We are all Slave now.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

True conservatives, libertarians, moderates, quasi-conservatives, and quasi-libertarians are adrift. I don't know where we go. I'm just floating around, and occasionally my boat runs past Hank's or SEC Chick's or Slave's and we wave to each other. But we really don't have a place in Trumpland.

Adrift?

You mean "fucked".

And fucking the rest of us.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

What really pisses me off about the damn bakers is not their politics, it is that they give Christianity a bad name. The religion I cling to is a faith in which God is not a bigot.

Oddly, Scripture doesn't say anything about the role of baked goods in a wedding. To hear Colorado bakers and some conservatives, you'd think the baked goods play an integral role, rather than serving as a tasty treat at the reception that follows.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

So I was right? This is exactly what i said.

It's what I told you yesterday when you asked the first time.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by SEC_Chick

People like Ty thinking they understand conservatives in middle America is why we have Trump. I have seen a few #NeverTrumpers move to Trump agnostics and are now are full on MAGA. And it had nothing to do with Trump, but everything to do with idiots like Maxine Waters. I'm increasingly resigning myself to Trump 2020.

I'll go back to clinging to my guns and religion, now.

I agree with you 100% regarding liberal caricatures galvanizing Trumpkins and even converting moderates to Trump.

Nobody likes whiners or self-righteous finger waggers telling them how to think. And that pretty much describes the Left right now.

But (huge caveat here), Ty isn't wrong. His main point, that conservatism doesn't really exist anymore, is correct. You're a conservative. Could you square Trump's platform with your traditional conservative views? Of course not. Which is why you went #NeverTrump and voted third party.

Ty's point would have been better made as, "These Trump supporters are not conservatives. They are just calling themselves that." I think that's what he intended to say. Which, of course, invites the next discussion. If Trump is largely anathema to both true conservatism and liberalism, do true conservatives and liberals align to fight his movement? Or do we have a three party system of liberals, true conservatives, and "temporarily deluded quasi-fascists"?
______
Note: I use "liberals" because I am socially liberal and think the word needs to be preserved. But I fear these animals are nearly as extinct as true conservatives, replaced with "progressives" who hold some authoritarian views ("I know what's best for you, and I'm going to make you follow my rules!").

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

"People who thought they were conservative who disagree are discovering that they are no longer conservative." I was thinking of you when I said that, actually. Your twitter feed may be full of those people, but you have been left to guard an isolated outpost while the rest of the army is fighting its battles somewhere else. If conservatives thought like you, we wouldn't be here.

"People like Ty thinking they understand conservatives in middle America is why we have Trump." This, on the other hand, is quintessentially conservative nonsense. No one votes for Trump because of what I think or say. (Oddly, no one ever suggests that people changed their minds to vote for Hillary because of "Fuck your feelings" shirts.)

Regarding Trump's base growing as a result of caricature, the NY Times agrees with SEC.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Not Bob

Do you really think so? Is Ty’s arrogance and the condescension of the coastal liberals on social issues really enough to drive you and people like you to vote for Trump as a way of retaliating against the arrogance, smarminess, and condescension of liberals? Why not support a Ted Kennedy to Trump’s Jimmy Carter instead?

Just to underscore the point, if a conservative makes a sweeping and possibly tone-deaf characterization about liberals, I don't think anyone would jump to call it "arrogance". The propensity of conservatives (there, SEC Chick, now I'll think of you as a conservative again) to feel aggrieved and victimized by having to live in a country with liberals is truly remarkable. "Arrogant"? All I did is try out an too long for Twitter on an internet chat board for lawyers. I'm just describing what I see on Twitter and Facebook.

The idea that this "arrogance" drives anyone to vote for Republicans totally confuses cause and effect. Someone *is* a conservative because they react to liberals in this way. The reaction to libs and the desire to trigger libs is the essence of conservatism. My two cents: As awful as Trump is, Never Trumpers continue to see themselves as a conservative because her reaction to liberals is so strong, and that reaction puts her in a camp with Trump and other conservatives.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Nobody likes whiners or self-righteous finger waggers telling them how to think. And that pretty much describes the Left right now.

Dude, you knew what you were doing, and just decided to fuck us all.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Adrift?

You mean "fucked".

And fucking the rest of us.

You don't need faith to accept Newton's Third Law.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I agree with you 100% regarding liberal caricatures galvanizing Trumpkins and even converting moderates to Trump.

I completely reject this fucked up notion that I have to somehow tiptoe around the fact that, for example, a not insignificant percentage of Trump supporters are racist xenophobic assholes because, if I actually articulate that, I am being a judgmental liberal elite driving people into Trump's arms. I just saw a video where a women, basically using Trump's exact words, yelled at a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, saying Mexicans were rapists, animals, and drug dealers.

https://twitter.com/KenidraRWoods_/s...43243181027330

If some more moderate conservatives are going to embrace Trump, and his explicit emboldening of racial and ethnic hatred, because they see coastal arrogance as the greater evil, or because it hurts their fragile self-esteem to be told that some of their view are unacceptable, then they can rot in whatever fucking hell their moronic religion proselytizes about.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Dude, you knew what you were doing, and just decided to fuck us all.

This is a different discussion. We've been over that ground endlessly. There is nothing constructive to be discussed there. We will never agree.

But the bleating folks of the moment are not Hillary Democrats. Those moderates are also adrift.

The battle of the moment is between two groups with authoritarian bent. The Trumpkins wish to take us back to a '50s that never was. The progressives who've supplanted liberals and moderates as the bullhorn of the Democrats are busybodies who want all of us to live according to their rules. The latter is far more benign than the former, but does anyone wish to live under the tyranny of any group that thinks "it knows best"? I know I don't.

Buckley once said he'd rather be governed by random names in the phone book than Harvard faculty. (That's not anti-intellectual, as he was saying it as a "boorish Yalie" [hat tip, Montgomery Burns]). I find this sort of thinking persuasive when I consider some of the policy suggestions I hear from modern progressives. There's a definite air of, "We're smart, and we know what policy will work." Ah yes... and then the law of unintended consequences rears its head years later.

The fastest road to hell is paved with good intentions, with asphalt rollers driven by bright young kids with degrees who are sure they've got life figured out at 30, and their pure academic mentors who've never left the Ivory Tower.

I'm adrift because I do not wish to be governed by know it alls or know nothings. And I don't seem to be offered anything in the middle right now.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

I completely reject this fucked up notion that I have to somehow tiptoe around the fact that, for example, a not insignificant percentage of Trump supporters are racist xenophobic assholes because, if I actually articulate that, I am being a judgmental liberal elite driving people into Trump's arms. I just saw a video where a women, basically using Trump's exact words, yelled at a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, saying Mexicans were rapists, animals, and drug dealers.

https://twitter.com/KenidraRWoods_/s...43243181027330

If some more moderate conservatives are going to embrace Trump, and his explicit emboldening of racial and ethic hatred, because they see coastal arrogance as the greater evil, or because it hurts their fragile self-esteem to be told that some of their view are unacceptable, then they can rot in whatever fucking hell their moronic religion proselytizes about.

I don't think anyone has a duty to tiptoe around these people. I think calling them racists and xenophobes is fine. Many off them are, and that's just a fact, and I've personally said it to many of their faces.

It's when you lump all "conservatives" under the Trump umbrella that you lose moderates. SEC is right that a lot of traditional conservatives get seriously offended at being labeled xenophobes, racists, etc.

Pundits should be careful to retain the distinction between conservatives and hardcore Trump supporters. That latter should be called Trump Populists, or as I've noted, "temporarily deluded quasi-fascists."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

"Feelings" should not have any place in policy or law. The correct word is "rights."

You have certain rights upon which I cannot infringe, regardless of my "feelings" about whether and to what extent you should have those rights.

So lump me in with the "fuck your feelings' crowd in regard to policy and law. Policy and law are not the place where we assuage anyone's "feelings." There is no obligation to make sure people's feelings are not hurt. We can and should discuss things like feelings, but that's between private individuals, not a matter for govt intervention.

Thanks for reading my post, but you completely missed my point. When conservatives wear shirts that say, "fuck your feelings," no one calls them arrogant, and the mainstream media civility police don't leap into action. When Rep. Maxine Waters (D. - Cal.) makes ambiguous comments about shaming politicians, conservatives leap into outrage, an emotion that curiously expressed itself as more like gleeful celebration when Rep. Greg Gianforte (R. - Mont.) actually physically assaulted a reporter. As Michael Kinsley once said, I think, half of national politics is Republicans clutching their pearls about Democrats doing things that Republicans rolled out two election cycles earlier.

eta: "Mike Kinsley once wisely noted that half of politics is Republicans getting vapors when Democrats try out tactics Republicans pioneered two cycles earlier" link

But the rest of your point - that most conservatives today (and almost all Trumpkins) aren't conservatives at all, is accurate.

And that wasn't my point either. My point is that conservatism *is* where most conservatives are. What is is has changed, because conservatives have changed in. People like SEC Chick have been left behind as the movement has gone somewhere else. The sooner the rest of us realize this and get a grip on it, the better. Pretending that there is some Platonic ideal of conservatism that most conservatives are ignorantly deviating from is just denial.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I agree with you 100% regarding liberal caricatures galvanizing Trumpkins and even converting moderates to Trump.

Total fucking nonsense.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

This is a different discussion. We've been over that ground endlessly. There is nothing constructive to be discussed there. We will never agree.

But the bleating folks of the moment are not Hillary Democrats. Those moderates are also adrift.

The battle of the moment is between two groups with authoritarian bent. The Trumpkins wish to take us back to a '50s that never was. The progressives who've supplanted liberals and moderates as the bullhorn of the Democrats are busybodies who want all of us to live according to their rules. The latter is far more benign than the former, but does anyone wish to live under the tyranny of any group that thinks "it knows best"? I know I don't.

Buckley once said he'd rather be governed by random names in the phone book than Harvard faculty. (That's not anti-intellectual, as he was saying it as a "boorish Yalie" [hat tip, Montgomery Burns]). I find this sort of thinking persuasive when I consider some of the policy suggestions I hear from modern progressives. There's a definite air of, "We're smart, and we know what policy will work." Ah yes... and then the law of unintended consequences rears its head years later.

The fastest road to hell is paved with good intentions, with asphalt rollers driven by bright young kids with degrees who are sure they've got life figured out at 30, and their pure academic mentors who've never left the Ivory Tower.

I'm adrift because I do not wish to be governed by know it alls or know nothings. And I don't seem to be offered anything in the middle right now.

Actually, the Hillary forces are pretty much winning everything in sight on the Democratic Party side these days. The Berners are falling flat. Have you missed the last 18 months of elections?

Of course, you know by now that Buckley was a fixture of my childhood, and someone I interacted with quite a bit. He was an elite and effete snob, and an out-of-the-closet racist, who would have been quite comfortable with the authoritarianism expressed by Trump. He wasn't complaining about the Harvard faculty thinking they were better than him, he was pointing out that he was better than them, and fully capable of manipulating random names in the phone book.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Regarding Trump's base growing as a result of caricature, the NY Times agrees with SEC.

That article is bullshit that proves my point. It's not clear whether the NYT reporter who wrote that article knew it, but Gina Anders is a longtime conservative activist. She is not changing her mind about anything because of "caricature." She worked on Ron Paul's campaign, for Christ's sake.