Comment by Loughla
8 hours ago
The half that supports this nonsense genuinely believes this level of corruption has always existed. They're just happy it's their team this time.
I simply do not understand American politics.
8 hours ago
The half that supports this nonsense genuinely believes this level of corruption has always existed. They're just happy it's their team this time.
I simply do not understand American politics.
I think this whole "that half" and "this half" thing makes it significantly harder to hold people in the government accountable. I know plenty of conservative people who think the corruption in the government is out of control.
Do they act on their beliefs or merely parrot them?
I ask because I've known people who were shocked at what took place 2021-01-06 but who proudly voted to re-elect Trump.
Today isn't much different: talk to a conservative voter who complains about the tariffs, Iran war, etc. and ask them whether it would be enough for them to vote Democrat, and the answer is near universally no. Lots of people have performative outrage because they're supposed to be outraged at what's going on, but the truth is that there's no line the Republican party can cross which would make them switch votes. Exceptions to this rule are still few and far between as far as I can gather.
Do those conservative people keep voting for Trump? Will they support his blatantly unconstitutional third term run? If so I think we need more words for nuances around what conservatism has come to mean.
Once I understood that capitalism is (thinly) veiled slavery, and that it creates a system to suppress those that add value, I have found it easier to follow what is happening over there.
We just don’t see the slavery because we are the best compensated slaves. But most of us want to become masters, don’t we. “Entrepreneurs“, right? So at some level we know that that is the system we live in. And we are at the top of the bottom rung of that ladder. But it is still the bottom rung. And it is still a ladder.
Well friend, the current political climate in America might be unprecedented, but is not unique. As someone who lived under a mix of military, monarchy, psudo-democratic and democratic governments for first 30 years of my life, I've seen this played out many times before.
> I simply do not understand American politics.
You are in good company with most Americans in that regard.
It seems like the whole "we just blame the other side for everything we want to do, and then use that as justification when we actually do it" strategy must be well orchestrated, but the voters themselves legitimately seem to believe it is actually how things work. I am darkly impressed at the skillful manipulation.
It's not comprehensible without understanding that huge amounts of people are watching straight up lies and propaganda all day every day for their 'news'.
If Trump tomorrow says communism is great, then every Fox news host, MAGA content creator, and MAGA bot would be extolling the virtues of communism. The republican house and senate would enable it, maybe with a small bribe here and there. There is no line. There is no integrity. It's just looting.
We're just going to ignore the open communists that are infiltrating the other party? You sound intellectually honest.
Troll or pure clown.
I think you missed their point entirely.
To be intellectually honest, please name a few open communists infiltrating the other party.
Imagine there had been no Nuremberg trials. The Nazis just got a slap on the wrist and almost immediately let back into politics as usual. That's how we got here. We're still fighting the remnants of the confederacy. Germany and Japan in particular purged most of those elements from their society. Here we built statues to the evil fucks.
Here's a map which attempts to estimate when slavery was abolished across various parts of the world:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/zsnr8q/year_of_abo...
The US wasn't much of an outlier.
As a general rule, anyone who tries to use slavery as a skeleton key to understand US politics is most likely an ideologue with an agenda. Sane people don't propose struggle sessions for events which happened 100+ years ago when everyone involved is long dead. You wouldn't point to a gigantic statue of Genghis Khan to explain what's wrong with modern Mongolia.
I don't think this is a slavery thing. Trump just sucks.
The poster you responded to did not mention slavery, they mentioned the confederacy, which held a variety of views, many of which still inform the politics of many Americans today. Acknowledging this reality seems reasonable.
Your replies indicate your disdain for appeals to the history of American slavery in political discussions, yet you were the one who brought it into the conversation, diverting the thread by initially straw-manning the parents view.
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Some people believe they have a right to land based on claims from millennia ago.
I suppose you could question their sanity, but the point stands - history has a short memory, and a few generations are nothing.
Especially when the after-effects of slavery, including segregation, disenfranchisement through gerrymandering and for-profit imprisonment, and other forms of continuing violence, are still live issues today.
As a general rule, someone trying to use a simple single numerical measure as a skeleton key to understand politics across nations is an ideologue with an agenda.
As for the Genghis Khan comparison, I may have made an error. We may just be dealing with severe cognitive limitations here.
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Genghis Khan died 800 years ago. The last American to have born into slavery died in the ~1970s~ 1960s.
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Sounds like you’re completely ignorant to US history post civil war. You seem to know nothing about the daughters of the confederacy. Know nothing about segregation and Jim Crow. You have no idea that conservatives fight to this day to maintain monuments to literal traitors to the country. Or that they still routinely fly the flag of traitors to the country. Or more likely you do know about all of that and agree with it and just want to white wash conservative history in the US.
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You don't seem to believe that something like generational wealth makes much of a difference?
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The United States must be one of the only nations on earth that names its own military bases after enemy commanders.
>> We're still fighting the remnants of the confederacy.
Consicely put, and not nearly present enough in contemporary discourse.
I mean that is what happened. Most of the politicians and bureaucrats in Germany post WW2 were Nazis.
Comparing MAGA to Nazis is a bit much, and I would argue that this kind of hyperbole is a better example of how we got here.
True, in the sense that right wing extremists apparently have no agency and no responsibility for their actions or beliefs.
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People who feel lost and disaffected would rather see the whole thing burn down than continue with the status quo even if it is objectively worse for them.
And its clearly been building for a while. Trump and Obama are about as opposite as possible, but they both won by campaigning on "change".
This is true in most political systems. Its how most revolutions start. The commoner is always screwed but they still support them.
I dont think america is all that exceptional. All sides just see it through their filter bubble and miss the forest for the trees.
Nobody does. The amount of teenage angst posted in this forum about the current admin is amusingly pathetic. None of it matters. Congress constantly gets a free pass while we focus on a figurehead largely enabled by a passive and embarrassing congressional electorate. “We found the scapegoat, blame that guy!”
It’s really embarrassing
> “We found the scapegoat, blame that guy!”
Yeah, that's not what an scapegoat is.
What's a scapegoat then?
This is greatly because most congressional elections are not competitive.
Corruption has been rampant under multiple administrations. I actually had hoped Trump might root out more corruption in his 2nd term, but two things happened: Congress wouldn't go afraid the corruption that was being found, and Charlie Kirk was assassinated in broad daylight...after 2-3 assassination attempts on Trump himself too.
It's easier to start looking the other way when bullets start flying.
Having said that, I'm not saying Trump was a saint, but it seems this board forgets we just had Obama and Biden running their corruption rings for 2 decades too...
If you really can’t see the difference between Trump’s corruption and any other recent president, you have a reality problem.
It's a very banana republicy thing and not uniquely American.
Well, banana republics are run by American companies from what i understand
Lol do you know how the term "Banana Republic" originated
Yes, of course. There's a whole wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
Modern usage is not about fruit companies.