Republicans would like to take these off the table.
Because they want a permanent underclass to exploit.
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This exactly. For me, once I kind of realized that the end game is just to shove as many people as possible into the worst circumstances possible in order to exploit them for profit, power, and pleasure I started to grasp how the seemingly opposed “conservative” viewpoints can coexist together in the GOP. It’s chilling and disgusting, but now I’m never surprised.
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Come to think it, I guess that’s the point of “The cruelty is the point”!
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What still does shock me is how the exact same people also seem to be able to imagine themselves as good Christians to boot. 
It’s a complete reconfiguration of Jesus’ egalitarian messages of compassion that they only extend to the “elect” (straight out of Calvinism). It’s a combination of Calvinism, greed, and straight up racism. It’s just hidden enough that people seem able to tell themselves that they’re not really racist, they are just being good Christians. It really thrives on the authoritarian mindset too (that the authority is always right).
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It’s not racist ya know to think that the “children of Ham” should stick to themselves on society’s lower rungs if the Bible says so. Why, I’m perfectly happy giving them my almost worn-out clothes every year!
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On some level I think those kinds of Christians have an instinctive response because that kind of Christianity also profits and derives pleasure/satisfaction/self-importance from exploiting the less fortunate. It’s just they hide it under the guise of piety. But really who would they be without some one to pity and demonstrate their superiority through? They’ve made the “white man’s burden” a tenet of their faith. And how would they keep the profits rolling in if they admitted that? It’s sick, but it’s exposure to a lifetime of that kind of Christianity that gave me that POV.
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Agreed (and with @anon15383236, too). I struggle here getting people to understand that this isn’t the only kind of Christianity that people adhere to or practice. It’s just the vocal minority among political conservatives as of late.
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Absolutely. It’s also not limited to a specific Christian sect. It’s not even “all evangelicals” for instance. It is just a toxic and socially destructive current in contemporary US Christian thought.
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Yep! Their current trajectory is to bring back slavery. What is the ultimate supply side economy? Chattel slavery. Outright ownership of the underclass and deletion of the middle class, so that the upperclass can do anything they want. Some of the middle class would be converted to Ghetto-Polizei, for a few extra rations because the owners need enforcers.
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I wonder how many of the middle class who work in government realize they are on thin ice, too? Pandemic budget cuts are coming, but conservatives think that’s OK, because they like small government. They believe that until the largest local budget items - police, fire, and office staff - start getting consolidated or eliminated. Those enforcer jobs might wind up as private sector gigs - with less regulation, training, or accountability than what exists now. 
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I mean… why not pay a private contractor (ie, a city manager’s brother in law probably) to use prison labor for that, since we’re already doing it to fight wild fires out west? They get useful job training, we save a few bucks, the bro-in-law is raking it in! Win-win-win!!! Oh, and add public school teacher into that, too! Those unionized commies make far too much for just glorified baby sitting, right?!? /s
What’s really upsetting is that I can see someone really making that argument…
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December 31, 2020 (Thursday)
As the sun sets on 2020, I want to thank you all.
It was not clear what this year would bring, and fear that we were seeing the end of American democracy was very real. Thanks to people like you, we have won a respite, at least, and now have the chance to articulate what this country can look like if we put all hands on deck.
I also thank you for your support for me, and for this project. It is no exaggeration to say we are in this together. I shape what I write according to your questions, and learn at least as much from you as you do from me. More, though, your personal support, especially in the face of the hate mail that comes over the transom, is what keeps me going.
So I thank you, all around.
I wish for you, and for us all, a better 2021.
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January 1, 2021 (Friday)
Congress began the new year by repassing the National Defense Authorization Act over Trump’s veto, finding the two-thirds majority it needed to override one of Trump’s vetoes for the first time. The House of Representatives passed the bill on Monday by a vote of 322 to 87. The Senate vote was 81 to 13, with 6 Senators not voting.
The NDAA allocates the money Congress has appropriated for the military, and since Congress passed the first NDAA in 1961, it has never failed to pass.
This measure pushed back on a number of the president’s policies and demands. He wanted to be able to sue social media companies for things other people post on them—the law preventing such lawsuits is in Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act—but even staunch Trump supporter James Inhofe (R-OK) refused, noting that Section 230 has nothing to do with the military. Trump objected to the measure in the bill that requires renaming military bases that currently bear the name of Confederate generals; Congress left it in. Congress also specified that federal authorities must “visibly display” their name tags when operating in public, a rebuke to the administration’s deployment of officers in unmarked clothing this summer.
The NDAA also challenges Trump’s policies by slowing or stopping the removal of troops from Germany and Afghanistan, making it harder to move troops to our southern border, and blocking the removal of troops from South Korea unless the Pentagon signs off on the move. It caps at $100 million the amount of money the military can use on domestic projects, a protest of the president’s decision to fund his wall by moving $3.6 billion from other projects.
The NDAA also contains strong anti-corruption measures. Originally passed as the Corporate Transparency Act, these measures prohibit so-called shell companies with secret owners and operators, key tools of criminals and money launderers. The NDAA also regulates the antiquities trade, another haven for money laundering. The director of Transparency International’s U.S. office, Gary Kalman, called the bill “one of the most important anti-corruption measures ever passed by the U.S. Congress.”
After the Senate repassed the bill, Trump took to Twitter to call the Republican Senate “Pathetic!!!”
As the veto override indicates, the war between Trump and establishment Republicans is now out in the open. On the one hand are lawmakers who are publicly backing Trump and his on-going attempt to overturn the election; on the other hand are Republicans who don’t want to sign on to an assault on our democracy that, if it succeeds, would make Trump a dictator and remove all their power.
House lawmakers have indicated they will challenge some of the state electoral votes for Biden when Congress counts them on January 6. The process of gerrymandering, which protects Republicans from moderate challengers but leaves them open to challenges from extremists, has put a number of Republican radicals in the House, but the Senate has far fewer of them. A challenge from one house of Congress does not do anything, but a challenge to a state’s electoral votes from both the House and the Senate means that both houses must debate whether or not to accept the electoral votes from that state. Then they decide by a simple majority vote.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has tried to keep Senate Republicans from challenging any of the votes because he doesn’t want Republicans to have to go on record either for or against the president. The election was not close. Biden won by more than 7 million votes and by 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. The Trump campaign has either lost or had dismissed 60 of the 61 cases it has brought over the election, and its advisers are increasingly unhinged.
Today, for example, a Trump-appointed federal judge threw out a lawsuit filed by Louie Gohmert (R-TX) that sought to empower Vice President Mike Pence to throw out Biden’s victory. Pence had opposed the lawsuit, and after the judge ruled, attorney Lin Wood, who is a supporter of the Trump effort, bizarrely predicted that Vice President Mike Pence could “face execution by firing squad” for “treason.” (Twitter suspended his account.) Trump himself today retweeted an 8-minute video claiming that the Communist Party in China has secretly infiltrated America through Hollywood and newspapers and has bought Joe Biden. It urges “patriots” to defend America. To the tweet, Trump added: “January 6th. See you in D.C.”
It seems clear that, with no chance of proving this election fraudulent, Trump is now trying to incite violence. Nonetheless, Republicans who are jockeying for the 2024 presidential nomination want to make sure they can pick up Trump’s voters. While McConnell doesn’t want Senators to have to declare their support either way, those vying to lead the party want to differentiate themselves from the pack.
On Wednesday, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced he would join the efforts of his House colleagues to challenge Biden electors from Pennsylvania and perhaps other states. This will not affect the outcome of the election, but it will force senators to go on record for or against Trump. In a statement, Hawley listed Trump talking points: the influence of “mega corporations” on behalf of Biden and “voter fraud.” Hawley seems pretty clearly to be angling for a leg up in 2024.
On Wednesday night, Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) made his own play for the future of the Republican Party. He refuted point by point the idea that Trump won. He scolded his colleagues who are signing on to Trump’s attempt to steal the election, calling them “institutional arsonists.”
“When we talk in private, I haven’t heard a single Congressional Republican allege that the election results were fraudulent – not one,” he wrote on Facebook. “Instead, I hear them talk about their worries about how they will “look” to President Trump’s most ardent supporters.” They think they can “tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage,” he wrote, but they’re wrong. “Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.”
Today, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, launched his own bid to redefine the Republican Party with an attack on Trump’s apparent botching of the coronavirus vaccine rollout. In a press release, Romney noted “[t]hat comprehensive vaccination plans have not been developed at the federal level and sent to the states as models is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.”
But he didn’t stop there. Romney went on to say that he was no expert on vaccine distribution, “[b]ut I know that when something isn’t working, you need to acknowledge reality and develop a plan—particularly when hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake.” He offered ideas of his own, offering them “not as the answer but as an example of the kind of options that ought to be brainstormed in Washington and in every state.” After listing his ideas, he concluded: “Public health professionals will easily point out the errors in this plan—so they should develop better alternatives based on experience, modeling and trial.”
Romney’s statement was about more than vaccine distribution. With its emphasis on listening to experts and experimenting, it was an attack on the rigid ideology that has taken over the Republican Party. Romney has said he comes to his position from his own experience, not his reading, but he is reaching back to the origins of conservative thought, when Irish statesman Edmund Burke critiqued the French Revolution as a dangerous attempt to build a government according to ideology, rather than reality. Burke predicted that such an attempt would inevitably result in politicians trying to force society to conform to their ideology. When it did not, they would turn to tyranny and violence.
Sasse’s point-by-point refutation of Trump’s arguments-- complete with citations—and Romney’s call to govern according to reality rather than ideology are suggestive. They seem to show an attempt to recall the Republican Party to the true conservatism it abandoned a generation ago.
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I think it’s been a lot longer than a generation…
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It’s definitely time to formalize the split in the party with names: Trumpublicans (Chaotic Evil) and Republicans (Lawful Evil).
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Lawful, you say?
I understand Sens. Hawley and Romney calling out the chaos as being somewhat heartening. But lawful R’s is still a stretch for my mind (at this point in the evolutionary timeline of Republican shenanigans).
[Edit: I confuse Sen. Hawley (R. MO) with Sen. Ben Sasse (R. Nebraska). seems Sasse is wearing the level head and Hawley is one of the loons calling for sedition. remaining point stands.]
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My thoughts exactly. Republicans have completely owned the chaotic evil box. There needs to be a new category for Trumpists, pointless evil? evil for evil’s sake? Oh, stupidly evil evil! That’s the ticket!
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And for short, Tromps and Rumps?
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I mean it in the D&D sense:
A lawful evil character sees a well-ordered system as being easier to exploit than to necessarily follow. Examples of this alignment include tyrants, devils, corrupt officials, undiscriminating mercenary types who have a strict code of conduct, blue dragons, and hobgoblins.
Or
A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order but not about freedom, dignity or life. He plays by the rules but without mercy or compassion. He is comfortable in a hierarchy and would like to rule, but is willing to serve.
He condemns others not according to their actions but according to race, religion, homeland or social rank. He is loath to break laws and promises. This reluctance comes partly from his nature and partly from those who oppose him on moral grounds.
Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook Edition 3.5
For example, see Gohmert under “Goblins” and Cruz under “Hobgoblins.”
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