Perhaps, but wanna take any bets on whether the Kochs fund PACs that work to get Trump re-elected?
ETA: in any event, I’m not trying to find disagreement where there really isn’t–I understand your point and agree with a good deal of it, so I’ll give you the last word on it if you’d like. Happy Halloween!
I would imagine the thinking there is that Trump is now making those shared causes look bad. The kochs funded a lot of classy propaganda about wealth accumulation and Trump came along and regressed tha messaging all the way back to a cartoonish 80s movie villain (he was probably literally the inspiration for every “crooked property developer threatening to close the rec center” from that period). Trump could (should, and goddammnit had better) trigger a major leftward swing and rejection of the Republican trajectory for quite a while now.
I’d say that the regular GOP base is the Trump base, these days, so you’re right about that. But I think that a lot of GOP politicians in the Congress aren’t happy with Trump, at all. They support him because they fear the backlash from their base, and because they believe they can advance their goals with Trump in the White House, but most of them have no loyalty or trust in Trump.
Ultimately, though, this is probably just quibbling without much importance.
You’re right, of course (likewise, @anon21100188) about the optics. Paul Ryan is the Koch poster boy: fiscal conservatism, not Trump-branded, burn-it-all-down-to-pwn-the-Libs chaos. But I also think it’s as simple as money in the here and now.
How sadly ironic that your cogent and demanding analysis is in response to Gracchus, given the history of the Gracchi:
The Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, were Romans who both served as tribunes of the plebs between 133 and 121 BC. They attempted to redistribute the occupation of the ager publicus—the public land hitherto controlled principally by aristocrats—to the urban poor and veterans, in addition to other social and constitutional reforms. After achieving some early success, both were assassinated by the Optimates, the conservative faction in the senate that opposed these reforms.
The Democratic Party establishment are not “the left”.
https://twitter.com/theonion/status/1189249766326226944?s=21
It’s hard to trust to the motives of a billionaire when we can’t even relate to them. We have had better luck with cross-species psychology, we know more about how bonobos relate to each other than how the 1% relate to the 99%.
that presumes ten dollars means the same to people of low income as it does to people of high income. only it doesn’t work that way.
if you have the money to meet your daily needs with ease then any amount above that is discretionary.
people in the top 1 percent can give tens of thousands and not even notice. it’s a rounding error.
when you actually have a budget. when you need to worry can i make it to the end of the month, can my family, even ten dollars is a significant investment.
that’s how stratified our country is.
we live in a world where people - especially those with kids - can’t spare a dime because so much has already been taken or withheld from them. and yet they are trying to contribute anyway.
it means a lot.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
