I don't think anyone with the ability to think would argue that the modern GOP is anything other than an embarassing dumpster fire.
If you don't think that is the case, then this thread is not for you.
But the recent spat in the Biden thread kind of surprised me. As someone who used to support GOP candidates, I didn't even think it controversial to note that the foundations for the current disaster that has become modern conservatism was laid a long, long time ago. Trump is not some aberration out of an otherwise perfectly normal party. I mean...the second place guy was Ted Fucking Cruz, after all.
So if we can all agree that the end result is something outrageously shitty....where did it start?
I think if you go back far enough you can find a time where we can reasonably say was before...say...Eisenhower? I don't think anyone would argue that what the GOP has become today had anything to do with the GOP of the Eisenhower administration, as an example.
So where did it start?
I've always laid the groundwork for the rise of the Tea Party movement, the demonization of the Democrats, and that entire cesspool of right wing media around the Reagan years. That, to me, was when you first saw the ideological start of the idea that
1. Government is intrinsically evil and corrupt.
2. The left is godless, and hence invalid
3. Corporatism is itself good and moral
4. There is a culture war happening, not just a conflict
I think the eighties were the start of the entire corporate movement. Greed is good. Government just gets in the way - and not just passively so, but is actively evil and immoral. Cowboy individualism. Randian libertarianism on the rise. Any ideology that is not right wing conservative is by default communism. Trickle down economics as a matter of faith more than any kind of thought out policy. The beginnings of the rejection of science in favor of creationism, and the demand that this be taught in schools. Really the intensification of the culture tension into outright culture wars. The moral majority. Not much later we see Newt Gingrich and politicians making solemn vows to never, ever, ever raise taxes ever no matter what.
Full disclosure - I supported McCain. And he was WELL after this all started. I did not recognize it then - I thought his obviously pretend pro-life stance was just a political ploy. I thought Sarah Palin was a terrible mistake, but not really indicative of anything other then a terrible mistake. Now I look back and it's pretty obvious Palin was McCain trying to appeal to the whackadoodle fucking crazies that were starting to become a driving force on the right. I certainly did not, at that time, have any idea just how bad it would get. But I would not pretend now like looking back on it it was pretty damn clear that those things were not disconnected to where we are now - not at all.
So....what do other people think? How far back do you have to go before you can safely recognize that the rot that became todays GOP was not yet started?
I think it started with Reagan as well. It was a gradual progression, though, so just because it started then doesn't mean that it was obvious at the time what was going on. It wasn't until the Obama years when GOP declared total war on Democrats and governance.
Incidentally, I think the root of all rot is race. Reagan mobilized the right with the right code words, and made up stories about welfare queens, and Obama mobilized the right further by being black. There is still a lot of unresolved racial tension in the country (not made easier by the fact that honest discussion of it is highly discouraged), so there is plenty of fuel to tap into by a sociopathic enough politician.
I am obviously an outsider so there are a lot of things that I don't understand.
I support the free market, low taxes, small government and all that, so I easily identify with the US Republican Party.
But still, to me, the US Republican Party is, for lack of a better word, crazy. They supported an obviously unfit and incompetent man like Trump. They refused to take reasonable action against gun violence and COVID19. They refuse to accept the 2020 election results. They refuse to accept basic scientific facts like global warming.
I mean this goes well beyond policy differences. You can disagree all you like about what to do about gun violence, COVID 19 and global warming. But you just can't deny some very fundamental scientific facts. They have failed their most fundamental responsibilities as politicians to take care of the country on behalf of the public.
Quote from: DGuller on July 01, 2021, 09:06:34 PM
I think it started with Reagan as well. It was a gradual progression, though, so just because it started then doesn't mean that it was obvious at the time what was going on. It wasn't until the Obama years when GOP declared total war on Democrats and governance.
Incidentally, I think the root of all rot is race. Reagan mobilized the right with the right code words, and made up stories about welfare queens, and Obama mobilized the right further by being black. There is still a lot of unresolved racial tension in the country (not made easier by the fact that honest discussion of it is highly discouraged), so there is plenty of fuel to tap into by a sociopathic enough politician.
I agree - like I said, if you resurrected Reagan, I think he would be fucking appalled at what his party has become.
That doesn't mean you can't trace the history of the GOP back to Reagan, and see how one thing led to another led to another led to another...
Quote from: Berkut on July 01, 2021, 10:02:53 PM
That doesn't mean you can't trace the history of the GOP back to Reagan, and see how one thing led to another led to another led to another...
I disagree. Goldwater's Southern Strategy (embraced by Nixon in 1968) is the beginning of the corruption, where the Republican party knowingly embraced white nationalism and abandoned the self-evident truth the country was founded on* that all men** are created equal. Once you start doing the politically expedient thing to win rather than the right thing, all else is just details.
*Subject to terms and conditions, of course.
**I recognize the irony.
Much more here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/26/what-we-get-wrong-about-southern-strategy/
It still irks me how pivotal those fucking butterfly ballots in Florida were to the fate of the country. Truly a butterfly flapping its wings moment in history if there ever was one.
Quote from: DGuller on July 01, 2021, 10:20:21 PM
It still irks me how pivotal those fucking butterfly ballots in Florida were to the fate of the country. Truly a butterfly flapping its wings moment in history if there ever was one.
...the Comey letter was another butterfly...
Quote from: ulmont on July 01, 2021, 10:21:30 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 01, 2021, 10:20:21 PM
It still irks me how pivotal those fucking butterfly ballots in Florida were to the fate of the country. Truly a butterfly flapping its wings moment in history if there ever was one.
...the Comey letter was another butterfly...
Or is that idiot who forgot the "not" in his e-mail to Podesta.
Quote from: DGuller on July 01, 2021, 10:20:21 PM
It still irks me how pivotal those fucking butterfly ballots in Florida were to the fate of the country. Truly a butterfly flapping its wings moment in history if there ever was one.
I thought the death of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo was a bigger moment.
The Great War was inevitable.
Quote from: Monoriu on July 01, 2021, 10:29:01 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 01, 2021, 10:20:21 PM
It still irks me how pivotal those fucking butterfly ballots in Florida were to the fate of the country. Truly a butterfly flapping its wings moment in history if there ever was one.
I thought the death of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo was a bigger moment.
To the fate of the US?
Quote from: Berkut on July 01, 2021, 08:11:46 PM
I don't think anyone with the ability to think would argue that the modern GOP is anything other than an embarassing dumpster fire.
If you don't think that is the case, then this thread is not for you.
But the recent spat in the Biden thread kind of surprised me. As someone who used to support GOP candidates, I didn't even think it controversial to note that the foundations for the current disaster that has become modern conservatism was laid a long, long time ago. Trump is not some aberration out of an otherwise perfectly normal party. I mean...the second place guy was Ted Fucking Cruz, after all.
So if we can all agree that the end result is something outrageously shitty....where did it start?
I think if you go back far enough you can find a time where we can reasonably say was before...say...Eisenhower? I don't think anyone would argue that what the GOP has become today had anything to do with the GOP of the Eisenhower administration, as an example.
So where did it start?
Clearly it's all Lincoln's fault.
Quote from: Jacob on July 01, 2021, 10:49:34 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on July 01, 2021, 10:29:01 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 01, 2021, 10:20:21 PM
It still irks me how pivotal those fucking butterfly ballots in Florida were to the fate of the country. Truly a butterfly flapping its wings moment in history if there ever was one.
I thought the death of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo was a bigger moment.
To the fate of the US?
The Great War is a pretty big event for the US.
Quote from: Barrister on July 01, 2021, 11:06:26 PM
Clearly it's all Lincoln's fault.
Stop letting the Whig Party off the hook.
The rot starts with Henry Clay.
Quote from: Monoriu on July 01, 2021, 09:51:00 PM
I support the free market, low taxes, small government and all that, so I easily identify with the US Republican Party.
I support most of those things as well. The only one they still seem to like is low taxes, but unsustainable reckless low taxes.
It is the cultural stuff and religious nuttery that makes them toxic, and it is the thing conservatives from other countries get most confused by I think.
The late 90s was when I became disillusioned, and I jumped all the way off the bus at the Bush tax cut in 2001. Now, granted, nothing inherently wrong with cutting taxes but we had just balanced the budget after decades of struggling and they blew it up...then started spending like crazy people. And then reckless actions internationally. It was almost like Dubya and his people couldn't destroy the United States domestically and internationally fast enough. And sad to say it has just gone downhill from there.
People who I theoretically should roughly agree with since I still like lots of conservative ideas I can barely talk to because their grasp on reality is so tenuous. It is hard to find any issue where we agree on even the basic facts, much less solutions.
Quote from: Barrister on July 01, 2021, 11:06:26 PM
Clearly it's all Lincoln's fault.
Nah. Things went fine until the dastardly villain Rutherford B Hayes came along.
Quote from: Barrister on July 01, 2021, 11:06:26 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 01, 2021, 08:11:46 PM
I don't think anyone with the ability to think would argue that the modern GOP is anything other than an embarassing dumpster fire.
If you don't think that is the case, then this thread is not for you.
But the recent spat in the Biden thread kind of surprised me. As someone who used to support GOP candidates, I didn't even think it controversial to note that the foundations for the current disaster that has become modern conservatism was laid a long, long time ago. Trump is not some aberration out of an otherwise perfectly normal party. I mean...the second place guy was Ted Fucking Cruz, after all.
So if we can all agree that the end result is something outrageously shitty....where did it start?
I think if you go back far enough you can find a time where we can reasonably say was before...say...Eisenhower? I don't think anyone would argue that what the GOP has become today had anything to do with the GOP of the Eisenhower administration, as an example.
So where did it start?
Clearly it's all Lincoln's fault.
Well that's a useful take.
I think there are two ways of looking at it - when did it start and when did it sort of start to become inevitable.
For when it started I'd say the key period is 1976-80.
I think in that period you have Roe v Wade and the disappointment from the perspective of Christian conservatives in the Baptist in the White House. I think that allows for religious politics to align in a way behind the Southern Strategy of Nixon; I think without Roe v Wade I don't know if the Souther Strategy works. I think Roe v Wade interacts really importantly with racial politics in developing the modern Republican party.
There is also the twin failure of liberal foreign policy in Iran. America is humiliated through the embassy hostages but also America has undermined its allies and exposed itself to humiliation and weakness through sort of nebulous liberal values like "human rights". I think that leads directly to the GOP foreign policy views which is often national assertiveness which, because America has an ideological foundation, is explained in ideological terms: freedom, democracy etc. But at the same time I fairly ruthless willingness to not let those values actually have substantive impact on foreign policy so we get sophistry around totalitarian v authoritarian, the Contras, the entire Reagan administration policy to Latin America, friendship with Mubarak and other strong men etc which goes on. I think Trump is the end destination of that because he calls on the bullshit and said his idea is American assertiveness, America first and that isn't based on the foundational values but on power and explicit trade-offs.
You also have staglfation (which Carter starts to address) the lingering effects of the oil shock, government debt is a problem, interest rates soar etc. And Regan's team which eventually wins has a story - they can tell you how we got here and how to fix it. It is dismissed by Bush as "voodoo economics" but, to this day, it forms a core part of Republican ideology.
Republicans divide in 1980 - he's forgotten now but John Anderson runs as the sort of Evan MacMillan of his days, there are big rows between Bush and Reagan. Reagan is an insurgent in 1976 and by 1980 there is still an establishment v an insurgent narrative but the insurgent is the favourite. It matters more that he traced his roots, ideologically and symbolically to Goldwater, than that he possibly scuppered the re-election of a Republican president (imagine if Bernie had prepared for 2016 by running against Obama in 2012). But the insurgent wins triumphantly in the primary and the general election - I think that sets a narrative for Republicans that the solution comes from the grass-roots/outside the party establishment. Reagan's incredible charisma also sets that up as sort of the star-spangled narrative of America for Republicans, not just that it is a successful message but that it is somehow a more naturally American political framework than sort of wonkish, elitist liberalism of the Kennedy/Obama type.
The other bit it seems to me is almost meta. I think 76 to 80 is the point when the Republicans become the world's first post-modern political force. There are fewer grand coherent narratives (though Republicans still have a few) and that includes science. And instead you have opportunism and performance, because the level of discourse is all that is left - what matters is less reality in facts than reality as projected and played in the media. Economic statistics and underlying numbers are secondary to the performance of Wall Street (and literally the Douglas performance in Wall Street). The reality of American power matters less than the display of it on TV (an invasion of threat to hemispheric security: Grenada) or in the movies (basically every 80s action film). Because that level of discourse becomes reality. This still shapes Republicans - the obsession with whether politicians would say "radical Islamic terrorism" is entirely about discourse and indicates nothing about policy or reality. I think Bush I reacts against this and loses. But what becomes important is not whether someone can be a good President (Bush I) but whether they are a sort of simulacra of an American President.
Quote from: Berkut on July 01, 2021, 08:11:46 PM
I don't think anyone with the ability to think would argue that the modern GOP is anything other than an embarassing dumpster fire.
If you don't think that is the case, then this thread is not for you.
But the recent spat in the Biden thread kind of surprised me. As someone who used to support GOP candidates, I didn't even think it controversial to note that the foundations for the current disaster that has become modern conservatism was laid a long, long time ago. Trump is not some aberration out of an otherwise perfectly normal party. I mean...the second place guy was Ted Fucking Cruz, after all.
So if we can all agree that the end result is something outrageously shitty....where did it start?
I think if you go back far enough you can find a time where we can reasonably say was before...say...Eisenhower? I don't think anyone would argue that what the GOP has become today had anything to do with the GOP of the Eisenhower administration, as an example.
So where did it start?
I've always laid the groundwork for the rise of the Tea Party movement, the demonization of the Democrats, and that entire cesspool of right wing media around the Reagan years. That, to me, was when you first saw the ideological start of the idea that
1. Government is intrinsically evil and corrupt.
2. The left is godless, and hence invalid
3. Corporatism is itself good and moral
4. There is a culture war happening, not just a conflict
I think the eighties were the start of the entire corporate movement. Greed is good. Government just gets in the way - and not just passively so, but is actively evil and immoral. Cowboy individualism. Randian libertarianism on the rise. Any ideology that is not right wing conservative is by default communism. Trickle down economics as a matter of faith more than any kind of thought out policy. The beginnings of the rejection of science in favor of creationism, and the demand that this be taught in schools. Really the intensification of the culture tension into outright culture wars. The moral majority. Not much later we see Newt Gingrich and politicians making solemn vows to never, ever, ever raise taxes ever no matter what.
Full disclosure - I supported McCain. And he was WELL after this all started. I did not recognize it then - I thought his obviously pretend pro-life stance was just a political ploy. I thought Sarah Palin was a terrible mistake, but not really indicative of anything other then a terrible mistake. Now I look back and it's pretty obvious Palin was McCain trying to appeal to the whackadoodle fucking crazies that were starting to become a driving force on the right. I certainly did not, at that time, have any idea just how bad it would get. But I would not pretend now like looking back on it it was pretty damn clear that those things were not disconnected to where we are now - not at all.
So....what do other people think? How far back do you have to go before you can safely recognize that the rot that became todays GOP was not yet started?
I agree with all of that. But where they are now can be traced back further to the rise of the right wing evangelicals. The combination of the rise of the political religious right and Reagan's political positions was the perfect storm that formed the party into what we see today.
Quote from: Berkut on July 01, 2021, 08:11:46 PM
1. Government is intrinsically evil and corrupt.
2. The left is godless, and hence invalid
3. Corporatism is itself good and moral
4. There is a culture war happening, not just a conflict
The Birchers believed that, and Goldwater pandered to it, so the roots are definitely pre-Reagan.
That apocalyptic style of politics is very old - you can see it in Bryan era populism or the 1820s anti-masonic party. You can trace it back to the old court-country divisions of the ECW era.
What contained that mentality in the postwar era was a commitment at the leadership level to consensus politics over strife. Party relations at the congressional level were reasonably cordial and Reagan's people had no problem dealing with the O'Neills and Rostenkowskis in a way it would hard to imagine now.
The key turning point you are looking for is 1994 and Gingrich.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 02, 2021, 11:02:46 AM
The Birchers believed that, and Goldwater pandered to it, so the roots are definitely pre-Reagan.
That apocalyptic style of politics is very old - you can see it in Bryan era populism or the 1820s anti-masonic party. You can trace it back to the old court-country divisions of the ECW era.
What contained that mentality in the postwar era was a commitment at the leadership level to consensus politics over strife. Party relations at the congressional level were reasonably cordial and Reagan's people had no problem dealing with the O'Neills and Rostenkowskis in a way it would hard to imagine now.
The key turning point you are looking for is 1994 and Gingrich.
You beat me to this. There was some profoundly stupid stuff going on at all points in the country's history. It isn't too hard to trace a lot of the Know Nothings into the Republican Party--I seem to recall some epically stupid conspiracies going on in the 1850s (I was trying to think of some instance that seemed particularly stupid that is escaping my memory)...you go deeper into the politics of the 19th century and you get into absurd conspiracies regarding masons, catholics, and the pope. Really dumb religious movements, congressmen elected based on the number of bears they shot, or campaigning for congress by wrestling people on the stump.
What I'm hearing is that it is not the stupidity of the populism that is new, it is the inability of those mobilizing that stupidity for their own advantage to cooperate with the other party on anything. In the modern era, that seems new.
Stupid shit is not new, that doesn't mean all stupid shit traces back to the same things.
Quote from: Malthus on July 02, 2021, 12:08:59 PM
What I'm hearing is that it is not the stupidity of the populism that is new, it is the inability of those mobilizing that stupidity for their own advantage to cooperate with the other party on anything. In the modern era, that seems new.
There's nothing necessarily stupid about populism - it's not a good or a bad thing. This type might be stupid - but it did win so maybe not.
Mammon has been the enemy of mankind for thousands of years.
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 02, 2021, 01:32:20 PM
Quote from: Malthus on July 02, 2021, 12:08:59 PM
What I'm hearing is that it is not the stupidity of the populism that is new, it is the inability of those mobilizing that stupidity for their own advantage to cooperate with the other party on anything. In the modern era, that seems new.
There's nothing necessarily stupid about populism - it's not a good or a bad thing. This type might be stupid - but it did win so maybe not.
The stupidity of the populism is orthogonal to whether it wins elections or not.
Saying wackadoodle nonsense may well prove a effective election strategy. The problem is that if people actually act on the wackadoodle nonsense, the outcome for the nation is bad, because reality will not be mocked.
Example: loudly trumpeting anti-science is, clearly, a winning election strategy for some. However, failing to act on the basis of science becomes a serious problem during a worldwide pandemic.
This seems to be a major problem for the GOP, particularly manifest under Trump.
Quote from: Berkut on July 02, 2021, 01:23:21 PM
Stupid shit is not new, that doesn't mean all stupid shit traces back to the same things.
Yes, but from what I've read in this thread so far, the biggest change (when the GOP really ran over the cliff, so to speak) appears to be their relatively recent inability to get anything done cooperatively.
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 02, 2021, 01:32:20 PM
There's nothing necessarily stupid about populism - it's not a good or a bad thing. This type might be stupid - but it did win so maybe not.
This may be a bit of a semantic rabbit hole, but I'm curious which populist parties or movements or governments you would consider not stupid.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 02, 2021, 02:59:27 PM
This may be a bit of a semantic rabbit hole, but I'm curious which populist parties or movements or governments you would consider not stupid.
Modern ones - Blair, Koizumi, Lula, the Kirchners - I still have a soft spot for Podemos and Syriza. I mean I don't think Bibi or Modi or Erogan or Orban etc are stupid or running stupid governments
More historically - I love (some of) the Aussie and American populist traditions. In Australia from what I can tell basically all politics is populist at all times :lol: But almost all of their Labour leaders Gough Whitlam, John Curtin, early Paul Keating with the whole sort "fair go" Aussie ideology. Similarly I've always had a soft-spot for the sort of Mid-Western populists - the La Follettes, Farmer-Labor, Hubert Humphrey in 1948. I think Teddy Roosevelt and the progressives were populists with great achievements - though a different politics than, say Bryan. Obviously Cardenas :wub:
Edit: God! How could I forget: de Gaulle :wub:
QuoteThe stupidity of the populism is orthogonal to whether it wins elections or not.
Saying wackadoodle nonsense may well prove a effective election strategy. The problem is that if people actually act on the wackadoodle nonsense, the outcome for the nation is bad, because reality will not be mocked.
I don't think it's orthogonal because one of the purposes of a political movement is to win power. In terms of fulfilling that goal it may be canny and I don't think you can win with stupidity, I think voters are pretty smart - so you, at least, need a lot of other stuff going on/as part of your offer.
And as I've said before with Trump the really striking thing is he didn't act on what he said - because he's lazy and not engaged or interested in governing. You know the whole infrastructure week meme is a sign of how unseriously he took those campaign commitments - instead what he delivered was what elite Republicans have wanted and delivered for decades: tax cuts and judges.
I don't think Trump's flaws are his populism, I think it's all of the personality/character stuff that was clear on day one.
I have a soft spot for Syriza as well but its an exception that would tend to prove Yi's rule, as they ended up governing in a way that disappointed their populist backers.
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 02, 2021, 09:26:05 AM
I think in that period you have Roe v Wade and the disappointment from the perspective of Christian conservatives in the Baptist in the White House. I think that allows for religious politics to align in a way behind the Southern Strategy of Nixon; I think without Roe v Wade I don't know if the Souther Strategy works. I think Roe v Wade interacts really importantly with racial politics in developing the modern Republican party.
Roe v. Wade was important because the conservative Protestants in the US decided it was. Prior to RvW most mainstream Protestant groups didn't have a problem with abortion, and it was seen as a Catholic issue. It wasn't until almost 5 years after RvW that it became a point of contention.
Quote from: frunk on July 02, 2021, 04:50:33 PM
Roe v. Wade was important because the conservative Protestants in the US decided it was. Prior to RvW most mainstream Protestant groups didn't have a problem with abortion, and it was seen as a Catholic issue. It wasn't until almost 5 years after RvW that it became a point of contention.
Yeah - there's a fascinating Talking Politics on this. And I think it is linked to racial politics and the south, as argued here:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133
QuoteI have a soft spot for Syriza as well but its an exception that would tend to prove Yi's rule, as they ended up governing in a way that disappointed their populist backers.
Fair.
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 02, 2021, 04:05:25 PM
I don't think it's orthogonal because one of the purposes of a political movement is to win power. In terms of fulfilling that goal it may be canny and I don't think you can win with stupidity, I think voters are pretty smart - so you, at least, need a lot of other stuff going on/as part of your offer.
And as I've said before with Trump the really striking thing is he didn't act on what he said - because he's lazy and not engaged or interested in governing. You know the whole infrastructure week meme is a sign of how unseriously he took those campaign commitments - instead what he delivered was what elite Republicans have wanted and delivered for decades: tax cuts and judges.
I don't think Trump's flaws are his populism, I think it's all of the personality/character stuff that was clear on day one.
You and I are simply defining stupidity differently.
If whatever wins is smart, nothing someone said is stupid if it helps them win, by definition.
My problem with that is demonstrated by recent events. I define stupidity as saying things that are both untrue, and that a person of reasonable intelligence ought to reasonably know are untrue. That stupidity is actively harmful if it leads to results that are bad for the nation and its citizens.
In the case of Trump, his pronouncements on the pandemic were stupid in this sense. It doesn't matter, under this definition, whether his stupid claims won him votes or not (in this case, they probably cost him the election, as even a middling competent reaction to the pandemic would probably have seen him win - piles of dead bodies are hard to overlook). However, the stupidity of his statements on the pandemic would not be transformed into intelligent remarks if he happened to win the election.
Quote from: Malthus on July 02, 2021, 05:04:06 PMYou and I are simply defining stupidity differently.
If whatever wins is smart, nothing someone said is stupid if it helps them win, by definition.
My problem with that is demonstrated by recent events. I define stupidity as saying things that are both untrue, and that a person of reasonable intelligence ought to reasonably know are untrue. That stupidity is actively harmful if it leads to results that are bad for the nation and its citizens.
Yeah. So I suppose I don't see stupidity as linked to truth - and I'm always slightly uncomfortable with truth becasue to me I think there's a difference between facts which are important and truth which to me involves interpretation. I think there can be untrue interpretations of the same fact, that acknowledge the fact it - it doesn't lead to truth in itself; or that there can be multiple truths from the same factual pattern - if that makes sense.
So thinking of Trump and stupidity - the thing that springs to mind straight away for me is "injecting sunlight" or bleach. The issue isn't that it's untrue but that it's idiotic - perhaps that it's not only untrue, but could never be true - it's untethered.
QuoteIn the case of Trump, his pronouncements on the pandemic were stupid in this sense. It doesn't matter, under this definition, whether his stupid claims won him votes or not (in this case, they probably cost him the election, as even a middling competent reaction to the pandemic would probably have seen him win - piles of dead bodies are hard to overlook). However, the stupidity of his statements on the pandemic would not be transformed into intelligent remarks if he happened to win the election.
I agree with that. But I suppose my point is that I don't think Trump ran on his management of the pandemic, I think he ran from the pandemic because he knew it was bad for him. I don't think Trump's strategy was to mobilise voters who thought he'd done well on the pandemic.
And I suppose if I was to say that populism as a style of politics is mobilising anything - it's frustration/anger, not stupidity.
That's why I always think it's a symptom rather than a cause of political issues. It may exacerbate them but it reflects an underlying frustration/anger. And the thing I think most of those populists I like and don't think are stupid have achieved is normally they have bent the results or politics of their society closer to the expectations of voters - whether that's trust-busting, shaking up an old-fashioned political establishment, experimenting with direct democracy, expanding social welfare, or even in the case of de Gaulle and Cardenas producing a sort of settled national political system/modern identity. They reduce that distance between people's expectations and political reality.
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 02, 2021, 07:23:06 PM
I agree with that. But I suppose my point is that I don't think Trump ran on his management of the pandemic, I think he ran from the pandemic because he knew it was bad for him.
But this is a strictly political viewpoint.
The job of politicians is not to just get elected. It is to actually DO THE ACTUAL job once elected.
You seem to divorce your view from the reality that the politicians have to actually do things outside getting elected or re-elected.
I can't help the feeling that the Sheilbh way of politics would lead to terribly efficient campaigners (via deplorable means) who would win but also be the worst possible people for those jobs.
Aren't you describing the state of things that already exists?
Quote from: Berkut on July 02, 2021, 09:41:50 PM
But this is a strictly political viewpoint.
The job of politicians is not to just get elected. It is to actually DO THE ACTUAL job once elected.
You seem to divorce your view from the reality that the politicians have to actually do things outside getting elected or re-elected.
Of course not but if you don't get elected you don't get a chance to do anything at all. All you can do is watch with utter impotence while other people fuck up and, especially, if you lose to someone who has no right winning anything that should cause a back to the drawing board re-evaluation.
Again I think the issue with Trump are personality and character and I think that dictated his response to the pandemic.
QuoteI can't help the feeling that the Sheilbh way of politics would lead to terribly efficient campaigners (via deplorable means) who would win but also be the worst possible people for those jobs.
:lol: No, not at all. Although Trump is the only person I've been utterly unsurprised by in office because as Berk said, we learned nothing. I never bought the "office will change him" thing and it was all predictable. I think most people do change in office but I never expected Trump would, and I don't think he ever did.
We also rely on our structures to, in a sense, do a bit of a stress test for suitability for office - I think the GOP structures are breaking down/being reformed as we speak. But I think the "The Party Decides" model of primaries sort of serves that purpose.
But I think in a democracy you can't really separate being able to win a campaign from being good in office - or the other political stuff which is more internal and around the various internal stakeholders/actors you might have to deal with/shady backroom deals. There's other stuff you need obviously, but the core of winning a campaign is getting people to listen to you and having a story. I think you still need to be doing that in office to bring people with you. But in office I think it's less a story than an argument of why policies are necessary and contribute to that campaign narrative. I think that strikes me as a failure of Bush I and early Obama - that they stopped bringing people with them or even trying. They were almost entirely focused on process and the technical side of things they forgot to make the "why" argument. Reagan is the opposite extreme - and I think Bill Clinton is probably the best I've seen in my lifetime at this.
And I don't think deplorable means are good - I also don't think they're actually that effective on their own - I think the core of being a good campaigner is have a simple story and repeating it until the 90% of the country not paying attention to politics know what you're for. They almost all boil down to time for a change or don't change horses midstream. I don't think Trump was any less deplorable in 2020 - I think he had a worse story and his opponent had a better one than in 2016.
But I get really annoyed at people who sort of elevate the purely technical policy side of things and love that they're good on that, but feel like they're sort of above politics because what they're really doing is fetishising losing and turning it into a virtue. I think if you think politics matters, and I do, then that sort of self-indulgence is one of the worst things and it particularly annoyw me because it does seem to be a particular fault on parts of the left - at least in the UK and US.