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Old 08-15-2017, 10:13 AM   #1593
sebastian_dangerfield
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Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

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Trump stands for traditional hierarchies, in all sorts of ways. He is utterly uninterested in the principle of equality. His views on race are pretty clear. He is pleased to discriminate between religions. He unabashedly hires rich people because they're better. MAGA is about restoring an American where people knew their place. So is law and order. Arguably, his views on immigration are not really about removing immigrants from the country, but about imposing on them a second-class status which subordinates them to the rest of the country.
I think this credits him with thinking deeply enough to have a vision. The description you offer is deadly accurate, but it's the Bannon wing of his administration's view, not his own personal view. I still think, based on what I've seen, his personal views are non-existent. The man cares about nothing beyond winning whatever zero sum game in which he's engaged.

His criticism of the Nazis at Charlottesville was forced not because it's contrary to his personal beliefs, but because it's a capitulation. In that moment, the "Left Wing Media" was forcing him to say something. Forcing Donald Trump to do anything is beating him -- it's him losing. And he hates losing. (Dumb fucker still has no clue that, had he given a strong speech about Charlottesville a few days earlier, properly condemning Nazis, he'd be "winning" in the meta debate with the media.)

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On this view, most Republicans are good with this. A few are really committed to the principle of equality and also limited government, and struggle with Trump, but it turns out that most liked limited government because they were opposed to the federal government's ability/propensity to level traditional hierarchies and act on the promise of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Squaring equality and limited govt is a tricky thing when you expand "the promise of the Fourteenth Amendment." Affirmative Action and anti-discrimination laws are fine. But where does that "promise" end? The friction is between those who see it as a limited thing, and those who think it should apply more widely, with a govt not only redressing the effects of slavery and Jim Crow, but also using all sorts of policies to effect desired social behaviors.

The country owes a debt to those it enslaved. Nobody argues that. But under this umbrella, how much license is given for the country to tell businesses how they must act in regard to numerous other minorities who were not enslaved? We've expanded the "promise" you note to a degree a lot of Republicans feel goes far beyond what is prudent.

I don't know where the line ought to be. I don't think anyone does. And I think it changes all the time, making this subject all the more difficult.

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eta: A great many Republicans are more concerned with the zero-sum game over political power and status within this country than they are with things like growth and opportunity and growing the pie, and this is because they are acutely conscious of the status they have lost and are losing, and that their political coalition is smaller, population-wise and waning. This is why Republicans are basically OK with voter suppression -- it preserves their place.
Privately, a great many are following a simpler logic: Get as much as you can while you can, and find a way to protect it. A lot of Democrats are following the same plan. This is understandable in an environment where there's so much potential volatility lurking in so many corners. At core, it's always the lizard brain at work. And the lizard brain's only real concern is survival and lifestyle protection (Read: Money).
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