs” that you haven’t defined, you’ve ignored all citations, examples, and historical discussions, and dismissed all of it as bad, wrong, or somehow illegitimate.
Why are you doing this? What about the OP, or the other commentors do you actually have a problem with?Report
It is true that my politics are outside of the mainstream (I don’t know the OP, so I can’t compare our politics), but it is very mainstream now to treat the current manifestation of the American Right as hostile to democracy, as authoritarian, as nationalist, as racist and xenophobic, etc. Most everyday liberals might be wary of calling this fascist, for a variety of reasons, but it is at least that the OP is getting at with the label.
And it’s worth noting that you can find prominent members of the American Right who embrace each of these, and not a few who would embrace all of them (see, e.g., the open embrace of nationalism at the convention, or the appreciation for Orbán among many Republicans, including the current VP candidate, etc.). So yes, these ideas are popular among a monitory of voters, but they’re still what they are.Report
Eh, not really. There’s a lot of mainstream libs who would like to propagate that, but they don’t, because
1. They don’t believe it themselves.
2. It’s not politically effective.
3. They especially don’t believe the followup arguments the OP makes. And in particular they don’t want to expose themselves as anti-democratic, anti-pluralist, anti-American in the way the OP does.
So for now at least, the OP stays fringe.
Which for me at least is kinda the point. I don’t really care that much what he thinks about us. We can be xenophobic, racist, fascist, whatever.
What I do care about is that if he does think that, it’s not an actual real thing, it’s just his particular brand of fringe Left bullshyt.
If it were up to me, I would hope the OP would come off that particular brand, but frankly I don’t need it and it’s not that important.
Republican voters are going to, _legitimately_, take the offices and implement the policies they are due, based on their demographic and intellectual power, and how well they campaign.
And there’s nothing about the OP that changes any of that. And in fact, it wouldn’t change any of that even if the OP were true.Report
This is where we have to agree to disagree, I suppose. While I have not heard any mainstream offline liberals refer to conservatives/Republicans as fascists recently, I’ve heard pretty much every other part of that from mainstream liberal sources ranging from NPR to members of Congress to the sitting president. Whether it’s a winning strategy is, of course, another question. Hopefully the Dems will come up with a strategy that’s less “The other guys are really bad,” and more, “Here’s what we want to do,” but it’s the Dems, who seem convinced that they are a perpetual opposition party even when they’re in power, so…Report
Yeah, probably.
Though, I think there are some undertones where we agree more than it’s apparent at the surface view.
Like here. This is right.
This version of the Democrats has to be the most intellectually barren major political party I can ever recall.
Orange Man Bad is their only coherent thought, in a world where nobody else is panicking about the Orange Man any more.
You might be inclined to give them a pass because the whole drama about Biden hypothetically dropping out has sucked out all the oxygen for anything else. But the Demos had this problem long before the debate.
The economist Tyler Cowen recently posted on his blog about a “vibe shift” consisting of 20 things or so breaking in favor of the GOP. Tbh, it’s probably worth a separate post here. But it is shocking, or at least surprising, just how completely flatfooted the libs and Demos are to the major cultural currents going on in America now.
Regarding the point about what’s mainstream and what’s not, I still think I’m right. It might help to clarify things to differentiate between nasty epithets against us and being able to successfully organize to disempower us on the basis of the epithets being true.
The NPRs of the world aren’t doing that, and for the most part they’re not trying very hard.
Maybe things will be different when the fascists take over and the OP gets arrested, but frankly I’m not holding my breath for any of that.Report
Still waiting for a critique of the points.Report
You mean I didn’t concretely address your dissatisfaction with the modern GOP, specifically in the context of it’s tendencies toward monarchism and the Southern Strategy?
You don’t say.
Yeah, but no. Whatever ill can be said about me, I am not incoherent, and I have written plenty here.
And you are either pretending to be oblivious or you actually are oblivious, like the teenage drug dealers Samuel L Jackson shoots at the beginning of Pulp Fiction.
If you are looking for a substantive response to your issues with the Republicans, you can start here:
“Republican voters are going to, _legitimately_, take the offices and implement the policies they are due, based on their demographic and intellectual power, and how well they campaign.
And there’s nothing about the OP that changes any of that.”Report
“The one thing I’m stuck on in this reply is its reliance on the number of voters, as though the number of voters were a sign that something is, or is not, fascism.”
people sure did care about “the number of voters” back in 2016Report
” for those of us who are tuned in to what the political Right has wanted since its existence as a pro-monarchist political realm”
Yeah, I remember when I was in my Junior year of college. Good times. I really had a lot of strong feelings about stuff that year.Report
Do you care to expand on that? Since the inception of the “left v right” dichotomy, the right was always pro-monarchist in bent, ranging from straight up wanting a king all the way to a powerful democratically elected executive who had near-king like powers. This is kind of a defining function of the right.
Or am I wrong here and you have a better explanation?Report
It is almost amusing to see the old “Tut tut we are not monarchist at all, no sirree!” argument trotted out in the wake of SCOTUS exclaiming “Monarchy and Me: It Is My Bag, Baby!”Report
“Do you care to expand on that?”
If you missed the point of my post so badly that you thought a screed about “monarchism” was the proper response then I’m not sure you’re capable of comprehending whatever I might add.Report
You know who else was monorchid?Report
“Someone who can’t ever keep more than one flower alive!”
(trapdoor opens, alligator lunges out and bites off my torso)Report
Heh. I had to look that one up.Report
I think it might be that maybe you didn’t have a point other than “get a load of this guy, amirite” without adding anything.
I, and others, are wondering what your comment means.Report
If these arguments are true, things follow. People have obligations in the face of great evil, after all.Report
“Fascism” might be the wrong approach, at the end of the day.
It seems like “America’s Hitler” might be a tree that will bear more fruit. Have you considered comparing the Republicans to Germany’s National Socialists?Report