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Open thread! It’s Super Tuesday here in the US. Discuss today’s primaries, the evil that is Trump, politics in general.
I’ll agree that Trump is authoritarian. Bluntly, openly, loudly authoritarian, to the point where I think a lot of his “supporters” think he’s joking when he really isn’t.
I can’t get my head around why so many libertarians like him, other than they aren’t libertarians so much as “edgy rebel assholes” who would gladly crash the whole country into a telephone pole if it meant a “pussy liberal” might be offended. Priorities!
Anyway, congratulations, GOP. You’ve successfully allowed a situation such that I will cast a vote for Hillary Clinton in the generals if need be. I didn’t think it could be done.
Our newspapers that are less Murdoch controlled are publishing articles to the tune of ‘a Trump win will destroy Australia’.
Hmm, time to go see what the ass, I mean, arch, conservatives are saying about him here. I’m a Guardian, not an Australian reader.
+1 on the Vox article. Strong and disturbing theory.
I’m American in the UK. Worrying from a distance tonight.
Speaking of disturbing – these photoshopped images of Trump as president…
http://m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/9354014
@lightcastle: Good article. It’s interesting they didn’t mention Robert Altemeyer at all, as his work on The Authoritarians was relatively popular during the Bush “You’re either with us, or with the terrorists” phase and the rise of conservative media.
His book is here, and it’s absolutely recommended reading:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
(And yes, I agree completely that the structural issues behind Trump aren’t going away any time soon. The GOP attack is that Drumpf is “too liberal”. I predict a few more election cycles of hard Alt-right candidates and wins.)
@leftwingfox #MakeDrumpfGreatAgain
XD
@ThatBear: I’ve noticed a disturbing trend towards authoritarianism in self-proclaimed “libertarian” circles. A few people I’ve talked to have suggested that a dictator that refuses to trample on economic liberties (i.e. Pinochet) is superior to a democratic government which engages in “economic coercion” (i.e. taxes and public utilities).
I think that comes from the Ayn Rand Objectivist school primarily. Her philosophy and books promote the idea of Great Men acting selfishly for the betterment of the petulant mooching masses.
Voted today in my Super Tuesday state. Aside from the presidential stuff, I voted for a sheriff candidate who wants to de-escalate the whole armed confrontation approach, spend more time on violent crimes and property crimes (less time on low-level possession charges), and slow down if not stop the whole “school to prison” pipeline.
Just a reminder that we’re voting for more than presidential candidates today.
Ok, the Australian describes Trump as non-conservative and is generally neutral with a passing reference to how he hates women and Mexicans, because that’s a pretty neutral position for that paper. The Australian is a highly right wing newspaper, so they are more concerned with getting titles right than giving a fuck about women or brown people.
The Herald Sun says about the same (identical wording!) but has omitted the comments about women and Mexicans. It’s a ‘working class’ conservative newspaper and doesn’t have a dog in the race aside from explaining a current big news event.
The Age is our centerist paper and is ‘what the fuck, KKK?! What?!’
@leftwingfox I despise those guys. They want to enjoy the feeling of nobility without the essence of it – sacrifice of the self.
I’m not sure I agree with the Vox article’s deeper analysis; unless the pattern of correlation is consistent across ethnic groups and nations I’d be inclined to say that it demonstrates that people who feel socially or morally threatened trend towards authoritarian responses and if civil rights were trending in the other direction we might well see Democratic authoritarians; it’s not like civil rights movements don’t have radical fringes. They’re not dominant, but on the other hand people are broadly optimistic on trends and expect things to get better rather than worse.
Granted, left-wing moral issues and physical security issues tend to be intertwined, so it’s plausible that they won’t become dominant absent people being afraid of physical threats.
I’m still convinced there’s no chance Trump would win in the general. Too many people see him as a joke candidate.
Here’s yet another explanation for why Trump is leading, and why the future might hold more Trumps unless something fundamental changes. The basic idea is that Trump is the inevitable outcome of a process that the GOP has gone through with discrediting fact-checking and rewarding bombastic rhetoric, as if the party had worked to create a weakened immune system that Trump could take advantage of.
http://weeklysift.com/2016/02/29/trump-is-an-opportunistic-infection/
And I’d have to echo that Hillary being nominated would play into one of the most targeted hate campaigns we’ve ever seen. It’s been literally decades in the making, to the point where even liberals have been convinced by it and continue to parrot its talking points.
At least she’s used to it by now. 😐
On the bright side, maybe the GOP elites will be so repulsed by Trump that they set up an independent candidate and split the vote. It’s really a question of which is bigger; their Hillary hate or their Trump hate. Not exactly encouraging.
Man.. if Trump wins the general election, I’m seriously considering moving out of the country. I don’t even know if I’m being hyperbolic or not.
@leftwingfox Thanks for the Robert Altemeyer link. 🙂 Nice to see good stuff coming from my (former) home province.
Bernie Sanders is a self-described socialist and I really don’t think the Republicans will find it hard to run a smear campaign on him.
I’m somewhat worried about Trump winning, though he’s strongly predicted to lose for demographic reasons. This is the sort of climate where his brand of rhetoric wins elections or powers revolutions; there’s a lot of people who think the current system is broken and want it replaced, and Trump is offering a replacement. So is Sanders, it’s just a different replacement and appeals to different people. Or sometimes the same people.
They’ve got different platforms, but the same kind of platform: the party is beholden to wealthy special interests and won’t [defend against terrorists and keep foreigners from taking your jobs | provide universal healthcare and boost the minimum wage] but [Trump | Sanders] doesn’t depend on their support and is his own man, so he’ll change things. And that is the answer to why some people support Trump but are interested in Sanders or support Sanders but are interested in Trump; might well be some sexism in there on the left but that doesn’t explain the people whose Fox News-watching relatives are curious about Sanders.
Back in July of last year, I entered a betting pool on how long Trump’s little roadshow would last. At the time, I said that Trump would stay strong for a long time because there’s no impetus for any real adult behaviour from Republicans: Machiavelli himself could not win this election, so candidates who appeal to the instinct for denial will do better than candidates who make the party face uncomfortable truths.
My bet was that Trump would win the nomination and last until late October, at which point reality would catch up and his campaign would collapse.
I don’t stand by everything I said last July, but I stand by that.
Trump is ugly, but he is a creator of ugly fictions like Frank Miller rather than a creator of ugly realities like Vladimir Putin. He has no chance of getting into power, only of creating vivid fantasy worlds in the minds of his followers which makes them forget that they don’t live in those worlds.
The upside to the decades long anti-Clinton rage on the right is that it means there are no skeletons left in Hillary Clinton’s closet. There’s nothing about her we haven’t heard before. All of the talking points are pretty stale.
Trump on the other hand, is less vetted. Sure, he’s been famous for decades, but there’s no scrutiny like running for president. A Trump candidacy is target rich and I don’t think either Clinton or Sanders will be afraid to go after him.
Yeah, I don’t think the anti-Clinton rage is going to move her polling numbers any further than it already has. Possibly in the other direction if a Republican says something too revealing in the vicinity of a live mike, but I think they’ve really run all their possible talking points into the ground.
I’m so nervous about the results of Super Tuesday that I’ve made myself completely nauseous. It’s going to be a long day for me. >_<
leftwingfox:
I was wondering about that. I found The Authoritarians pretty compelling, but perhaps his work is less well regarded in academic circles?
Isn’t the situation to the point now where any campaign against Sanders or Hillary by Trump could be identical? Quite literally?
You could accuse Sanders of betraying his roots as a woman. You could accuse Hillary of betraying her roots as a democratic socialist. The counter of ‘but you are saying something random and not connected’ would be pointless against Trump, because his entire campaign is based on ‘be funny, be disruptive, and yell louder’.
@thatbear
Close but not quite. The are right-libertarians, which is to say high-SDO personalities who’ve lived their lives high on the privilege curve. They support fascists because they are fascists. Right-liberarianism is all about the haves having absolute authority by divine right over the have-nots, and its proponents always see themselves on the have side of things. Their rhetoric is all about how the almighty business owners should be able to treat lowly employees, and uninvolved neighbors, however they want and nobody saying different. Many of them openly advocate debt-slavery. They are, frankly, vile people.
@leftwingfox
Nope, it’s a common thread throughout. Look at how they lionize the work of Hayek and his proteges in helping Pinochet destroy Chile.
As one of your northern neighbors, there’s part of me that kind of wants to see Trump win the nomination, but only in order to spectacularly fail.
More pragmatically, I hope the entire GOP implodes and Bernie runs unopposed.
The only good thing I can say about Trump is that at least he’s screwed over Ted Cruz’s chances.
Otherwise he’s a failed orange cry baby, a think skinned short fingered lying bucket of human waste, a chickenshit coward who likes to talk tough. He’s a fascist who’s too much of a wimp to call himself a fascist, he can’t make a business without having to File for bankruptcy.
But somehow this IDIOT is convincing people that he is legitimate because he’s willing to tell bigots and idiots what they want to hear. The republican base has gone so goddamn far to the right I’m surprised they actually want a president at all, they hate the government so much.
#TRUMP2016
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