Should conservatives take their own advice, or is it just the n***** loving baby killers who need to mind their place?
Wow, this is your attempt to understand?
Are you filled with hate?
Sorry,I am going to have to leave now, the original The Thing is on Svengoolie.
Hatred of Muslims and fear that they will subjugate us all under Sharia Law is a common bigoted fear of conservatives. When they are the ones who typically want to turn this country into a theocracy, just a Christian one instead.
I think that is the key here, they believe Muslims are the competition when it comes to telling other people how to live their lives. When the reality is that Muslims in the US tend to be pretty moderate and don’t want to force their views on others - unlike Christians.
My conservative friends don’t come out and say that all Muslims are terrorists and wouldnt say otherwise if pressed. However they do trot out the meme that Muslims will be a majority in Europe in the foreseeable future and don’t want that to happen here.
The thing is, is that Democrats are looking out for everyone. That includes the white middle and working class. What is driving them away is that they want someone who looks out for them especially, which is something that they can find in the Republican party.
Right they are making the politics about their identity as white middle and working class. And they will support the party that promises to elevate them above the others. (Except for the upper class, they will always be catered to first.)
When the Republicans stop voting them into office, sure.
Maybe historically, but it’s become clear that neoliberalism has taken over the party and they are much more concerned with the top 1% than the working class. They bow to the whims of capitalists just as much, if not more so, as Republicans.
Yep, people think “identity politics” is just on the left, but they cling to their white cishet identity just as much, that’s why anybody different is a threat to them.
My Trumpist relations definitely believe that Muslims are evil and trying to take over and destroy America; it’s a narrative often intertwined with “The Left hates Christianity” (see also: the War on Christmas) and “The Left promote Islam over Christianity”. These messages are often circulated with a picture of Ilhan Omar, offered up as “proof” of the Left’s nefarious scheme to help evil Muslims undermine America from within.
It’s all nonsense, of course, but it’s a persistent and pervasive view in right-wing circles, so I’d be surprised that anyone with any interaction with those circles hadn’t encountered it at some point.
Did I miss the explanation for this? How is it black supremacist at all?
I’ve always found the criticism of Rep. Omar to be particularly hilarious. She is one of the more progressive, most pro-LGBTQ, most women’s rights supporting politicians in Congress and yet she is the one who will subjugate us all under Sharia Law (which doesn’t apply to non-Muslims anyway)? 
I just posted this elsewhere, but it fits here too. Check out this post from my friend(made on Parler, of course)
Full mental breakdown.
True, and that is how trump won. He was a populist in a world where politicians had become different flavors of elitist.
Even ignoring the AGI issue, Sam’s own statement confirms this:
Nope. In 2017, billionaires in America paid 23% of their income in federal, state, and local taxes. The top 1% paid 26.8% of their income in tax - by far the highest tax rate of any group. In comparison, the upper middle class - the top 25% to 10% of taxpayers - paid only 11.5% effective taxes.
The 1% is largely not billionaires. It’s largely people making several hundred grand a year. Those people are driving up the average by paying substantially more than 26.8% taxes to make up for the 23% that the billionaires are paying. In fact, according to the same cite, 5%ers are also paying more at 23.7%.
So while the tax system may be progressive below that 1% range, it’s regressive above that. And that is, as you mention, going only by AGI–it’s probably worse than that in practice.
I think part of Sam’s post got by me the first time. Thanks for bringing it back up, @Dr.Strangelove
Sam’s comment talks about the total of Federal, State, and Local Taxes paid by billionaires, but only points to the Federal Income Taxes paid by the top 1% – a wildly unfair comparison.
Which also says:
In 2018, billionaires paid a smaller portion of their income in taxes than average Americans. That’s the first time that has happened in history.
And as you and I agree, that’s still based on Adjusted Gross Income.
And we’re back to square one of my basic premise.
Also from the Business Insider article:
Between 1950 and 1980, billionaires paid more than 50% of their income in taxes each year
So the putative “total” tax burden of America’s billionaires has been cut in half in the last two generations.
How much are we paying to support our Royals ?
I think so. And it may very well be wildly worse.
Are you talking about the Democrats or the Republicans? The Bernie wing of the party seems to actually believe something like this, but I don’t see any evidence that this is actually the case. If the Democrats really did favor the 1% over the working class, we wouldn’t be in a situation where there are only a few good billionaires (Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Tom Steyer, and a few others) who support Democrats while most of the wealthy are Republicans.
Apologies. I lost track of which thread this was appearing in … after having said that I’d drop this subject on this thread.
For any interested in pursuing this topic further … may I humbly suggest …
Trump won be using the ignorance, hatred, and frustrations of working class and middle class Americans to undermine the various institutions that keep America running and then presenting himself as the savior of the people.
Yeah, the whole “elitist” meme is propagandist garbage. The right has been using reactionary memes to trick people into supporting policies that result in a transfer of wealth to the super-rich. The left has been trying to use evidence and reason to try to get people to support rational policies. The accusation of “elitism” is a non sequitur used by the right to blind people to this reality.
To say “Washington is elitist” is part of the firehose of bullshit to trick people into thinking that they need to support an “anti-elitist” while ignoring all the while what policies those so-called anti-elitists are actually implementing.
When did he undermine all these institutions? You think their side is ignorant, hateful and frustrated but your side isn’t? That doesn’t really seem in keeping with the spirit of the OP. You are basically dismissing the other side’s view as invalid ab initio. It doesn’t really display a desire to try to understand the other side.
Who is spreading this propogandist garbage?
So the other side is stupid and being tricked and your side is using logic and reason to reach rational results? Some folks that voted for trump feel the same way. Some of them think the folks on the left aren’t bad people, they are simply being tricked…conned into supporting these stupid ideas.
Two side of the same coin in many ways.
All the usual people spreading right-wing propogandist garbage - every right wing news source, radio commentator, and most of their politicians. It’s slipped in amongst all the rest of the propogandist garbage that has turned modern conservatives into drooling morons and frothing rage beasts.
And that’s actually the unbiased way to look at the situation. People are shaped by what they believe, and what people believe is shaped by what they are exposed to and what is repeated to them. This is an evident fact about humans demonstrated in many forums, and is the root of everything from religion to cults to incels to political movements.
Conservatives believe stupid, obviously false things because they were trained to believe these things, by people who know exactly what they are doing. Its an indoctrination process. And you don’t have to be stupid to be indoctrinated - though it can be a consequence of indoctrination, as you are trained away from various forms of rational thought which would cause you to reject the indoctrination.
It’s worth noting that liberals can be indoctrinated too - there are a lot of liberals who are still against nuclear power due to the training of our youth, and you have your rabid PETA types and those psychotic murderous vegans. But the place where liberals get lucky is that the liberal and Democrat leaders don’t need to warp us into believing a complete alternate reality - the Republicans got their first. All the democrats have to do to get us to dislike Republicans is sit back and watch, as we recoil away from “the other side”.