Yet such fantasies are now the common currency of politics on the American right. Remember the days when pundits solemnly declared that Trumpism was caused by economic anxiety? Well, despite a booming economy, there’s still plenty of justified anxiety out there, reflecting many people’s real struggles: America is still a nation riddled with inequality, insecurity and injustice. But the anxiety driving MAGA isn’t driven by reality. It is, instead, driven by dystopian visions unrelated to real experience.
That is, at this point, Republican political strategy depends largely on frightening voters who are personally doing relatively well not just according to official statistics but also by their own accounts, by telling them that terrible things are happening to other people.
You must log in or register to comment.
Took you this long to notice, did it NYT?
They had another article today that effectively said “yes, the insurrection is made of insurrection.”
Is it possible they fell into some kind of time warp, and are perceiving the universe at a slower rate than the rest of us?
It’s more that the NYT is studiously centrist and is getting to the point where it is OK for their left-of-center opinion writers to say this kind of thing
the NYT is studiously centrist
More center-right to right wing. Just like the DNC leadership and strategists with which they’re joined at the hip.
it’s BS for polite white NY society and it’s garbage. give my grimy seattle anarchist zines, pls. oh wait, that got taken over by the trans movement focused on gender terms or some BS that has nothing to do with victory.
i remember when i believed in ppl.
It’s not like trans people matter and they are being seriously oppressed right now or anything, am I right?
Man… first it was the blacks, then it was the gays, now it’s the trans? Who are we supposed to care about next? Poor people? This is BS that has nothing to do with victory!
ride that bandwagon to nowhere!
edit: look, i get it. it’s another class of people conservatives hate and make their lives a living hell. well, guess what? they do that to all of us! get on the bus with the rest of us and let’s make way towards changing it. i’m just sick of focusing on a narrow segment of the population and losing sight of the big picture.
What ‘bandwagon’ would that be, the human rights bandwagon?
i remember when i believed in ppl.
Same homie, same
Kinda been a theme for Krugman for a while.
Ugh, it’s a Paul Krugman piece? He’s such a pro-corporate establishment hack 🤢
Nobody should ever look to him for anything, much less timely analysis of what’s going on in the real world.
Full disclosure: I’m going off the title alone in this comment. It’s late.
That said: no fucking shit
Fear mongering is kinda their thing. The illegal brown people are INVADING lol. The libs are DESTROYING our country…
Look at how they are with their guns. Every time there’s another school shooting another GUNS SAVE LIVES bumper sticker is sold. “This was preventable, if only I, Rambo was there.” No. You wouldn’t have saved shit and you don’t need a gun to survive.
The GOP and MAGA folks are nothing but scared pussies. Enough with this snowflake mentality.
The other aspect I believe plays into this is insecurity. They can’t accept brown & black people being equal, or LGBTQs being just as human as they. They can’t accept that some people don’t believe in the same God they do, or have the self confidence not to believe in any god at all. They are frightened by people making choices different from those they would make because it might mean their own choices are wrong. And they react by lashing out, trying to put “those people” back in the closet or into second class citizenship or labeling them as baby killers. They don’t have the self confidence to let others have the freedom to make their own decisions, run their own lives.
they’re the snowflakes now.
👨🚀🔫👨🚀 Always have been.
You mean the group of people, who are so afraid they need to carry guns everywhere, are based in fear
Fear and anger with absolutely no critical thought put into the issues. The two most primal feelings somebody can have.
For a group that talks shit about “snowflakes” always crying about everything, they sure like to cry about everything
Removed by mod
because it literally doesn’t matter
Spoken like someone who isn’t being demonized daily by a certain party and having your basic rights legally stripped away.
Removed by mod
The last few decades show that.
They literally show the opposite. But since you clearly have never had to debate your right to exist, then you get to think it doesn’t matter. Your indifference is a luxury not everyone gets, but I understand your blind spot. No matter what, YOUR rights won’t change.
But one party, explicitly wants to ban my ability to seek health care, so my and many other peoples access to medicine WOULD change with a vote. Being indifferent to this simply isn’t an option.
Removed by mod
Well you literally asked for examples. But if all you got is insults then whatever, I’m done here. You have a good day.
Removed, rule 3:
Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (perjorative, perjorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (perjorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
Removed by mod
Maybe you’ll understand in a few years when you’re old enough to vote.
Removed by mod
Um, this is the GOP as a whole, not just maga.
Isn’t the core personality trait for conservatives fear? Like it all basically stems from that justified or not.
Removed by mod
Others: |~~|
GOP. : |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just because “everybody does it” doesn’t mean they are equivalent. It’s like saying we both break laws when I’m speeding and you’re robbing banks.
Removed by mod
True but it doesn’t start nor end with maga. Republicans have been using fear mongering for a very long time
Removed by mod
Dude that’s the third time you’ve made this same comment on this thread. We get it, you think both sides are the same, relax.
Removed by mod
Go back to Russia
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
You seem to be doing the same duality thing: “If you are against Trump, you must be pro Biden and that is just as bad!”
Water is wet
Can we stop commenting this on every single political post? It just implies that the behavior in the article should be treated as normal by now. It’s not normal, no matter how common the media makes it seem.
This behavior isn’t normal, but it’s the MAGA morons who try to normalize it.
This article could have been written in 2017 and everybody would have gone “no shit Sherlock”
Is there anybody left in the entire country who does not understand the fundamental reality that conservatives in general are people who like to be lied to?
The thing is, they don’t know their being lied to. I think the big issue with many conservatives is that they are conditioned, basically from birth, to believe fantastical things as truth, without evidence. I.e. Bible stories as fact. Yes, Gabriel was swallowed by a whale. Of course Noah had all of the animals in the world on his boat. They learn to accept things at face value as long as it sounds good to them. This requires no critical thinking.
This is how you get otherwise intelligent people who believe right wing myths like high school kids identifying as cats and requiring litter boxes. They will believe anything as long as it confirms their biases. Belief = truth. I believe it, therefore it is true. It’s this simple to them. You can present all the evidence in the world to counter any one of their ridiculous conspiracy theories, but they will never change. Because, to them, belief = truth.
I’ve seen that with a very conservative former friend. They would send me reel after reel on Instagram of right wing talking heads discussing the “proof” they had that the coivd vaccine was deadly, “proof” that the human soul is placed in the egg at conception, and the LGBTQ+ people were really pedophiles.
There seemed to be no sense that a 30 second, highly edited reel on instagram could be false. It was telling them what they wanted to hear. The part that annoyed me was that they thought they were debating there position in good faith with these reels. That if they sent enough of them to me I would just say “Wow! you’re right, that reel from Andrew Tate really opened my eyes!”
We don’t talk any more and I hate that because we were really good friends until about 9 months ago.
OPEN YOUR EYES SHEEPLE!!!
Says the sheep with their eyes closed
i was shocked when i found out that everyone was bitching about immigrants collecting all the welfare, even though they are prohibited from working for 9 months after entering germany.
also many of them have no choice, who’s gonna employ someone who barely speaks english and not a lick of german? but no, mandatory education courses would cost money, we can’t do that.
conservatives are lying rats who just feed off of the hate they’re spreading.
No one ever addresses the fact that the same people driving the fear are the same people who own and control the country’s main media companies that blast the public day and night with propaganda.
They are in a cult and cults cannot exist without rigid hierarchy based on lies. If the cult the leader told his flock 2 + 2 = 5, that has utility the truth could never have. Cult members can repeat that lie to prove loyalty, the basis of a cult’s heirarchy.
When a Trumper tells you a crazy statement like 2 + 2 = 5, don’t look at it like they are an idiot. They understand they are telling you something normal people would find outrageous and they are testing to see how you react.
It’s almost funny to see corporate outlets like the NYT try an explain the GOP. Flat admitting half of the duopoly is in a cult and has been in a cult 40+ years does not mesh with the supposed meritocracy we live in. So these media narratives like to edge around the truth, never quite getting their because reality is a challenge to our corporate run system as well.
This sounds woefully inadequate in it’s understanding of this new incarnation of fascism. It works by fostering inequality based on a myth of an “essentialized identity”. Us vs them. So fear is just one of the tools.
And a massive driver for this is the increasing wealth inequality and sinking quality of life and prospects of prosperity. Because the old systems of propaganda do not work anymore (which the journalist is a representative of) the system “responds” by using fascism because that still works. For many decades they lie and cheat and this creates the fertile ground.
You can’t have working democracy without prosperity, security (!= constant wars) and education (!= decades of propaganda in consolidated mainstream media)
In other surprising news, water is wet.
If you don’t say “water-wise”, how can I know what you are referring to?
Whaaaaat
