Kolya on 17/8/2017 at 06:28
Whoever pays Trump to do a POTUS impersonation clearly got the short end of the stick.
Renzatic on 17/8/2017 at 06:51
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
I don't think it's so much that Trumpism is a hustle (though it absolutely is, just not quite in the way that article says), it's that American Conservatism is a hustle, and has been for decades. Trump just laid how much of a hustle it was completely bare.
Not necessarily. Conservatism is, at its core, the other half of an argument that's been going on since the founding of the country. While I think modern conservatives tend to be a little too dogmatic and narrow in their thinking, I won't say the ideology as a whole is a flawed one. Sometimes you do need a healthy helping of good old fashioned conservatism in the mix. At the very least, it serves to moderate social liberalisms tendency towards wild abandon.
A healthy democracy (or representative republic, since people really want to get specific about that these days) needs a bit of both. It's not an issue of one over the other, so much as knowing when one is more necessary. When do we need emphasize positive liberties, or when do we need to let negative liberties thrive. Think Reagan vs. Roosevelt for a good example of this.
Also, (
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trumps-moral-failings-on-charlottesville-are-destroying-conservatism/article/2631743) here's an interesting article on why Trump isn't doing conservatism any favors at the moment.
Thirith on 17/8/2017 at 07:09
To be honest, Renzatic, I think that thinking of actual schools of political thought along one axis only (conservatism on the one side, liberalism on the other) is simplistic and part of the problem. In practical terms, you've obviously got the two parties, so you can't avoid the binary thing in discussions, but "good old-fashioned conservatism", "social liberalism' tendency towards wild abandon", none of these make much sense to me, because there is no such thing as an inherent conservatism or liberalism.
To my mind, a healthy democracy needs to understand that the one-axis view is a faulty one that doesn't represent ideologies so much as it represents a de-facto two-party system only. There is no platonic ideal of conservatism, nor is there such an ideal of liberalism, and there are other aspects factoring into this. Simplistic views of what ideological positions the two parties represent (or should represent) don't help with a healthy democracy. The way you present this, the best position would always be the moderate one, and that's simply not true. The truth is not always in the middle.
Fafhrd on 17/8/2017 at 07:39
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Not necessarily. Conservatism is, at its core, the other half of an argument that's been going on since the founding of the country. While I think modern conservatives tend to be a little too dogmatic and narrow in their thinking, I won't say the ideology as a whole is a flawed one.
Jeffersonian Democratic Republicanism is a far far
far cry from the post-Reagan 'no taxes for the rich, if you're poor it's your fault' philosophy that is modern American Conservatism. The ideology as a whole is flawed because it's based on a reality that quite simply does not exist any more.
Renzatic on 17/8/2017 at 07:53
Well, in terms of American politics (and western politics in general), you could break things further down into fiscal and social axes. While we only have two parties, each party is a conglomeration of a bunch of subfactions that generally stay around the same area on the political spectrum, but aren't necessarily exactly the same. There is no such thing as just Democrats, and just Republicans.
Like, for instance, on the Republican, you have Tea Party/Freedom Caucus Republicans, which adhere to the idea of small government, a completely free, unregulated market, and traditional social values. They contrast against moderate Republicans, who prefer more deregulation to regulation, and are more flexible on conservative issues, but still tend towards traditionalism in the latter regard. For some reason, you usually see big L Libertarian among Republicans more often than the Democrats, even though they're almost completely liberal on social issues.
Democrats tend to be a little more homogenous these days. You could break them down into two factions. First, you have the moderate Democrats, which are somewhat like moderate Republicans, but more open to social programs, and usually address social issues more heavily at the federal level. The other is Bernie Sanders, who wants to go whole hog New Deal style Welfare Statist.
Of course you could break it down even more, but this is basically the microcosm of American politics. If you zoom back a bit, American politics almost is on one axis, a bunch of subfactions floating around and straining against each other over the single question at the heart of it all: what is the role of government in a free society, and what constitutes too much of it. Both of our parties are formed around the two different opinions to that one question.
Thirith on 17/8/2017 at 07:57
Okay, that already makes more sense to me, for one thing because it acknowledges that there are more dimensions at play and that this is largely about the political realities of the US (and to some extent all de-facto two-party systems). I'd still argue that you're not going to get a very healthy democracy if everything is conflated into one axis, because at that point you're going to get a useless at best, dangerous at worst, mix of political ideology and tribalism.
Renzatic on 17/8/2017 at 08:03
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
Jeffersonian Democratic Republicanism is a far far
far cry from the post-Reagan 'no taxes for the rich, if you're poor it's your fault' philosophy that is modern American Conservatism. The ideology as a whole is flawed because it's based on a reality that quite simply does not exist any more.
I think you're right.
You can't deny the initial success of Reaganite policy. Sometime, you do need to deregulate, cut taxes, and let the market grow on its own without much government interference. The problem is, the Republicans saw just how successful it was at the time, declared Reagan a god among men, and decided to adopt it as their sole ideology, continuing to push his policies even when it hurts us to do so.
"We'll keep doing it and doing it and doing...and oh shit, we're out of money. Let's dip into Social Security, and bitch about welfare. Oh shit, Social Security is getting to be insolvent. Let's talk about privatizing it! Keep bitching about welfare. We'll get this government so small, we'll be able to drown it in a bathtub, easy!"
Renzatic on 17/8/2017 at 08:07
Quote Posted by Thirith
Okay, that already makes more sense to me, for one thing because it acknowledges that there are more dimensions at play and that this is largely about the political realities of the US (and to some extent all de-facto two-party systems). I'd still argue that you're not going to get a very healthy democracy if everything is conflated into one axis, because at that point you're going to get a useless at best, dangerous at worst, mix of political ideology and tribalism.
Well there is a 2nd axis in there, but it doesn't need to be addressed, since both parties are usually well entrenched in the libertarian side of that axis. We're a classical liberal country as a default.
Kolya on 17/8/2017 at 08:18
Quote Posted by Renzatic
If you zoom back a bit, American politics almost is on one axis, a bunch of subfactions floating around and straining against each other over the single question at the heart of it all: what is the role of government in a free society, and what constitutes too much of it. Both of our parties are formed around the two different opinions to that one question.
While that is an important question I think there are lots of other questions in a modern state that cannot be reduced to that. And yet they are somehow in the US. Which makes finding common ground much harder than it might be in those other questions.
Thor on 17/8/2017 at 11:55
I'm not following this garbage as much as you guys, but I heard that when some wanker mowed down a bunch of people and managed to kill 1 of them as well, it got me curious: were they there because of political activism and stuff or were they just there randomly going to a store and not realizing there's a bunch of fuckboys playing civil war and killing each other? Anyone here knows about that? If it's just political activists, then okay, whatever. A stupid cause to potentially give your life for, but that's just me.
