How about cult of personality?
3 Likes
Not even that. They hate the guy. But they’d vote for him again over Hillary or someone similar any day.
Ah, the “I’ll vote for anything that hurts liberals, even if it hurts me, because hurting liberals is the most important thing” crowd.
9 Likes
Take a few real world citizens who voted for [insert your favorite despotic regime here]. Most of them don’t seem so bad when you get to know them personally. Most of them wouldn’t volunteer to run death squads or slave labor camps.
But they still voted for the bastard.
13 Likes
Not really even that (though some are for sure). Most of them just don’t want the government telling them what to do with their property, and they think democrats will ratchet up the regulations. And I think they have a point. It’s mostly just city style governing (democrats) versus country. But fascism, even peripherally, has nothing to do with their reasoning. And calling it that does nothing but cement the divide, and certainly won’t change anyone’s mind.
So they’re starting from the point of delusion and ignorance and then voting for a Republican candidate who promises to ratchet up the regulations (but just on dark-skinned people and women – more to come). Forgive me for writing off such people and not thinking them worthy of engagement in an effort to change their minds.
12 Likes
I really think you’re overstating this.
Sure, many of them have negative opinions about regulation. But they are also deeply invested in dictating what other people can do with their bodies, who they can marry, and who is worthy of social support.
Above all, there is a sense of a desperate desire to roll culture back to earlier times or at least maintain the status quo in terms of power and influence.
15 Likes
Not the ones I know. They couldn’t care less in fact.
We all know the expression “kill your television”, and all these misconceptions or broad generalizations make me think a “kill your internet” campaign is due.
As many have pointed out above, they are supporting the entirity of the party platform which includes those goals, in spite of “not caring”.
I’m not convinced caring more about building sheds than other people’s civil rights is better than being an outright facist.
12 Likes
The problem is that they’re totally indifferent to those things, which is what allowed them to vote for someone who cares very much (at least insofar as pandering to and delvering to his hardcore base) about increasing regulations on people other than themselves.
There are plenty of bog-standard Republicans spouting the Libertarian “government regulations ba-a-a-d” mantra, but instead of supporting them sufficiently in the primaries they chose to vote for someone who also promised fascist policies. No-one forced them to head out to the polls in 2016 and vote for Il Douche – they could have stayed home, voted for Gary Johnson (who’s big on the whole property rights thing), anything else. Worse, it sounds like they still support him.
If they don’t want to be seen as fascists or complicit in fascism, maybe they shouldn’t be voting for and supporting a fascist regime, yeah?
7 Likes
A fair point, but property rights are massively important to them, “building sheds” is just one example. In a lot of senses it would even fall under the category of civil rights for them. You just might feel the same way if you had a shit ton of acreage. I’ve seen people go from San Francisco liberals to country Republicans in a month after moving.
As far as immigration, theyre all friends with immigrants, employ them, treat them with respect. To me that speaks a lot louder than any abstract political declarations, especially when none have made any to the contrary.
1 Like
Well sure, some of their best friends are immigrants, and they’ll be glad to tell you about the “good ones” they know.
8 Likes
Ha, nice generalization. You’re speaking in stereotypes. You really need to meet some actual, real live Republicans! They’re not all what the internet tells you they are. Time for a road trip maybe?
I understand what you’re trying to say.
But at the end of the day, the policies they might not be claiming but still inadvertedly supporting have been set in motion and are moving forward. The end result is the same.
They might not be hostile to immigrants in person, but they have contributed to a much more hostile enviornment via the state, which is much worse than not being employed or treated with respect.
10 Likes
I have, many times. Some of them are my clients, which means they’re part of the tiny group that actually votes for the GOP in their own economic self-interest. Most of them either didn’t vote for Il Douche, voted Libertarian, or voted for Clinton (because as a Third Way establishment Dem she’d have served Wall Street well enough). But they’re smart and educated conservatives who are most assuredly millionaires of the non-temporarily-embarrassed variety. They also understand that this is not a normal GOP candidate.
The “generalisation” is just a re-statement of your comment more accurately characterising the attitudes of Republicans who chose to vote for Dolt-45 (some of whom I’ve met, too, by the way).
Also, there’s no point selling the whole Real Americans™ vs. Coastal Elites narrative here: we’re not buying.
9 Likes
Anyone who enables or facilitates shitty, inhumane behavior is, by their very association, also shitty and inhumane.
12 Likes
Fuck this two-party system.
6 Likes
All our systems are fucked, already, sadly…
5 Likes
Until ranked-choice voting gets more widespread we’re stuck with it. For now it’s more important to focus on opposing gerrymandering and voter suppression and (eventually) reforming the Electoral College so it isn’t turned into an effectively one-party system. Although part of me wonders if it isn’t already too late.
8 Likes
They rank other things higher than treating people like people?
9 Likes
