Drag March "Coming for your children"

[Dill]

(06-29-2023, 02:01 PM)Truck_1_0_1_ Wrote: I'm glad SOMEONE said it, 'cause I was going to post that 3 members of this board have *explicitly* stated that they are not Right Wing... and proceed to base their entire posts and everything, on right wing propaganda and right wing-related, "news." 2 in this thread, at that.

It's almost as if the qualifier is stated because they know that there's an inherent issue with being right wing and they choose to go against their better judgement. Something like, "I don't drink and drive, but I will be sure to head to the bar tonight to celebrate something/be miserable and then get home later on..."

I mean, people like Brad and he who shalL not bE mentiONed are PROUD to be right wingers and are not shy about, "what side they're on," so why hide from the facade of, "unaffiliated," or whatever, when your actions prove you're nothing but?

I'm going to agree with you on this; I just want to first say that there is nothing inherently wrong with being a "right winger." Liberal democracy cannot work without a conservative party. The term "right" covers rather a wide spectrum of beliefs and behaviors from monarchists to Nazis to evangelicals to small business owners who just want their Congress to balance the budget, most of whom don't share the same values. In the U.S. the latter may comprise traditional Burkean conservatism.  About the only thing that collects them under the "right" rubric is that at a very general and abstract level all are more comfortable with hierarchy than liberals and actual leftists, though the range of degree here is great. A portion of this "right" is not so wedded to the GOP that they cannot vote Dem when the GOP seems unable to manage issues important to them.

I don't recall that being an "independent" was ever a big issue for some on the right until it became clear that the Iraq War was going sideways. Fox was just ramping up its full propaganda power in 2002-03; it was easy to maneuver that audience into conviction the war was necessary and Saddam had WMDs. Hannity and Rush led the charge against the "traitorous left," who saw Saddam as quite distinct from Al Qaeda and didn't see why we had to invade even if he had WMDs, which he likely didn't according to our own intel. So "the left" supported Saddam and Al Qaeda. True Americans don't criticize a president during a war. They back him. Then after the prompt victory came the jubilant celebration which seemed to confirm Bush's judgment and American power. Hey world--this is what happens when you mess with America. You with us or against us!?

Three years later, after Fallujah, with battle deaths reaching the thousands AFTER the "victory," and still no WMDs, the crowing fell silent. Rush and Hannity and Fox had been wrong about LOTS of things. Then Obama won, and wanted healthcare for people who couldn't afford it. Then a big recession hit. Clearly O. was also mismanaging the war. Was he "too close" to "those people"? Just asking. 

2010--that's when I first began hearing it. Hard right wingers were no longer "Republican" and cursing both parties. They hated Obama for reasons they could never clearly articulate. But he was hammered every day about his brown suit or the coffee cup salute etc. Were lower and middle class Americans REALLY opposing tax cuts to the rich and the end of pre-existing condition clauses? Jon McNaughton began painting pictures of O. burning the Constitution and the like. Tea Partiers wanted the government out of Medicare, and they gave the House back to the GOP--the party noted for its defense of government programs. And when I argued with them on line or in person, citing Bush or planks in the Republican platform, they'd suddenly say they weren't Republican, and throw up Fox-generated false equivalences while telling ME to get my head out of the sand.  "Both sides" were to blame for the 2008 recession and such like. And Hilary supported the Iraq War too. The WMDs had been moved to Syria. 

I think this may be a kind of plausible deniability. The party that represents your values and policy preferences REALLY poops the bed; then course-corrects to get worse. But it's no longer YOUR party so you're not responsible for the choices of people you voted for. But when election time comes around, you are still going to vote for the party that represents your interests as you see them. Pretend like you are in the middle and then, wow, your "independent" sources inform you this Biden fellow is corrupt and has weaponized the DOJ, plus he is a "socialist," while Trump just outlined a persuasive foreign policy which will make America great again by shrinking its diplomatic investment in the world--so you go with him. A tremendously successful businessman (you saw him on The Apprentice, right?) who stands for the common man. No wonder the fearful "fake news" makes up stories about bankruptcies and fraud and accusations of sexual assault and obstruction and misuse of office and sedition.

People like Stewy and Nately are, I think, genuine independents. They voted with one party for a time, while it was a rational and defensible choice. Then they saw that party veer into crazy. They're not convinced by the alternative. That makes their vote genuinely up for grabs; You can't just say "socialist!" or "trans bathrooms" to herd them your way. Dems might get them with reasonably good candidate; if not they'll likely go 3rd party. We never see them defending Trump's Muslim ban as not a Muslim ban or arguing that he was not responsible for 1/6 or demanding a border wall or praising Trump's SCOTUS picks. That's not true of the hard right "independents" we are speaking of. They will always oppose "the left," as it has been defined for them.  If Fox says the Durham Report exposed FBI bias then, by God, they'll prove it with Fox links. Russia investigation exonerated Trump from all collusion and obstruction. Trump's coup attempt is not a deal breaker. Sheesh. But don't "label" them just based on what they support. 

You can be an agnostic and still support papal infallibility, right?