politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Does the GOP still count as a political party? What is their platform, anyways? I don't think "install a dictator and oppress minorities" counts as a platform. Point is, maybe we should look at getting a second political party first. One that can actually represent conservatives.
The Republican Party is representing conservatives better than it ever has. Installing a dictator and oppressing minorities is what conservatives genuinely want, and always have wanted.
If you see what set off someone like James M. Buchanan, as well as people like Falwell: it was about maintaining segregation. This is what motivates so very many of them. Their claims of "conservative values" are so much noise.
Yep, and the thing the founders of conservative ideology -- Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre, etc. -- had in common was that they were defending monarchy. Conservatism is an unbroken line directly from Royalists, to Confederates, to Nazis, to the alt-right of today.
To the extent that the Republican Party of a few decades ago was not Royalist or Confederate or Nazi, it was only because the conservative influence was tempered by having to form a coalition with other factions and constrained by having to work within a liberal democratic system. But now those other factions have essentially been ejected from the party and it is working with 100% laser focus on breaking the liberal democratic system, so here we are. And the conservatives are loving it.
Let me tell you about the cult I belonged to once that explicitly preached the US was made by their god, but also wanted to install the head of their cult as king of the US (because the united states didn't fight two wars to get rid of those) and eventually world.
If by conservatives you mean Americans who describe themselves as conservatives.... that's a ridiculous claim. I don't think I've ever met a Republican who openly wanted a dictator. I'm sure they exist, but it's not the majority view within Republican voters.
If you mean something else, please define what you mean by conservative.
The key weasel-word there is "openly." Even in your rebuttal, you tacitly admit I'm right.
In supporting trump, they support someone who would gladly take that role if he could. I agree.
But the contradiction is deep within themselves not just held for outsiders to see. They aren't lying when they say they support democracy and say they support trump at the same time. They're contradicting themselves, but they aren't lying. I don't know why that happens, but I guess they have been deceived.
But it's important to have that distinction, otherwise we dehumanize millions of people, and destroy hope of showing them the truth.
Is the key word, almost none of them will admit it, often even to themselves. They're so deep in brainwashing and doublethink that most of them are convinced they're standing for democracy and freedom even though their actual beliefs and policies clearly show that what they actually want and are actively working towards is an oppressive authoritarian dictatorship.
Absolutely! But to accuse them wanting a dictatorship will only drive them further into the deception, because they aren't lying when they say they don't want it, despite them supporting a path towards it.
Accusing a person of lying when they are not willing always get a strong reaction against you because they believe they are morally right and you are lying to them.
You've touched on a major issue which is that many Republicans do NOT think that they are openly supporting a dictator, they don't realize the danger.
I'm guessing they're caught off guard by the fact that these acts (which resemble an attempt to establish a dictatorship) ARE being done fully in the open.
How else can you succinctly describe the brazen, persistent, and unprecedented attempts to overthrow the results of a democratic election? What about their published plan to fire employees of the federal government (who are not political appointees) and replace them with loyal sycophants?
It seems like a move towards some kind of dictatorship to me. If you're working to hold on to power despite the votes of millions of people we have a word for that: dictator.
I can only hope that this turns out to be some kind of clever plot by the Republican party and they don't actually still support Trump. Maybe the people who still say they support Trump despite his naked attempts to become a dictator are just trying to "own the libs" some more and don't actually want him as dictator? Maybe the party leadership knows that Trump is done and they just need him to throw his support behind someone else before he gets thrown in jail and they too recognize the danger?
I can agree that Trump and those like him are moving towards that kind of power structure.
And yes that means that those who support trump and deny that want a dictatorship and at some level contradicting themselves.
But that is a different thing tham actually wanting a dictatorship.
Misrepresenting people will get us no where. It will dehumanize those we disagree with and will create enemies from those who could be allies.
At a certain point, it becomes hard to separate the fascists from the moderates, and it ceases to become a misrepresentation to call Republicans fascists.
It's the same as with the police... a few bad apples spoil the bunch. If these organizations don't start strongly denouncing the bad apples, then it's perfectly valid to regard the entire group as spoiled.
Let's see more moderate Republicans denounce Trump, and louder. Let's see some moderate Republicans willing to compromise with Democrats to get legislation passed instead of being held hostage by the extremists in their own party. Let's see more people like Romney and Liz Cheney calling it like it is.
When that starts happening on a larger scale, then maybe it will be a misrepresentation to refer to Republicans as fascists or supporting a dictator.
I think it's a good idea to separate the politicians and party leaders from the rank-and-file members.
The organization knows what it is they are doing. But the members.... I think of lot of them are just completely deceived in various ways about various things.
So when someone says "republicans want a dictatorship" it can be true in one sense, and nonsense in another.
They have no platform, they didn't even bother to make one during the last party convention
They had that one banner that said something like "we are domestic terrorists." I think that's basically their platform.
The funny thing is that they did. They copied their 2016 platform - including language that denounced the current administration. (At the time it was originally drafted, Obama, but on reuse it targeted Trump.) They can't even copy paste properly.