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The elitists that provide the funding behind movement conservatism and their think tanks, professors, etc., have long had it in for everything America is really supposed to stand for. They hate this country and most of the people in it.
It's ironic because cons are associated with symbolic manipulation (things like bits of colored cloth and songs and associated ritual movements) that leads (low-info) people to think they are the patriots that are for freedom and love the Constitution.
They're jaded because America has largely rejected their social platforms and failed economically under their policies.
The GOP is unpopular, vilified, and hopelessly devoid of merit or integrity. They've decided that the only way to win America is to beat her into submission.
They're sore losers; they're losing at history, and at governance. This is their revenge.
I don't think they have anything against America specifically. They just seem to want to cash in as much as possible, which is fairly standard for politicians in general.
Seems like the big difference is that they're increasingly able to get away with stuff that would have otherwise ended their political career or straight up put them behind bars...
I don’t think they have anything against America specifically.
Depends on who's america you're referring to. A vibrant diverse multicultural melting pot? HAHA NO.
A white christo-fascist theocracy? The GOP's down for that.
You can't manipulate the laws easily enough,and dirty money is traced and collected.
The GOP wants this to be more like China and Russia, they see these untouchable oligarchs and their little crooked dicks get hard.
They want "America" to mean "cis white straight Christian males are at the top, and everyone else is either second class or dead."
No, they want corporations to rule and line their pockets, even more than they already do.
Racism, religion, sexism, and all the other fear & hate, are just useful tools to rile up voters, and pull the wool over their eyes.
They want both. There are many in power who are true believers of the religious stuff, as evidenced by the SCROTUS decision to ban abortion, which has no monetary benefit. There would, however, have been a benefit to keeping it legal, as outrage fuel for the base. Now that the dog's caught the car, they've lost that benefit.
decision to ban abortion, which has no monetary benefit.
Unwanted children keep people poor, unable to relocate, and desperate for work and validation. Banning abortion has a direct monetary benefit to every red state and most religion, as poor people remain poor and desperate and remain underpaid and overworked and unable to make a change.
Make no mistake, there is very much a poor-to-pulpit pipeline and ensuring that accidental pregnancies are forced to term keeps that pipeline full.
I do believe there are some true believers that think an abortion is an Affront To God, but the rest of them are just riding those coattails as an excuse. But there's always a profit motive. Always. These mfers wouldn't wipe their own ass if they weren't skimming tax money for it. It's always a grift, every single time.
I'd have to see concrete evidence that banning abortion has led to significant monetary gains for red states before I'll believe it.
How the hell do you expect their "fix America" message to land if it isn't broken in the first place?
Nice try, New York Times
You can’t pretend you all of a sudden realized that Trump is a threat to all of American democracy and relay it to us like it’s breaking news and hope we’ll be gaslit into thanking you for informing us because we were not aware, and forget about all the coverage up until yesterday where you were explicitly favoring him for some horrifying reason
It's Paul Krugman. He's been talking about how awful Trump is since at least 2016
He said Nice try NYT, not nice try Krugman. Krugman's a minority voice there these days; the overwhelming majority of NYT coverage has been all about Biden's age (while ignoring trump's age and word salad incoherence)
... and before that he was talking about how awful Bernie Sanders is. Fuck him.
Not sure what that has to do with discussing the dangers of Trump. You can agree with someone about one thing and disagree about other things.
Sure, or I can disregard his opinions entirely.
I've found, throughout my life, there are many opinions that should be disregarded.
were explicitly favoring him for some horrifying reason
I'm at work on a short break so I can't pull up the source, but the guy whose family "runs" the NYTs has said he's looking to court conservative readers. He has denied this somewhat recently, but the trend matches the behavior we witnessed l. I found this by trying to figure out who owns the NYT to begin with so maybe start with the wiki on NYT
Although I don’t at all agree with its central thesis about the Times, this article goes into a good bit of the history and the behind the scenes. I talked in the comments about what I think is mistaken about the article, but you can still learn a lot about the Times from reading the facts it is basing its incorrect conclusions on.
They hate America as it is, but they love America as it used to be, or, more accurately, they love the sanitized, propagandized version of how America used to be. They want to return America to its former supposed glory.
Frankly, I hate America as it is, also, but I don't want to go back to some fantasy golden era, I just want the country to be better.
Sometimes I feel like I'm sitting in a dirty, cluttered, dilapidated house with two other people. I say to them, "this place is a mess, this is totally unacceptable, we need to clean this place and fix it up." The person in the middle says, "What are you talking about? Everything's fine." The person on the right says, "If this place is a mess, it's because you two strayed too far from this household's traditional values, and if we're going to return this home to its former glory, you two must embrace those values. If you don't, I'm going to kill you." It's frustrating, depressing, and terrifying.
So, if I'm understanding your meaning with this comic, you would say that I, the person on the left, don't recognize that the house is actually in fine order, and that I want change for the sake of change, or because I'm just a malcontent, and if I try to bring about the change I want, I will end up creating chaos and disorder?
Nah, I wasn't saying anything about you, your metaphor of America as a house just reminded me of this comic, which was posted shortly after Trump won the election. If you want a connection, this happened before you arrived to see the house a mess.
Gotcha. I just wanted to make sure I knew what you meant.
This is why editorial cartoons often have stupid labels on everything. If that character had "GOP" on his chest, you would immediately know this is a critique of Trumpism.
And a version of this image will show up in a conservative forum with the chest caption "DEI".
My take is that they think that by sharing the cake with others, it means less for themselves. It's self serving greed and an inability to grasp that we are better as a joint community than as a collective of individuals.
The real answer is that over the decades of progressively more ossified leadership, Republicans have moved to the conservative position of ruling rather than representing. If something prevents them from ruling, then they dismantle it. The final obstacle preventing them from ruling is democracy itself.
A movement which sees affinity in strong-man governments around the world. They view Putin (or Orban/ Kim / Xi, and even Modi now) as a model for what they’d like to bring about domestically.
Single party rule, sometimes with the facade of an opposition party. This is their end goal.
WWII.
They're Russian assets. The GOP is the Russia's most impressive achievement in the cold war.
Essentially. After WWII, the US imported some Nazis in exchange for their research. This was a mistake. They are like an infection. You do not let any of it survive. You eradicate it
Yeah but we got to go to the moon so there’s that
They actually tried to just poach the research and have American researchers do it, but they weren’t up to the task. They had to put the Nazi scientists in charge before the rockets started really working.
As if there weren't plenty of fascists in the US already. Like a certain Fred Trump, who was arrested in 1927 for taking part in a KuKluxKlan rally.
Or the Silver Shirts.
Yeah there were plenty of facists in the US already before WWII. Here's Madison Square garden in 1939.
Operation paperclip. What a disaster. Should have looked more like Lenin storming the palace.
Not much of an achievement. The fuckers basically fell over themselves to suck Putin's dick.
The cold war started like 80 years ago.
Believe me when I say there were virtually 0 Americans falling over themselves to suck Putin, or any other Russian's dick in the 70s. This has been a century's long effort. The fact they fall over themselves to suck Putin's dick today is the achievement.
Never underestimate the adversary.
Decline of the Republican party took off with the dropping the requirement of "News" channels to actually have News.
Fox (Faux) news & Reagan started us on the road, Putin jumped on & up to pilot the train more recently. Propaganda and division are their standard bearers. They are now the fake news snowflake party (gays are ruining America! Bad books are corrupting our children! Immigrants are raping and spreading drugs everywhere!).
It is a terrorist organization. I wish defense department (& budget) would be used to dismantle Murdoch's & Putin's tendrils.
