Joy, tears and chants of "freedom" as Venezuelans - Bravo President Trump and his decisive actions

RDKirk said:

But you're not seeing the board from their point of view.

You're seeing them from your point of view.

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I'm gonna push you on this a little bit.

I understand what you say that you're trying to do, which is merely describing the way they perceive themselves. If that was your only point, then I think people are making a mistake in trying to argue with you about whether they're justified in those feelings.

But sometimes it feels like you're justifying their beliefs, at least a bit.

I can't speak for everybody, but I do try to understand things from the perspective of the Right. Genuinely. And there are a lot of folks, at least in the center-left, who do as well. After each of Trump's victories (and in between to a lesser degree), popular center-left media was full of self-flagellation and seeking to understand what it was people found appealing about him. Obviously, some of us try harder than others, but it's hardly a rare exercise. Personally, I didn't grow up left. I grew up so conservative that I chose Rush Limbaugh as the subject of a research paper in junior high. I'm very familiar with this world.

But I also think that a lot of us who have sincerely tried to understand have become exasperated by what we've found to be a lot of inconsistencies, blatant hypocrisies and bad faith arguments. Maybe MAGA does see themselves as under attack, but to flip flop the way they have on things like "lawfare", "cancel culture," public corruption, and a host of other things makes us skeptical that they even believe much of their own story about themselves. Your take on them sounds reasonable, but I think that for a lot of them, it isn't accurate - at least not entirely. Maybe they believe that's what they believe, but if somebody else (say, somebody on my "side") goes and tries to act on that information, under the assumption that folks in MAGA will act rationally within that framework, they'll find themselves on a fool's errand, because deep down, the MAGA folks don't actually believe those things. They're heavily propagandized and what they truly believe is whatever they're told to believe. Their beliefs are heavily shaped by people on their side who profit from that propaganda.

Fantine said:

If MAGA had a different spokesperson perhaps I could look at their platform more objectively.
But trying to find serious proposals in the poisonous mix of insults, hyperbole, and verifiable falsehoods is like panning for gold in a mud-filled container.

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Fresh atop the “I-calls-them-as-I-sees-them” files*
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MAGA is both against things, and for things.
Most almost never switch on what they’re against. Which they often remind (the rest of) us of, with frequent rapidity.
MAGA also almost always tells us what they’re for without explaining how we get to the “good things” that they are championing, without trampling on our progress of the last 70 years.
MAGA trusts Trump, and is baffled as to why anyone would doubt him, (in Big Picture terms).

As for Trump’s mercurial nature, many MAGA see this quality as a great boon, keeping his enemies at bay, because no-one knows what Trump is going to do. Some assume that he does know what he is doing and are happy to go along with him if he does what they want; (which for a substantial portion of his followers) is everything they’re too busy to do, like, say, “govern”.

Some want someone to “obey”, desperately.
Trump gives them that.

I think that’s great.
And many still think that he is holding up his end of the bargain.

They are certainly free to have Trump govern as they would like.

*please feel free to rebuke any/all of this

RDKirk said:

But you're not seeing the board from their point of view.

You're seeing them from your point of view.

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But we are seeing "the board" from their point of view. Their point of view is Trump's. Period.

MAGA said Kamala Harris shouldn't be trusted because she'd get us into foreign wars. Trump got us into a foreign war, and MAGA is all for it. MAGA complained that, under President Biden, grocery prices went up. Now, as a direct result of Trump's tariffs, prices across the board are going up even more, and MAGA is all for it. In fact, they praise Trump at every opportunity for doing what they complained about before he did it.

That's the MAGA point of view: whatever Trump says. Until he says the opposite, then that.

-- A2SG, if we're missing something, please educate us....

iluvatar5150 said:

I'm gonna push you on this a little bit.

I understand what you say that you're trying to do, which is merely describing the way they perceive themselves. If that was your only point, then I think people are making a mistake in trying to argue with you about whether they're justified in those feelings.

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If the Left did see the the game from the Right's side of the board, they would either change their game or openly admit the intention to screw them and just don't care.

And if the Right did see the game from Iran's side of the board, they would either change their game or openly admit the intention to screw them and just don't care.

RDKirk said:

If the Left did see the the game from the Right's side of the board, they would either change their game or openly admit the intention to screw them and just don't care.

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MAGA does that now. "Owning the libs" and all that. Did you see the pic someone posted from Trump with him using "liberal tears" to fill the reflecting pool?

RDKirk said:

And if the Right did see the game from Iran's side of the board, they would either change their game or openly admit the intention to screw them and just don't care.

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MAGA does that now. They wholeheartedly support the war, even after one of their reasons for supporting Trump was that he wasn't going to get the US into any foreign wars.

So, I ask you: how should the left "change their game" regarding any issue from the MAGA right? Should they just capitulate to any and all measures supported by the right, no matter how authoritarian? Should they support the threats of unilateral bombing of Iran, even when doing so would constitute a war crime? Should they support Trump's dismantling of the previous treaty with Iran, which directly resulted in the situation we now find ourselves in, and seem incapable of getting ourselves out of?

How should the left "change their game," exactly?

-- A2SG, since MAGA seems so very willing to compromise and all.....

RDKirk said:

If the Left did see the the game from the Right's side of the board, they would either change their game or openly admit the intention to screw them and just don't care.

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Some of the left are changing. Twitter cancel mobs, for example, are pretty much a thing of the past.

But on a number of issues, particularly culture war stuff, they’re damned if they do/damned if they don’t, because changing enough to have a hope of assuaging the concerns of MAGA will mean abandoning many of their core values and constituencies. You say MAGA feels under attack because the culture changes too quickly? Ok, on which cultural shifts do we pump / should we have pumped the brakes so they have time to comfortably get on board? Trans rights? Sexual harassment/ MeToo? Gay marriage? Civil rights for blacks? For women? Ending slavery?

How long would it have taken to normalize gay marriage if we’d waited for folks crying about “the destruction of the family” to change their mind? How long to get women treated well in the face of still-rampant misogyny? How long to get black folks access to public accommodations when large segments of the country saw them as subhuman?

Now factor in the fact that many of those who supposedly feel attacked by these developments don’t merely feel attacked by them, but also manufacture outrage and often straight up lie about these developments in order to make the backlash worse.

Progress on these issues could’ve easily taken multiple decades longer had the left waited around for the right to get on board. And the truth is that, for many of them, no amount of time would’ve been enough for them to come around on their own. What better example of this is there than our current SECDEF who’s publicly pushing the idea that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote independently of their husbands, something that the rest of us changed course on 100 years ago?

ETA: Remember, too, that fundamentalist Christians often choose to feel attacked by the world. They’ve taken Jesus’ comments about persecution and run with them so far that this persecution complex is now a core part of how they perceive their relationship with the world.

And when you do address their concerns, many of them eagerly move the goalposts and find something else to beset by. During the Clinton years, we heard tons about the integrity that the office of the presidency deserved - and rightfully so. Bill Clinton is a creep. Eight years later, Dems nominated in Obama a man who was very gracious to the other side and the most squeaky clean presidents since Jimmy Carter. A man who loves his wife, loves his children, honors his mother in law, and has never had so much as a whiff of personal or corruption scandal. No, he didn't agree with them on a number of policy issues, but he was generally kind, thoughtful, and willing to listen. But instead of acknowledging that, they went and manufactured a bunch of outrage about his ethnic and religious background, made a mountain out of a molehill with the "guns and religion" comment, and ultimately responded by nominating his polar opposite, one of the most cartoonishly unprincipled men in American political history.

So yes, if you're going to persuade people, you have to address them on their terms via the lenses through which they see themselves, but you also have to address their true motivations, whether or not they understand those motivations themselves. And if their motivation is just to be angry and to feel put upon, or if their motivation is just to be in control, then catering to them and coddling them won’t work and the only sane response is to “shake the dust from your feet” and let them catch up later, if at all.

iluvatar5150 said:

.....Progress on these issues could’ve easily taken multiple decades longer had the left waited around for the right to get on board.....

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it would be easier to move on with the moral evolution of our society if the populist right wasn't granted various structural advantages in our electoral / representative systems. As it stands, they effectively have a more powerful individual vote than others. So if anyone is getting "steamrolled", its certainly not them.

Now I'm all for the limits on power and curtailment of direct democracy contained in our constitution. But I do think every voter should have the exact same amount of say in how our govt is composed. No individuals, no special interest blocs, should be privileged. Then let the chips fall subject to a limited scope of govt powers.

Then we should endeavor to understand each other as equal individuals before the law. Not just one group having to assuage the other because the other enjoys a structural privilege.

Fantine said:

The working class received a huge blow when Ronald Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controllers' Union. That was the beginning of the massive income inequality we see today, because good union jobs were replaced by "right to work (for peanuts)" jobs.

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That single act did all that? No, that doesn’t add up in any way. Government overspending on military and welfare created an inflation spike that continued to 1981 when Reagan became president:


Elevated government spending during the Vietnam War, primarily on military expenditures, resulted in rising inflation between 1965 and the early 1970s. President Lyndon Johnson was blamed for increasing this spending without a related tax increase, allowing aggregate demand to soar and triggering widespread increases in prices. Allegedly, Johnson intentionally underreported the costs of the war to protect his Great Society social programs. The combined increase in both defense and social welfare spending in the mid-to-late-1960s is credited with beginning an era known as The Great Inflation, which continued until 1981.





As far as addressing poverty:


If massive welfare fraud and illegal immigration hadn’t been rampant, those in need might have properly served especially in California.

Reagan's attack on the air traffic controllers union affected every other union in the country. All of a sudden management in other companies felt empowered to be strikebreakers and to stop negotiating in good faith with their union members.
I lived through all this, and I saw how the country changed uunder Reagan and how deficits increased.

Fantine said:

Reagan's attack on the air traffic controllers union affected every other union in the country. All of a sudden management in other companies felt empowered to be strikebreakers and to stop negotiating in good faith with their union members.
I lived through all this, and I saw how the country changed uunder Reagan and how deficits increased.

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Another part of this was the Reagan administration encouraging and laying the political/legal groundwork for industry to move out of the NorthEast to the South...where for some reason (I'll say it's an evil principality) Southerners believe their labor should be free and thus resist unionization.

RDKirk said:

Another part of this was the Reagan administration encouraging and laying the political/legal groundwork for industry to move out of the NorthEast to the South...where for some reason (I'll say it's an evil principality) Southerners believe their labor should be free and thus resist unionization.

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“Union” has additional connotations in the South.

Pommer said:

“Union” has additional connotations in the South.

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It would be easier if we didn't call the "Union Army" as such, but used its proper name: United States Army (regulars and volunteers) and the term "union" wouldn't have such connotations. (And they could remember their ancestors for the traitors that they were.)

Pommer said:

“Union” has additional connotations in the South.

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In all these years, I've not thought of that.

When I say that for MAGA it's all about the culture war, this is how they are thinking:

RDKirk said:

When I say that for MAGA it's all about the culture war, this is how they are thinking:

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Their conceptualization of "saving western civilization" is just white nationalism. This holds for the account Musk is quoting and musk himself.

Hans Blaster said:

Their conceptualization of "saving western civilization" is just white nationalism. This holds for the account Musk is quoting and musk himself.

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Could be, but my point is understanding their view.

When you simply dismiss it with "it's just..." you're signalling that their point of view of your ultimate intention is precisely correct.

RDKirk said:

When I say that for MAGA it's all about the culture war, this is how they are thinking:

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The disinformation is pushing a false dichotomy. There are quite a few options other than 'being racially insensitive' and 'allowing Western Civilization to collapse'.

essentialsaltes said:

The disinformation is pushing a false dichotomy. There are quite a few options other than 'being racially insensitive' and 'allowing Western Civilization to collapse'.

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There are people on the Left holding the mic who have specifically said they require the end of Western civilization. It's the bedrock of both CRT and Radical Feminism.

RDKirk said:

There are people on the Left holding the mic who have specifically said they require the end of Western civilization.

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Like who?

RDKirk said:

It's the bedrock of both CRT and Radical Feminism.

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Neither of which is nearly as influential as you're convinced they are.

RDKirk said:

Could be, but my point is understanding their view.

When you simply dismiss it with "it's just..." you're signalling that their point of view of your ultimate intention is precisely correct.

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I think you misunderstood my statement. That's on me. It was not dismissal. the "It's just" was equating one thing with another. Let me put it more mathematically:

"Twitter defense of western civilization" = "white nationalism".

The image you posted was one white nationalist quote tweeting another. That is what I was trying to communicate.