Originally published at: CBS poll 70% of Republican voters believe a strong economy is a "bigger concern" than a "functioning democracy" | Boing Boing
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It’s beyond infuriating that both the Republican party and the media keep framing the question as if the two are mutually exclusive outcomes, whereas in real life fascism is at least as likely to send the economy further downhill than it is to improve it.
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Can’t have the former without the latter, assholes…
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Wait, are you suggesting that the trains don’t run on time under fascist regimes? /s
In 2009, fascist sugar daddy Peter Theil said he no longer believed “that freedom and democracy are compatible”. The American right has internalised that toxic message to the degree that they no longer claim, as they once did, that a strong economy supposedly grounded in free markets is compatible with democracy.
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Is their ‘economic anxiety’ just acting up that intensely; or are they operating on the implicit or explicit assumption that the dysfunctional democracy will have their people permanently installed?
If it’s just a matter of “no, Gerry Mander has done a great job, no need for further changes, now give me mine!” that’s not desperately surprising, if also not desperately impressive. If, though, they are stating a willingness to live under the wokist oppressors if it means not being sacrificed to mammon that’s incrementally more interesting.
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This poll needs to define what repuqlicans believe is a functioning economy.
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If the pollster bothered to ask, the answer would be “one with full employment for straight white men, no matter how uneducated and unskilled they are.” Even if such polls were suited to essay questions, though, I doubt the respondents would have the ability or honesty to articulate that like I just did.
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Hmm, y’all want to guess what is really bad for the economy?
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As well as a functioning democracy. They seem to care that an election was “stolen” from them, which would imply that they do care about a functioning democracy. If Democrats deliver on a strong economy, does that mean Republicans are fine removing themselves from politics?
(Sarcastic, rhetorical question obviously… they know that “broken democracy” means “Republicans cheating”, and they’re entirely cool with that.)
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Another survey on the risks to liberal democracy in the U.S, this one polling actual political science experts and academics (i.e. people who actually know what they’re talking about). Some takeaways:
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On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is least democratic and 100 is most democratic, experts gave the United States a rating of 67. Great Britain scores 76 and Canada scores 84. Those polled believe it’s possible for the U.S. score to drop to 60 in the next five years.
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The experts rated election denial by a large number of GOP candidates refusing to acknowledge Biden’s 2020 win as a highly abnormal event in the context of American democracy. They also estimated a probability of 70% that at least two Republican candidates for statewide office in the U.S. who lose next month will not concede defeat.
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The respondents say there is a 65% probability that the next vacancy on the SCOTUS will not be filled unless the Senate and White House are held by the same party, basically acknowledging that the core institution of an independent judiciary is in serious peril.
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It’s in their interest to maintain a hierarchy even if that hierarchy costs them (short or long term). It reminds me of a line from a Heinlein novel, “It’s easier to get a man to hate than to love.”
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And to be clear to others reading, that hierarchy is primarily a racial one. The majority of districts where TFG won in both 2016 and 2020 were ones where changing demographic indicated a decline in white hegemony. These changes took the form of increasing racial diversity and/or a straight decline in the white population due to people dying early and young people abandoning dead-ends with no economic future.
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And now this is the second time in a week that @frauenfelder has put the wind up me.
I don’t even live in the US, but I know how important the mid-terms are.
Call me optimistic, but, come on you Dems.
A lot of the planet is now depending on you.
(sorry, no pressure).
(actually, there is a lot of pressure, but do your best).
Vote Blue
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As long as it’s THEIR boot grinding others down. Right?.
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Full employment for white men was a real policy goal of the apartheid government in South Africa. After all, the existence of poor white people undermined their position as the master race. The railways were notoriously overstaffed and served as a job-creation scheme for white people.
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The poll results would seem to confirm that they understand that a (marginally) functioning democracy is what “stole” the election from them.
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I disagree.
A real functioning democracy (we don’t have any that are quite real or functioning right now) is more likely to deliver a strong economy (assuming a ‘strong economy’ means an economy that manages to operate largely for the benefit of the many not the few).
A badly functioning democracy is much more likely to fuck the economy in the end.
Serendipitously, I read this yesterday. It has bearing. (Basically, dictatorial regimes fiddle the books.)
(Citation? See Liz Truss.)
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What a poorly conceived poll.
