Opinion Can the political culture of the U.S. go back to normal again?

[Gandhi]

Yeah, they exist, but no one's winning elections with just the votes of people who want tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, cuts to the safety net, and more employer-friendly judges.

No of course not, we agree 100% here.

It’s just a part of the coalition. I am guessing that If every establishment Republican never trumped we would not be where we are. So they kind of deserve what they get if the pendulum swings to far the other way now.

 

[HockeyBjj]

B-list actor: Racism is bad.
Right-winger: See, I agree with Democrats on policy but stuff like that and the media covering Trump saying and doing embarrassing and harmful stuff that makes me never want to vote for them. That's why you lose, libs!
Observer: Yeah, no one thinks that Republican policies are good, but they vote on the basis of identity politics.
Right-winger (example: @HockeyBjj): How DARE you agree with me!

? Pretty poor example there, but nice try.

Areas of not liking the left for their identity politics is that for every 1 instance of trying to run on something like Rs utter failure to fix health care so maybe we should give some dem ideas a shot, they run 9 attack ads calling people racist for not wanting a free pass for illegal immigrants and call a person a bigot for being a Christian. This is what has led to so many lefties, yourself. In particular, with a high a mighty attitude as you continue to vote against the "racist and biggoted" party and pat yourself on the back, while changing your mind sight to support whatever the "morally right" party tells you too.

This was seen in the i side with quiz thread as lefties kept hitting 90+% with the party. How is it a bad thing Rs can see that while a majority of what we see as good ideas are on "our" side, the other does in fact have a few assets that could be brought in for a better functioning government? That sounds more like maturity and less tribalism.

As for the policies, you haven't really deluded yourself to thinking all left policies are loved by all, have you? And only voted against because we're racist?? Governmental control over Healthcare and education is worrisome. Disarming Americans is a very poor policy that does not at all poll well. Raising taxes to give handouts, is not a policy I or any on the right like. Trying to both increase the federal minimum wage while pushing to simply let anyone who walks into the country work for 5 bucks an hour is horribly conflicting.

And really gonna say the non identity politics side is the one with major presidential candidates running on race based reparations??

 

[BjPenn2017]

I love how people who actively push us to the extremes of the political spectrum are the ones also crying the hardest about "coming back to the center". Like you can hit someone in the face and then bemoan why people hit each other in the face.

Oh you sad, stupid, son of a bitch. You supported this, you don't get to absolve yourself when all of a sudden the "other side" agrees to the ROE that your side created.

So no, I don't give a shit what happens to Republicans...because of Republicans. Don't cry when the political knives come out.

Try not to break those limp wrists punchin nazis bro

 

[Falsedawn]

Try not to break those limp wrists punchin nazis bro

Do I even need to punch them? I could pat this mook on the shoulder and he'd have a heart attack.

 

[BarryDillon]

No of course not, we agree 100% here.

It’s just a part of the coalition. I am guessing that If every establishment Republican never trumped we would not be where we are. So they kind of deserve what they get if the pendulum swings to far the other way now.

*too

 

[Jack V Savage]

? Pretty poor example there, but nice try.

Areas of not liking the left for their identity politics is that for every 1 instance of trying to run on something like Rs utter failure to fix health care so maybe we should give some dem ideas a shot, they run 9 attack ads calling people racist for not wanting a free pass for illegal immigrants and call a person a bigot for being a Christian.

This is totally false, though. You actually have never seen a single attack ad calling people racist for not wanting a free pass for illegal immigrants or calling a person a bigot for being a Christian. That's something that exists 100% in your head. Literally more than half of Democratic ad buys in 2018 were focused on healthcare. That's something you can look up. I believe Democrats mentioned the GOP tax bill more than Republicans did (only 12% of their ads mentioned it). It's an objective fact that the GOP's ad buys were heavily focused on identity politics and Democrats rarely mention identity politics, and you're countering it with complete fabrications.

This was seen in the i side with quiz thread as lefties kept hitting 90+% with the party.

That's a funny misinterpretation of the data (based on applying your thinking to people who don't think like you). Democrats don't "side with their party," they vote for the candidate who agrees with them on policy. But very few people of any political leaning agree with Republican policy.

That illustrates the issues I mentioned earlier in the thread.

Good post here on the problem with your thinking ITT: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/11/03/what-developmental-milestones-are-you-missing/

 

[JonesBones]

Do I even need to punch them? I could pat this mook on the shoulder and he'd have a heart attack.

Reminds me of this scene. One of the most fictitious scenes in movie history. And lol at nazis just hanging out at college.




lol. I just noticed the product placement. Nazi gets thrown into a Coke machine. lol. Like Superman throwing bad guys through Marlboro trucks.

 

[BarryDillon]

As soon as conservatives repent, and issue this specific apology:

Then we can get back to normal.

 

[Unknown Pleasures]

I think there are two big issues here:

1. During the Bush 43 years, the intellectual basis of conservative ideology collapsed. Tax cuts failed to spur growth, as many conservatives expected (the Heritage Foundation predicted that the cuts would completely eliminate the debt by the end of Bush's term!), and in fact, growth following the Bush cuts was much slower than growth following the Clinton tax hikes. Deregulation/underregulation led to the GFC (not specifically related to Bush, but the general notion that deregulation is an unqualified boon did not survive Bush's presidency). The FP ideas of the movement were put into practice, and the results were equally a disaster. Cultural conservatism was identified with the religious right, which became hugely unfashionable.

If, as a party, your whole pitch to voters, your whole reason for existing, is essentially proved wrong, what can you do? You still hate the other guys. But pretty much all you got is that hate and identity politics (and no longer the nice but hypocritical Christian type--just nasty, racialized identity politics and calling everyone on the other side a criminal).

2. As this is all happening, as all the news coming out is bad, conservative thought leaders are denying reality and then saying that the usual sources of information--gov't-collected stats, academia, the media--are all just biased against them. The movement starts to turn against the idea of objective truth. You have the rise of think tanks as an alternative to academia and the rise of an alternative-reality media sphere. Turns out that telling conservatives, especially older ones, what they want to hear even if it's not true is a hugely lucrative business.

And BTW, with regard to that alternate reality, the real problem isn't gullibility as much as cynicism. On some level, I think most Fox viewers (to say nothing of InfoWars, Breitbart, or Prison Planet consumers) realize that it's kind of a game, but they just think, "we have our comforting lies, and other people have theirs." If someone believes something that's false, you can usually convince them. If someone doesn't believe that anyone really cares about what's true, they're just going to profess whatever beliefs give them more power.

I think this is one of the best posts I've ever read.

To me what's really not normal is the level of lies, and the acceptance that dishonesty is now irrelevant. While there always bullshit in life, things in the political sphere has turned really dishonest to the point of bragging about dishonesty being a virtue.

 

[58miles]

I guess a lot of guys here were pretty young when Bush was president. This is nothing new for the left. They are entitled babies who have no issue throwing an 8 year temper tantrum.

I guess you don't remember when Bill Clinton was president and the Republicans under Newt Gingrich destroyed a shitload of political norms because they didn't like the fact that Bill Clinton had the nerve to break what they thought was a Republican lock on the WH.

Not to mention the fact that in an effort to get rid of this pretender to the WH throne Bill Clinton, Gingrich along with talk radio hucksters like Rush Limbaugh permanently poisoned America's day to day political discourse.

But I guess you don't remember any of that huh?

 

[RetiredSlave]

Everything is exactly the way its supposed to be in the living moment. There is no other way. The future can be made better and the past can be learned from but the present is always perfect.

 

[jrams]

Neither side treats the other like adults, everyone is so indoctrinated in partisan politics, identity politics are being pushed more and more, and everything is being politicized. Emotion matters more than things like logic and reason.

Signs aren't looking good that we can bring it back to "normal".

 

[My Spot]

Charming...as always. It's funny how the last election was between two white people, yet you claim everybody who voted against your preferred white person was a racist and voted that was specifically because of racism. LMAO Good stuff old chap.

lol and Salty is on his 4th or 5th account because he made racist posts. Irony.

 

[My Spot]

It's a team sport to them, but you knew that. Trump is literally all the things they said Obama was, and it conveniently went away when it came time to play ball for the team. Deficits are bad, unless the team controls it. Steal a SCOTUS seat, stack the judiciary, obstruct historically, all good as long as the team wins.

When Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act got knifed, I came here and saw people celebrating. This was one of the most visible policies out of the CRM, STILL protecting minorities from racial discrimination in voting, just gone and our rightward contingent enjoyed the fuck out of it.

I'm not gonna kiss the ass of a group of people that would gladly see my civil rights reduced to absolutely nothing in the name of team spirit.

Oh the irony.

 

[My Spot]

Try not to break those limp wrists punchin nazis bro

You're talking to someone who supports reparations and said it's impossible for blacks to be racist towards whites. Just pat him on the head and move on.

 

[BarryDillon]

lol and Salty is on his 4th or 5th account because he made racist posts. Irony.

Oh the irony.

You're talking to someone who supports reparations and said it's impossible for blacks to be racist towards whites. Just pat him on the head and move on.

Wow, such valuable insight.

Thanks for shitting up the War Room with your idiocy.

 

[My Spot]

Wow, such valuable insight.

Thanks for shitting up the War Room with your idiocy.

Says the guy who was banned despite being a plat.

 

[Plissken]

It'd be cool if politics wasn't as much of a religion for people as it is now, that's why things are so bad. Many people abandoned traditional religion and made politics their new religion.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Some factors that suggest we'll get our shit together:

• We have been through worse division as recently as the late 1960s

More recently than that. There was massive (unthinkable by today's standards) political and racial violence in the 1970s, plus Watergate, etc. Might actually be that what was not normal was the period of relative peace that followed that appears to have been broken by the comprehensive failure of movement conservative policy (remember that pre-Reagan, movement conservatives were the lesser part of the GOP coalition).

 

[KONG-D'SNT-TAP]

I guess a lot of guys here were pretty young when Bush was president. This is nothing new for the left. They are entitled babies who have no issue throwing an 8 year temper tantrum.

Yeah it’s not like Bush didn’t destroy the country every step of the way.