08-10-2016, 04:03 PM
(08-10-2016, 09:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:The right has a deeply entrenched Democratic bureaucratic machine to over come. Dude, don't you realize that you're doing the work of/for some demagogue. I sure hope progressives aren't as stupid as they come across. I must assume that your high IQ didn't come with senses or ability to self judge or remain self reliant.(08-09-2016, 01:11 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:(08-09-2016, 10:49 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:Quote:Donald Trump said a lot of different things last week so we polled to what share of his supporters bought into each of them:http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/...march.html
-69% of Trump voters think that if Hillary Clinton wins the election it will be because it was rigged, to only 16% who think it would be because she got more vote than Trump. More specifically 40% of Trump voters think that ACORN (which hasn't existed in years) will steal the election for Clinton. That shows the long staying power of GOP conspiracy theories.
-48% of Trump voters think that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton deserve the blame for Humayun Khan's death to 16% who absolve them and 36% who aren't sure one way or the other (Obama was in the Illinois Legislature when it happened.) Showing the extent to which Trump supporters buy into everything he says, 40% say his comments about the Khans last week were appropriate to only 22% who will grant that they were inappropriate. And 39% of Trump voters say they view the Khan family negatively, to just 11% who have a positive opinion of them.
-Even though Trump ended up admitting it didn't exist 47% of his voters say they saw the video of Iran collecting 400 million dollars from the United States to only 46% who say they didn't see the video. Showing the extent to which the ideas Trump floats and the coverage they get can overshadow the facts, even 25% of Clinton voters claim to have seen the nonexistent video.
-Trump said last week that Hillary Clinton is the devil, and 41% of Trump voters say they think she is indeed the devil to 42% who disagree with that sentiment and 17% who aren't sure one way or the other.
We've been writing for almost a year that there's a cult like aspect to Trump's supporters, where they'll go along with anything he says. Trump made some of his most outlandish claims and statements yet last week, but we continue to find that few in his support base disavow them.
This pollster (PPP) despises Donald Trump. But this pollster has been around for a while, and it is Donald Trump who has brought something new to American politics. People out of touch with reality in politics who make outrageous claims deserve the ridicule that people like me dish out at them.
One thing that we need in this Crisis Era -- teaching that makes people more media-savvy so that they do not fall for dodgy demagogues.
I have to admit that back during the 90s and around Y2K I was reading anti-Clinton / anti-Hillary books, and subscribed to some of the conspiracy theories of the time. For me personally, I had an epiphany in Y2K and reformed myself. 9/11 sealed the deal. But knowing about the mind set, I can recognize the fact that there are those who have clung to the same mentality for the past 20 or more years. In my book, whatever warts she may have, and whatever goofs she might have had, H.R.C. proved herself beyond a shadow of a doubt as having the right skills and point of view to be not only a highly capable SoS but also PotUS.
The Right used to have some intellectual sophistication, and that held even as it got vicious and reckless. But the intellectual sophistication is gone and the recklessness and viciousness remain.The conspiracy-theory bilge about Bill Clinton got adapted to fit our Marxist, Kenyan, fascist, Islamist, anti-white, reckless, cowardly, militant President... well, why let truth expose the intellectual weakness of an argument? After all, what one believes to be true is more important than the truth, right?
Except, of course, that (1) Dubya has shown what a lousy President one could be, and (2) Barack Obama has done mostly right. Analogies to the two Lost Presidents (Truman and Eisenhower, but especially the latter) are relevant. Reactive Presidents are almost always underrated at the time because the Reactive personality is often troublesome.
While the anti-Clinton stuff was Boom-on-Boom invective, the anti-Obama stuff is either Boom-on-X or X-on-X invective. Reactive leaders in the previous Crisis and subsequent High included some of the nastiest characters of history (most Fascist leaders including traitors, leading perpetrators of the Holocaust, Stalin's hatchet-men, and Stalinist stooges). Thus Tojo, Himmler, Quisling, Beria, and Rakosi, In case anyone thinks that it is strictly a national phenomenon, America had David Curtis Stephenson, a charismatic KKK leader whose viciousness was similar to that of Nazis.
The best sort of Reactive is an administrative or entrepreneurial leader (like Dwight Eisenhower in the early 1940s) who leaves the moralizing to older Idealists who appreciates the pragmatic approach that Idealists do badly at, or the mellowed post-Crisis-era figure who concerns himself largely to securing peace and prosperity while showing respect for tradition and precedent (like Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s). The 60-something Reactive Presidents that America had between FDR and JFK were terribly underrated while in office -- perhaps because they weren't so good at self-promotion as FDR or JFK. Barack Obama acts much like a 60-something Reactive President, and his virtues should be apparent by now. He's cautious, attentive, honest, respectful of precedent... Brilliant? Brilliance is not enough. Goebbels and Quisling were certifiable geniuses, too. But we get him as President during a Crisis Era, and he is definitely not a Boomer. He just doesn't have the self-righteousness. Maybe he just has an unusual role in history after a failed Idealist President in George W. Bush.
It is time for the Right to go back to recognizing the validity of tradition, to rejecting demagoguery, and to promoting entrepreneurial self-reliance. The Right sacrificed limited government for crony capitalism and rationality for fanaticism. But if Republicans fail at that, then they might end up with little relevance in American life. Democrats are already appropriating conservative themes, and it could be that the Republican Party becomes irrelevant and the ne4xt conservative party appears as an offshoot of or even the mainstream of the Democratic Party -- but a party in which racism, misogyny, crony capitalism, scapegoating, and religious bigotry are unwelcome.