To be fair, this is a mildly more complicated issue IMO, because the Darwin fish is a very direct reference and response to the Jesus fish.
Not that that justified the vandalism, of course. Just noting that there’s a shade more to that specific situation than a
Yes, there is a fundamental difference between the two sides.
The right-wingers, encouraged by those profiting from their credulity, are moving fast toward ‘NO trust in ANY expert.’
I’m looking for a clip (but not yet finding a short one) from the Arkansas Governor’s media briefing yesterday, in which an enraged man expressed scorn at the very idea of trusting what’s in “the vial” that a doctor might use to give him a vaccine. He offered to give the doctor a vial of his own—apparently seeing this as making perfect sense.
People capable of thought realize that every day they put things in their mouths that they trust are safe—food, medications, etc. For no shot they’ve ever had in their lives have they observed the making of what’s in the vial from which the syringe is prepared.
But FoxNews and the rest of the right-wing media are making the big bucks off telling these low-IQ folks that they should NOT trust that doctor, should NOT trust the experts who made their medication, should NOT trust…anyone but The Great Father (Donald or Tucker or whoever is selling this swill).
It’s genuinely appalling.
Yeah, the Clinton years are where the seeds of a lot of today’s mistrust were sown, but for myself, although I disagreed with all the Clinton bashing, and thought the GOP members pushing it were either stupid or disingenuous, I didn’t actually fear them.
Fear didn’t really start until at least the Obama Presidency, and the rise of the Tea Partiers. At that point, it was clear that this was no longer just “politics as usual”, where if one side lost, all they had to worry about was trying to win again the next time. Now we had people showing up to political rallies with guns and bulletproof vests and all that, and that has only escalated. Now I do fear them, because it’s only a matter of time before someone decides to start shooting at one of these rallies.
Conservatives have lost the War of Persuasion. They can blame it on the media and the education system and popular culture and the nefarious Liberal Agenda to destroy freedom but these same avenues of persuasion were available to them and they failed completely to even recognize it.
Their current culture war is also a lost cause in the long run. For two full generations at least. They think they can manipulate elections and command the nation’s majority to follow their lead but it is an effort doomed to failure.
Matt Yglesias, with whom I disagree more often than the reverse, whimsically suggested a couple of days ago that Republicans should outflank Dems and propose universal health care and high taxes on the rich, both issues generally popular with the working class, the class they increasingly purport to represent. I like that idea but the GOP has made that impossible to pull off, not least because they currently can’t elect candidates who know anything about policy.
This is a good example. Republicans ARE in bed with Russia, provably so, and Democrats are NOT in bed with China, also provably so. And this is the problem – one side is deluded and lying, the other isn’t.
One reason for this is that conservatism is fundamentally unpopular in comparison to liberalism. One is the party of traditionalism, restriction, rules (well, except in a pandemic, where suddenly it’s no rules and no masks), a tendency towards legalism, and no fun. The other is the one of liberation, feminism, freedom, live and let live, popular with celebrities, etc. The former can’t ever win in the long run in the persuasion battlefield.
The interesting thing is that both of this could be done without compromising the GOP’s social values in the least. It is perfectly possible for Republicans to endorse universal healthcare and high taxes without budging on inch on being anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, anti-feminism, anti-CRT, anti-PC, anti-BLM, and the social issues are the ones that really revv up their voter base.
Indeed, supporting UHC and high taxes on the wealthy wouldn’t cost them at the polls; where else would their voters turn? Towards the Woke Left? Haha.
They could easily convince their culture warrior voters of the need for these policies and maybe even win over some moderate Dems. But the sticky part then rears its head: somebody has to formulate policy and Pubbies haven’t really been electing people who can do that. I’m not even sure if they exist anywhere in the party now.
You’re right that the “qualifications” for being elected as a Republican are much more likely to be based on rejection (and ridicule) of being smart/competent/expert, than on actually being s/c/e. And that the implication of this is that those elected as Republicans would be incapable of formulating and shepherding through any new policies.
But that’s what the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation are for.
Those bodies contain a few people who could indeed formulate and provide a legislative strategy for new policies. But the policies you suggest–universal health care and higher taxes on the rich–are not possibilities. The organizations, as well as the GOP politicians they support are all dependent on the donor dollars that come from entrenched interests–specifically, in this case, the dinosaur Health Industry and the most-wealthy.
None of those decision makers are going to send money to pols who make public declarations against their interests. Not even if the public declarations are largely sham.
In other words the GOP pols could say ‘vote for me, I will tax the top 1% and work to put the current healthcare industry out of business’ but have no intentions of doing so—but that wouldn’t be enough to keep the donations from the rich, and from the healthcare industry leeches, flowing in. Those entities care about their public image. They would reject as too dangerous even lip-service declarations of reining them in.
So I think the GOP will have to continue on its current messaging of white (and male) supremacy, combined with promises that every voter may remain a little toddler, doing exactly as he pleases, with no Big Bad Experts telling him he should do something different.
That message sells with the voters and–more importantly–does not annoy the big-money boys.
I hate to indulge the reflexively cynical part of my brain, but why are you so confident in this claim? I haven’t seen or heard anything that gives me hope that the opposite is true, and I’d really like some to carry around.
There was a Simpsons episode where their house caught fire. Afterward, the insurance adjuster asked, “OK, Mr. Simpson, were there any objects of value lost in the fire?”
Homer replied, “Oh, yeah, there was the Picasso, the vintage automobile, the rare stamp collection–”
The adjuster interupted, “Mr. Simpson, this policy only covers actual losses, not things you make up”.
Homer reacted indignantly, “Well, that’s just great”.
Homer was lying. The adjuster knew he was lying. Homer knew that the adjuster knew he was lying. But he still expected his lie to be treated as the truth.
Back when Sarah Palin was still being considered as a GOP presidential candidate, someone on this board started a thread asking whether she would have to deal with the baggage of her decision to step down after serving only half her term as Alaska governor.
A right-wing poster (who has since been banned) replied that it was no big deal–after all, he claimed, “Obama had that birth certificate baggage”.
That is the essential difference. The right believes their lies are equivalent to facts. And will fight you over it.
Which claim, about losing the culture war or not being able to command the culture via political power? Both appear pretty self-evident to me.
It’s been asked in here before what, if anything, liberals can do if rwnjs regain control of government but I’m not sure we have to do much of anything. The larger problem is theirs. Dragging a recalcitrant majority opposition along by force is exhausting, demoralizing and ultimately defeating. The resistance happens in millions of small ways a million times every day.
Republicans won’t be able to thump their way through the bulk of the country which wants something different than what Republicans want.
Trump conservatives are just a few decades away from largely disappearing. Someone recently wrote about big cultural changes that they happen first gradually, then suddenly.
Sorry, didn’t mean to run on.
Except for the ones who believe the lies are facts. They’re the scarier ones.
Again, I don’t want to say cite because I’m not trying to argue. I’m just really interested in the reasoning that led you to the idea that the Republicans are losing the culture war or can’t drag along their voters as they intend.
Look at the youngest two generations in the current electorate, Rhombus. They will be the ones driving the nation’s culture for decades to come and the odds that they “turn” conservative as they age are virtually nil. I don’t think the generations behind them will be swayed by conservative anti-science either but I guess anything is possible.
Republicans are gearing up to capture control of government with a minority of the national vote. And then keep it through undemocratic processes. I’m worried shitless about this but at the same time I don’t think it’s a tenable position for them. There won’t be enough authoritarian assholes to keep power for long but I confess that this is a feeling and far from fact.
Take a look at North Korea. This is the model that the Trumpistas are going to follow. There are plenty, PLENTY of authoritarian assholes willing to be in the inner circle and gain access to money, property, yachts, and other perks, while the rest of us eat a rat on a stick.
Newt Gingrich would like a word.
Yes exactly this. Something that I have commented on multiple times before, is that all rhetoric about healing the divide in the country and understanding the other side, comes purely from the left. The right side appears to have absolutely no interest in this. To extend the checkpoint analogy, you have one side that is trying to figure out how we can both get past the checkpoint without bloodshed, while the other side is trying to determine how to kill the enemy before he gets too close.
And extremely unfortunately for us all, there are Democrats in power who are stubbornly insisting on “Bipartisanship” as not only essential, but actually possible.
A fairly realistic view: