I will say that it is funny that three positions that were the core of my youth: the current neoliberal trade regime is bad, the Iraq War is a monstrous mistake and George W Bush sucks, have now become right-wing canon.
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This is delusional. 4.5 million civilians have died am from the war on terror. Trump continued the war on terror, but he has yet start anything as catastrophic as Bush did.
Gestapo treatment of random civilians, dismantling of hard won 🇺🇸 personal and constitutional freedoms, collapsing rule of law only 90 days in never occurred under Bush.
Not in 90 days. But, Patriot act started NSA domestic spying. Muslims were targeted by our government and attacked by civilians. Bush built a border wall designed to funnel migrants to routes where they were more likely to die.
You could not speak out against the war propaganda without being vilified. It’s was clearly a mistake before it ever began. It was shocking that so many people, friends and family and classmates were all on board. And they were angry when people spoke out or protested against it.
"[T]he current neoliberal trade regime is bad." Does this mean you agree with, or at least have some sympathy for, Trump's tariffs and his desire to de-globalize the US economy?
One of the most insidious traits of modern culture is when we mistake rationalization for reason. Perhaps driven by the incessant urge to contribute to discourse in an increasingly widening online world we callously dismiss the distinction. This results in a bizarre hodgepodge of beliefs.
Serious question though: was the trade regime bad? I was just thinking about how against nafta we were all supposed to be and wondering if that was just off base
Love how posters deride the Democrats for Trump's electoral victories, as if Democrats voted for Trump. No other Party could have overcome the collective hate and contempt which rose to power and elected their Idol. They'd re-elect him tomorrow if they had a chance. Wake up, hate still rules.
sorry. a bit slow this morning. you're saying today's right wingers think BushCo was bad?
hmmmm. but probably not really, right? they need to say that because all those fucking neocons who birthed these monsters are among the biggest TrumpCo critics
They haven't. They're MAGA canon. MAGA isn't right wing ideologically or even theoretically.
The "right v left" political landscape, to the extent it was ever actually true, has entirely collapsed. The divide now is fascist/authoritarian vs democracy/constitutional.
It stopped being about left v right a long time ago. Trump and his people have no ideology whatsoever apart from concentration of power and the people who enable them because they want to get a piece of the action.
Trump rejects neoliberalism because it is inconvenient for HIM PERSONALLY.
That there weren't mass firings of the people in the media who manufactured consent for Iraq was what broke the democracy and America's trust in anything at all.
The same friends that are magat also voted for Bush.They voted for Bush because of the war.And they believed in the weapons of mass destruction.I tried to tell them....
Bush Jr was a historically terrible president. 911, Katrina, Abu Graib, financial collapse. T is doing his best but don't forget what a high bar Jr set.
Chris, who wanted US to go to Iraq? Syria? Afghanistan? We killed a MILLION people in Iraq. We spent 20 Trillion dollars in Afghan and occupied for 20 years there! Our goal: Eradicate the Taliban -only to give the country back to the Taliban. Shameful! Which one of our allies wanted these wars?
I had a really bad nightmare not long after the 2000 election, where someone even worse took office, partly because of that administration. My brother keeps reminding me about that dream.
Kristol actually just loves liberal democracy, turns out. And felt that spreading it and protecting it via war was worth it sometimes (even if that was totally a mistake).
That's because the right-wing is not encumbered by a set of values and beliefs, or a defensible morality. They'll embrace any policy that leads them to power.
They wandered off the reservation. They're so convinced that Democrats are bad, they didn't even know they adopted the biggest positions of many on the left. We call it Neoliberalism, they call it Globalism. It means the same thing. The difference between us is they hired a reality TV star to fix it
8 years ago I said that I didn't think Trump was a neoliberal. That despite Trump selling Chinese red hats, his rhetoric is anti-globalist. He barely dabbled in tariffs, most of which moved some manufacturing to Vietnam, not the US. These new policies are stupid. Major big dumb.
It's just stupid. Trump and his Republican voters are stupid. They voted for all that. That was their bread and butter, and just like that, it was their idea all along.
Never Trump neocons get a lot of presence in the media, but relatively speaking most older Trump people were W Bush voters! They’ve memory-holed everything they voted for !
George Orwell literally predicted this shit in 1984 where the sides completely switched platforms and I thought that was the silliest part about the book but now it’s really happened
Boy, it sure was worth ARGUING FACTS & LOGIC with the Right for all those years instead of figuring out how to most efficiently launch them into volcanoes then, huh? Since now that they agree on all those points, they've come over to our side!
Deny, deflect, reflect - but most of all, LIE. LIE AS BIG AS POSSIBLE, THEN OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER UNTIL THE LIE, NO MATTER HOW EGREGIOUS, HAS BEEN NORMALIZED BY YOUR FASCIST PROPAGANDA ORGAN AND ACCEPTED BY THE CULT.
Then "move on" to the next....
You weren’t wrong in your youth. Very different values and world views can lead to similar logical conclusions. I used to work with a fascist before overt fascism was the governing coalition. Our analyses of the problems were similar but our solutions differed radically.
Never been more obvious than the recent alpha male morning routine virality. If I told anyone in high school that I did that every morning I would have been called every homophobic slur possible and quite possibly new ones even invented
It is Fox channel! All the propaganda outlets! They believe it. I asked my brother if he heard about chump losing half a billion dollars in NYC. He had no clue!
They've also now been embraced by the modern Democratic party who has basically morphed into the 1990s GOP with a rainbow flag. And this is why we lost. The Dem party needs to return to its FDR roots if we're ever going to beat fascism.
I was thinking that this may be a repeat of 1930 Smoot-Hawley stupidity. The good news is that the episode gave us #FDR and the #NewDeal. The bad news is that it worsened the #GreatDepression, and led to WWII. Such an unforced error! So many will be hurt! For what?! #ShowUp #Resist #Indivisible
The Biden administration spent as much as the New Deal + bank bailouts combined in his economic stimulus plans, but we have nearly nothing to show for it. He was an abject failure
Well … i must say that in my youth my ‘three favourite positions’ meant something entirely different !
But now I am older - perhaps wiser - a decision maker - I struggle to comprehend the stupidity of what is happening, but we need to find a way through..:
many of the Republicans in Congress who strongly supported the invasion of Iraq are still quite politically powerful - and have never admitted that it was a mistake
Though it is worth stating that the past couple Democrat administrations have passed very large legislation, while the Republican ones (both Trump) have relied on executive orders completely and can pretty much only pass tax cuts.
TY. I got hounded out of a couple of liberal online spaces because ppl were annoyed that I made this point. It's a decades old slight: Limbaugh, Gingrich, Hannity...
60yo Australian with a moderate but lifelong interest in US politics here and I’m gonna say that’s maybe the first time I’ve ever heard it called (correctly as I now know) the Democratic Party.
Point being it’s not just maga who say Democrat.
58yo American with lifelong interest in politics. An individual is a Democrat but the party is Democratic. Always has been. It’s been bastardized by MAGA and their ilk in right wing media.
Now Democrats are like, "but the generals don't like Trump." They keep referencing the generals that were complicit in the illegal war on Iraq, who failed to stand up to Bush's aggression and lies?
It helps - a lot - to realize that conservatives are simply the people who get cultural updates last. But they DO get them. The conservatives of today do not believe the same things as the conservatives of yesteryear. History eventually drags them into the future as well.
And now the democrats have paraded Liz Cheney for election campaigning, become the fiercest supporters of the neoliberal trade doctrine, and cozied to W. The entire political sphere has lunged irreparably to the right
That's why you spent your life on a channel that defended the Iraq War, the neoliberal trade regime, and the Democratic Party that endorsed both and still does. And barely a peep from you. People will do anything for money.
George Bush. Hm, I seem to remember him, but only dimly. Wasn't he a politician at one time? Then, in retirement, he suffered a mysterious ailment that rendered his vocal cords useless. Sad, very sad ending.
He's the guy, like the dotard at the Million Bucks per plate dinner last night, looking out at the audience and saying, "Mah kinda people. The haves and the have mores".
Do a bunch of horrible stuff, then look back and be like "Yeah, I never really supported that, even while we were raping other countries for resources. But hey! This new idea of ours to have kids work in the mines will go MUCH better!"
I hate how they divorced themselves from Bush and from their support of him. Every time they say "They lied about WMDs I want to yell at them that they told everyoen who said that to them when it mattered that they hated the troops.
From the older (1970s), wilder left in the UK:
1. The state controls everything by stealth
2. Government agencies are unaccountable and evil
3. Ordinary people have no voice in politics
4. Workers are exploited by global capital beyond national control
5. The mainstream media lie about all above
The term woke is being used to make the majority conservative, because woke is so obvious stupid. Not defining what exactly woke is. It is a weaponized term troll farms use to divide us and drive votes to the right. We are so easy to deceive. And the far lefts are so easy to trigger for that purpose
Yep, the ultra-wealthy have been hammering that term for years to trick voters into electing pols who'd deregulate them, cut their taxes, & weaken antitrust.
Their success, not systemic inevitability, killed the middle class American dream & has now destroyed post-WWII stabilizing alliances.
Benny Johnson is literally posting over on twitter that a venn diagram of the people who believed in the Iraq war and those against tariffs would be a circle.
The right wing doesn’t think Iraq war was a monstrous mistake and they have no problem with the neoliberal trade regime and they hated Bush’s poll numbers, not his policy.
I share your timeline, and the thing I miss most is the internet at that time. You could actually have rational discussions with conservatives pre-own the libs era. Then the visceral reaction to Obama broke everything, spearheaded by Glenn Beck and his chalkboards but quickly mainlined.
The tragic part is that, like everything else they push, the conspiracy theories are projection. The PNAC neocons used the GWB admin in much the same way Heritage is using this one for Project 25.
It's part unreality, right? It's fear mongering an unreality, at rapid pace so you can't stop and think. It's lore building, then they drop Project 2025.
Remembering Bush .. looking back..not so bad.. He was smart to have smart people around him. We did ok.. I even like Cheney..she made a shitload of since this past 3 years and has my ever lasting respect for seeing that circus to the end. And.. she didn’t bat an eye and she crossed all of her T’s.
Rather more than just a mistake wasn’t it.
I would call it a crime.
One can easily see the resemblance with the Bush era. The lying.
Dismissing what is lawful (as in enhanced interrogation-water boarding).
Complete disregard of US closest allies.
No one of significance being held accountable.
What’s less funny is that all the people who used to hold the opposite views, basically all conservatives haven’t even stopped for a second think “hmmm what might be the lefties be right about this time?” The answer of course is Trump is a historical menace. And at some point that will be consensus
Yeah, but there will always be people who will find some good in it from now on. They’ll always come back because „he built the autobahn“ or something.
If he's still alive after the midterms they will 25th amendment him right out of the White House because his 'it's all about me' schtick will have worn very thin...
The only way the right will abandon this cult is if it stops paying off. Unfortunately history is showing us the other way is if they find some other monstrous ideology to hitch their wagons to. I don’t believe they’ve abandoned Bush for morality reasons, more they found another scam
The millennial leftist panic about “globalization” and the neoliberal trade regime was actually wrong. WTO as the devil/panic word proved wrong and global trade with some rules was net positive with some obviously bad parts. A mixed bag that could be improved is the reality, instead of straight evil
All the many people who’ve made their entire careers lying about his obvious nature will just abandon it, and slink away and find some new project where the left is wrong.
Mitch McConnell did some slinking today when he told the NYTs that national security had been handed to
"amateur isolationists" when, in fact, he is complicit in handing the keys to Trump twice.
It will play out that way if we continue to enable people like him. There have been so many times where he should have been shut down/held accountable. Will we ever learn to call bad behavior out before it becomes detrimental to the world?
I remember being in high school back when St. Alan Colmes was still playing patsy to Hannity and he had to sit there while Sean made it sound like W was legitimately sitting on top of a tank leading the troops and therefore was beyond reproach.
I watched this whole thing happen w Bush! Hard to overstate the cult of personality around him! How brilliant and tough and wise he was! He turned out to be an incompetent disaster. But there was no moment of epiphany,no “wow we got that wrong” just a hard pivot (for most) into Donald Trump God King
That’s how it goes when your base is the low info religious vote. These voters are deeply conditioned to idolatry and just blindly following outlandish fantastical claims.
He was never “brilliant” he was the guy they could get elected and would sign whatever the congress out in front of him. Conservatives in Facebook debate groups knee he was an empty suit.
My dad, a WWll vet, a Republican, was beside himself when Bush started the “preemptive “ Iraq war. “That man needs to be put in a straight jacket.” were his exact words.
Personally, I’ve had to hold my nose to vote for democrats more times than I’d like to count. #
#constitutionalconvention
I think there was a watershed moment at the debate when Trump told Jeb your brother did not keep us safe because 9/11 happened on his watch. You could feel the entire facade of the GOP crumble in that moment.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot the past few days. Never thought I’d see a president as bad as W again in my lifetime, yet Trump has somehow made W look like the second coming of Lincoln. I can’t wrap my head around that thought. 🤯
I hear you. It’s amazing that so many people that were all-in on the Iraq invasion now tell me what a mistake it was but are all-in on everything Trump now.
I imagine most prominent republicans constantly have that feeling we had when we were 13, hadn’t figured out who we were yet, in a group with a bully who picked on everybody, just flop-sweating hoping he doesn’t light on you.
Saw this happening in real time in reaction to W's catastrophic global market crash in '08. We saw an embryonic, noncentralised version of what would become the Tea Party - only to get instantly astroturfed by the "Never a nigger in the White House" mouth breathers
and everyone else gave themselves a nice pat on the back for electing an effective community organiser who went on to double the spending on W's "War on Terror", bailed out the hedge fund orcs who tanked the economy & gave BP a slap on the wrist after blowing up an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico
They rode him+his stupid cult closer2absolute Power than they could ever dream of.Much closer than W ever could have.They r not going2abandon that position even after MangoMussolini is 💀.Maybe keeping quiet in public,but secretly hailing his fucking trading cards in the basement praying4 a 2.coming
It's outrageous. I taught a class World Issues in High School and remember 9/11, Iraq War and all the lies then. Sounds like they have just added to the playbook.
I never saw Bush having cult followers. I saw a Country scared after 911, kids in my school rushing to join the military, parents hugging their kids, Canada and England standing with us and a trusted General lied to us. Then- We voted for black man and loved him. That is what made the difference.
Opponents of the Iraq War were cast as unpatriotic or even traitorous.
Weapons inspectors begged to finish their work, while Rumsfeld amassed his troops. The idea that this whole thing was somehow confusing or an innocent mistake or naïve is historical revisionism of the worst kind.
I remember. Two very nice, kind and dedicated reading teachers try to tell us they were lying and nobody listened. 911 was an act of war and we were a nation walking around in shock. This time is different. We must prepare for an economy collapse and not give them a reason to control us.
Something else to ponder: Perhaps the trump cult -- who once happily supported Bush II 20 years ago -- began turning on him because he wasn't *malevolent enough* for them.
Yes, he did -- and the proposal was (shockingly enough) a generally decent and useful package. His own party rejected it. Bush was terrible as a president -- but unlike trump, not a terrible person. He wasn't a sadist. I could understand why people would vote for him, at least the first time.
He was *not* a good president -- but unlike this cancer now infesting the White House, I never got the sense that Bush was a hateful or wantonly destructive person. He had some appealing qualities and genuine charisma (trump has zero of either). Again: Not praising Bush's tenure; it was bad.
Same. Will never forget the Supreme Boomer Confidence they had marching into Iraq. Completely arrogant, Completely stupid. Still exactly the same today. No lessons learned.
They turned on him not for the disaster of Katrina, but for the *weakness* it showed then HARD against him when he made overtures on being loving & accepting of hispanic immigrants as potential Republicans to welcome. They loved the torture stuff.
Their base is objectively *evil* in D&D alignment.
If I remember correctly, it was during or right after The Great Bill Clinton Penis Hunt™️ that Soros became the boogeyman. I think he was associated with MoveOn, but I could be wrong.
The most important fact about the Bush years is that Republicans took the House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years and held it for the next 12, while holding the Senate for 10 of them. Bush was an amiable figurehead turned scapegoat.
Oh yeah, those yellow ribbons were everywhere. Any criticism of his stupid war was because you “hated freedom”. Then we lost, there was no plan, and a million people died in the aftermath. That all got memory-holed.
It started with the Powell memorandum in 1971, an outline of the steps business and "conservative" interests should take to defend their way of life. That was followed by the Project for the New American Century, the project plan for George W.
and, more recently, by Project 2025. The right has think tanks that produce plans for the politicians to follow. The other side just wings it or criticizes the right, never producing a coherent defense of its principles and goals.
Totally agree with you! I'm from Western PA and know firsthand how Reagan and his administration let the steel industry go down the tube. The steel workers were treated like crap and no one outside of the area cared one bit. It was sad to see what my dad, husband & others went through.
Curious George Bush, Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney told Tim Rusett, "We're going to have to go to the dark side." My wife said, "That doesn't sound good. I started laughing and said, "it's going to be a shit show." Behold: White House White Paper on Torture, 2001 Patriots
Act, National Security Letter.
Well, no such moment from R elites. But it was T himself who called the Iraq War a huge mistake, and that might have been the start of his wider populist appeal among most R voters (i.e. separate from the rank racism that brought out the maga base).
Yeah, they completely memory-holed him after he left office, but I think part of what helped with this was 1) his term ended with the Great Recession, which largely had Obama step into the limelight during his campaign and the interregnum to take ownership of that crisis, and
2) unlike Trump after 2020, Bush disappeared to Texas to paint watercolors. Had he had a normal post-presidency, maybe the right would have had to reckon with the consequences, but instead, they pivoted to despising everything Obama did and learned nothing from their mistakes.
The one trait I see among almost all right-wingers isn’t a specific ideology — apart from "liberals bad, conservatives good" — but emotional immaturity and an inability to ever admit they're wrong. The moment they get over themselves is the moment they leave the party behind.
After the crash they disowned Bush as a RINO for Medicare Advantage, AIDS drugs to Africa, and Latino outreach, then started screeching nonstop about the deficit *they* created which curdled into birtherism and that’s where Trump in his current incarnation entered the picture.
When you were the backup host for Maddow, didn't you do a bit about how exactly this would happen if we let Bush republicans off the hook the way we did?
Every R-voter I've known makes only quiet shifts, and never acknowledges when they get it wrong. They sometimes even deny they ever had previous stances. I don't know if they're even aware they do this. I think they also have anxiety about being seen as weak and disloyal, because then they're alone.
Including prominent Never-Trumpers (Kristol, Charlie Sykes, Bulwark). Doing good work now but not much reflection on their pre-2016 views & tone. An afternoon in the archives of the Weekly Standard is sobering.
Maybe the reason for this, is that they are so completely blinded by their hatred for liberal ideology, they are incapable of rational thought processes. That, and their adherence to might = right, and more money is never enough.
I remember reports that Bush was running drills in Texas to manage the growing militia problem in America. As soon as word got out, he supposedly ended program, so as not to seem anti-gun, etc..
He could’ve done something and chose not to.
GOP just never thought this movement could come for them.
But we never had a President during an economic crisis and after starting a war go immediately on a three day golf weekend, celebrate a candle light dinner with terrorists, promoting his own business property and ignoring the return of dead soldiers.
All true in part because Dems played the “let bygones be bygones” game instead of nailing tax cuts, 9/11, Iraq War lies to Republican asses. Instead, Bush won a second term!
That's worse than being wrong bc it implies you've been deceived- once would be fine but admitting you've been duped repeatedly over the course of years and years? It implies a lot of other not so positive things about the person.
More importantly, self-reflection isn't something a lot of these ppl do. They won't gain insight from this, do not expect it. Getting them to see how THEY will be negatively affected and leaning on the theme of betrayal is the only framework that won't make them aggressively defensive.
I remember reading some whackadoo Christian nationalist web page back in the Oughts that was proposing Bush be made emperor. Now some of the same people attack Bush and want to create a monarchy with Trump. It's mind-blowing.
From the day in 2015 when Trump descended his golden escalator, his deux ex machina, a MAGA hardcore has seen him as "The God Emperor", a modern-day King Cyrus, God's unlikely messenger. The savior. He may be starting to believe in his own divinity. But it's a doomsday cult.
My favorite point on this is their views on The Dixie Chicks. Ask a maga who hates the Iraq war what they think of the Dixie chicks and their heads will explode in anger.
I don’t remember a cult of personality around W, not like Trump’s, and I’m saying that as someone who lives in Texas.
I think it was more he got a giant 9/11 pass for whatever dumbass thing he did.
W never sold things like Trumpy Beats.
But aren't neo-liberals. Also sort of capitulating with the far right right now? Neoliberals are supporting that free trade is good, when it clearly is not.
Look at what is happening right now and tell me free trade is good. Tell me how monopolies are good. Tell me about how massive corporations coming and choking out. Family-owned businesses is good.
I can't believe that all the titans of industry are cool with writing off the world market.i can't believe that folks at Lockheed and Raytheon are cool with writing off billions in future sales. We'll never sell another plane or missile system again.
The awkward thing for Dems, of course, is that the same thing then happened with Joe Biden, except he was even WORSE than Bush and we all paid a far heavier consequence for it. 😒
Biden should have never run for reelection. Dems, cut the cord on him pretty quickly once it was obvious his ability to think and communicate in real time were impaired.
I can’t even with the canonizing of St. Biden. He built a career on cynical self-service, being wildly wrong about most important things, and failing upward by being good ol’ Uncle Joe. He had a generational chance to stabilize the world, and left a wreck. He’ll wind up sharing space with Buchanan.
I'm not THAT harsh on Biden (which is saying something given that I'm pretty harsh on him) since I tend to give most Presidents the benefit of the doubt on things since it's the world's hardest job. With that said, yes, Biden deserves no canonizing - not then and *especially* not now.
At 61 I've seen the ridiculous bad faith ideology of right wing America poison 1/3 of the country and the mass media just fucking played along like it had validity.
This is what gets me. After he croaks, the right will pretend he was some sort of leftist manchurian candidate, a product of the deep state then immediately go vote for a predecessor just like him.
I get that in normal times, conservatism is an important corrective to liberal excesses. But liberalism has given us child labor laws, the minimum wage, Social Security, women's rights, and so much more.
What have conservatives ever done policy-wise to make this country better?
With a great deal of people idolizing Andrew Jackson, Confederate traitors, and the efficiency of Nazi Germany, I'm not sure we can predict what the consensus will be.
I took a shot of booze every time Tulsi Gabbard said "Regime Change War." I woke up six months later in a neighboring state, hitch hiking on a freeway entrance, missing a shoe.
Their best talking points are always stolen from the actual "left." It's fun during election season to watch all the nouveau peace-niks on the right, parroting Medea Benjamin circa 2003. When I suspect Glen Greenwald + David Sirota of working for Moscow, it is truly, "The Season of the Witch."
Many people in “media” on TV, their guests et al- seem to look at this and scoff/laugh at the absurdity with smiles and grins, shaking their head, rolling eyes etc- but we are well past that point of politics as “entertainment.” It’s not funny at all, in any way any longer.
I’m sorry, but they only say that because they know that Dubya sucked ass and wasted a generation fighting for a lie. Them pretending to agree with you is just them saving face
These positions may have been the core of YOUR youth - and I agree with them, but they were hardly popular positions among the general population. The unilateral slaughter we subjected Iraq to was wildly popular in America for many years.
Pew Research documents strong support - up to 74% of Americans supporting it at the time of GWB's "Mission Accomplished" speech. Not as high as I had remembered it being but I remember questioning the war's premises and being distinctly in the minority.
Well, yeah. I wouldn’t have voted for Biden because I wouldn’t have voted for Bush II, and Biden’s platform was further right than W’s. I wouldn’t call it funny so much as I would call it horrifying, but ymmv.
It's also funny to find yourself sometimes agreeing with the WSJ editorial page. The world is flippin' upside side. Oh, for a "My Pet Duck" level-of-incompetence these days . . .
People will say that you're wrong on trade, but I think it's not mutually exclusive to point out that Trump's tariffs are destructive and that there were flaws in how the trade regime of the past 30 years or so has been implemented. There is room for a nuanced conversation on this.
What does this say, then, about the Democratic Party over the past decade or two? One answer: Dem leadership ceded popular positions when they blocked the Bernie/AOC left and aligned themselves with future former Republicans like Liz Cheney.
I was at the quebec WTO protest getting tear gassed in 2001.The right wing talking point was that anyone trying to stop the trade deals shipping American jobs overseas (and forcing indigenous communities globally off their lands)was a raving bluehaired commie who probably deserved the electric chair
Trump’s tariff war is very much like Bush’s Iraq war. Just like there were no weapons of mass destruction, no countries are actually ripping us off. Both wars were/are stupid, unnecessary, not well thought out, and extremely costly.
Come on. That is what you took from Harris? It was remarkable that Cheneys found reason to support Harris for democracy. Do I think they are great now? No, but they tried to move GOP away from Trump. Period.
This is pretty basic and somehow many will use it as justification for Harris’ loss when she was utilizing Cheney precisely because she lacked support among moderators and right leaning voters.
Try a UK "Labour Party" which has not a shred of Socialist or "Original" Labour dna in it, after it was gutted and taken over by the Zionist "Friends if Israel" and is now more RW than the Tory Party (which self destructed on the alter of Boris Johnson's Narcissistic Con, like GOP & Trump)
I was duly elected by millions of Americans, who love me. I could grab their mothers by the pussy and they say "Thank you Mr. President." The only pussy I won't touch is Ted Cruz.
#fuckdonaldtrump
#fuckrepublicanvoters
#fucktedcruz
I’ve actually been thinking about my own shifting thoughts on free trade a lot lately. But regardless of issues surrounding exploitation of workers elsewhere, you can’t just wave a magic wand and have there magically be factories overnight.
May I respectfully point you to the essential work of @driftglass.bsky.social and @bluegal.bsky.social, who have been beating this exact drum since the dawn of blogrolls
Yes but by the financial collapse everyone was ignoring Jr. And no one even asked him about the collapse. Obama and McCain met with Congress to make a plan and Jr wasn't even invited.
History has a dark sense of humor. When former “radical” truths become bipartisan talking points, it’s less vindication and more a reminder of how long systems can resist accountability.
the timing makes a great difference. The right wing learned to love JFK, like, when Dan Quayle ran for VP. That far out, it’s just appropriation of popular symbols, not espousing any position.
That’s the beauty of right-wing ideology: It doesn’t matter what they said 50 years ago, twenty years ago, before 2020, or even last week. Their beliefs are whatever lord maga says they are. How much simpler can it be?
Comments
Although it was always oriented around the worker.
This is straight up regressive with corruption and grift
Strategic targeted and time bound tariffs with domestic investments is one thing. This is not that.
Not Alone
Freedom
Not Repression
✊️hands off!📣
🌎🌏🌍🗽🦋💯
Especially because today’s “right wing” is void of principle and morality and fundamentally anti-American.
Boy, was I wrong.
Jes sayin
hmmmm. but probably not really, right? they need to say that because all those fucking neocons who birthed these monsters are among the biggest TrumpCo critics
The "right v left" political landscape, to the extent it was ever actually true, has entirely collapsed. The divide now is fascist/authoritarian vs democracy/constitutional.
Trump rejects neoliberalism because it is inconvenient for HIM PERSONALLY.
The democratic embrace of the security state has been the most alarming thing to happen in my adult lifetime.
handsdown. the Bush's.
1. destroy the economy
2. destroy democracy
if you think for one second the fascist gives 2 Fs about this country…. you need to go back to X where you’ll find your people
i'm saying i would take them over the fascist.
...right? 😅
Also counter-factual and extreme cases of it compared to on it is not clearly obvious a net positive.
A) The Trump nut jobs hate W. Bush, Cheney and the globalists MORE than they hate the Dems
B) Dems then embraced the Cheney's in the 2024 general. At that point how many far left leaning young people went WTF and just stayed home?
Then "move on" to the next....
Not many of us there considering the obvious scale of the abuse
Dialectics is my best hope
Well … i must say that in my youth my ‘three favourite positions’ meant something entirely different !
But now I am older - perhaps wiser - a decision maker - I struggle to comprehend the stupidity of what is happening, but we need to find a way through..:
Fox news creamed its pants!
by every career criminal and dictator
to justify whatever they say and do as ok,
even as they scream bloody murder
against every minor excess of anybody who opposes them:
I DID WHAT I HAD TO DO!
Chris, how would you change the trade regime?
Though it is worth stating that the past couple Democrat administrations have passed very large legislation, while the Republican ones (both Trump) have relied on executive orders completely and can pretty much only pass tax cuts.
Point being it’s not just maga who say Democrat.
1. From behind sitting
2. From behind standing
3. From the front kneeling
People voted for Trump because his bullying projects strength.
Do a bunch of horrible stuff, then look back and be like "Yeah, I never really supported that, even while we were raping other countries for resources. But hey! This new idea of ours to have kids work in the mines will go MUCH better!"
They're total shithead schmucks.
1. The state controls everything by stealth
2. Government agencies are unaccountable and evil
3. Ordinary people have no voice in politics
4. Workers are exploited by global capital beyond national control
5. The mainstream media lie about all above
Their success, not systemic inevitability, killed the middle class American dream & has now destroyed post-WWII stabilizing alliances.
Well, the Billionaires stole the country, not the illegal immigrants. It takes that level of acting to make it real.
Your network sucks
I would call it a crime.
One can easily see the resemblance with the Bush era. The lying.
Dismissing what is lawful (as in enhanced interrogation-water boarding).
Complete disregard of US closest allies.
No one of significance being held accountable.
As the saying goes:
How do they sleep at night?
With the fan on.
Must be nice.
"amateur isolationists" when, in fact, he is complicit in handing the keys to Trump twice.
And even that was tethered to the Gingrich life.
"Smoke them out of their holes"
"Can't get fooled again"
Personally, I’ve had to hold my nose to vote for democrats more times than I’d like to count. #
#constitutionalconvention
Weapons inspectors begged to finish their work, while Rumsfeld amassed his troops. The idea that this whole thing was somehow confusing or an innocent mistake or naïve is historical revisionism of the worst kind.
He even gave a big TV speech on it. One of the last GOPers to ever have a grown-up opinion on the subject, tbh.
THAT is what made them turn on him. I saw it in realtime.
(The 2008 crash has obscured that).
Their base is objectively *evil* in D&D alignment.
CAN YOU PLEASE CLARIFY IF YOU'RE REFERRING TO THE 1ST PRESIDENT BUSH OR HIS SON?
Contrast to the Trump fraud of his charity
It was Reagan who started the ball of disaster we find ourselves today.
Act, National Security Letter.
He could’ve done something and chose not to.
GOP just never thought this movement could come for them.
I think it was more he got a giant 9/11 pass for whatever dumbass thing he did.
W never sold things like Trumpy Beats.
Go and sit down.
their total lack of shame is matched only by their viewers total lack of any functioning memory.
How to launder money and get a free pass simultaneously.
Oh wait, I forgot. We have to do their work for them.
https://static.heritage.org/2024/Heritage%20Foundation_23%20FS.pdf?_gl=1*1uid675*_gcl_au*NDMzODA4Njk2LjE3NDM4NzA1MDY.*_ga*OTk2MTMyNzg0LjE3NDM4NzA1MDY.*_ga_W14BT6YQ87*MTc0Mzg3MDUwNi4xLjAuMTc0Mzg3MDUwNy41OS4wLjA.
What have conservatives ever done policy-wise to make this country better?
They can keep their trade views and f-off.
Lack of accountability from the 90s to the present, is why nihilist cynics are running the show into the ground.
What a world we live in.
#fuckdonaldtrump
#fuckrepublicanvoters
#fucktedcruz
Republicans never notice that in the present they have the same kind of people making equally awful decisions.