I cannot agree on any premise that says that the democrats are “authoritarian” on gun control when they are in fact to the Right of almost every other developed country on this planet.
Youre referring, of course, to Joe Manchin and his ilk here?
No I meant the squad and Bernie.
Got it, you must be a bit confused about what’s beeen happening over the last year, carry on.
It’s not the people doing the obstructing, it’s the people we want to be doing the obstructing that are the problem
At first I thought these people were just idiots, but now I think that there’s an intentional attempt to conflate fascism with “the left” so people won’t see a right-wing autocracy when it’s right in front of them.
Projection, in the psychological sense, has been the modus operendi of the right for decades now.
Projection? I thought their M.O. was simply to lie their asses off.
What, you can’t have two M.O.s?
Well, yeah, but that requires a level of intelligence a certain political group doesn’t seem to have.
Also, I posted early in this thread that I no longer care how the party of treason sees anything. They just simply need to go away, peferably via prison for their leadership.
IMHO there’s at least two separate things to unwind here regarding “Republicans.” There’s the traditional democracy vs. authoritarianism axis, with authoritarians gravitating to the Republicans before 3/11/2020 (the official start of the COVID-19 pandemic). With just that axis to consider, the Republicans as authoritarians are a strong but ultimately losing coalition, the vagaries of the electoral college not withstanding. IMHO what happened is that there is another group, call them libertarians, anarchists, freedom lovers, or whatever else, which strongly gravitated Republican after the pandemic started. They aren’t traditional authoritarians that support someone like Hitler, Putin, or Trump. Before that, it was Democrats who were in favor of various freedoms, and they voted accordingly. Freedom to be gay, to be an atheist, to use marijuana, to have an abortion, etc. After COVID-19, however, that group began to see Democrats as being against freedom (to not wear a mask, to not social distance, to not get a vaccine, etc.). They thus gravitated strongly Republican, explaining the 2020 vs. 2018 results, and the ongoing problems Democrats are likely to have in the mid-terms. As a Democrat, I, and presumably many of you on this board, tend to see such things in terms of social responsibility rather than restrictions of freedom. Obviously there are many who don’t view things primarily in that way.
Mmm, I think this kind of Republican existed pre-pandemic in the “freedom from taxes” “anti-socialist” etc. identity.
This is interesting speculation. I can’t disprove it, but I find it hard to find the numbers of “libertarians, anarchists, freedom lovers, or whatever else” existing but voting Democratic, or at least not voting Republican, earlier. Their present concentration in areas that were already hard-right Republican strongholds is also an argument against. A third point is what Kimstu posted, and I would have extended that to freedom from governments telling them what they can teach in schools, or ban from libraries, or keep Muslims from building mosques, or serving gays, or any or a hundred other “can’t tell me how to live” grotesqueries. The shift became hugely pronounced after 9/11 as well.
This one.
https://ponderingprinciples.com/2017/08/16/the-alt-right-isnt-right/
The author presents this chart as his own view of the political spectrum. The article argues that Alt-Right is politically left.
~Max
I’m probably giving this blog more thought than it deserves, but anyone who actually believed it would think that Trump, who is pretty nakedly an authoritarian nationalist would be worse than a Democrat.
I think Barr’s support is either shown more by corruption than ideology, or it’s a sign that he’s just an authoritarian and hasn’t warped his views into whatever that “ideological spectrum” is.