zlacker

>>Ozarki+(OP)
I had no idea this was a campaign promise. Why? I don’t understand.

>>maplan+Q
Trump went around to a huge number of niche communities and promised to fix their core concerns in exchange for their support. The crypto and libertarian communities are obsessed with freeing Ulbricht. It was honestly a brilliant strategy, and probably the reason he won. Ironic that an authoritarian fascist was able to get elected by enlisting the help of anti-authoritarian communities with a single issue promise.

>>Univer+74
Unfortunately you could level the same type of name calling towards Democrats. It's now public record they colluded with all the major media outlets, coerced big tech to censor and debank opponents, imprisoned whistleblowers, violated bodily autonomy with unconstitutional mandates, weaponized the courts to conduct lawfare, and now issued an unprecedented number of pre-emptive pardons for unspecified crimes committed by Fauci, Hunter Biden, et al.

I remember when the Democrats were the anti-war party, but Biden was escalating the Ukraine war in the final days of his presidency, and celebrated Dick Cheney's endorsement of Kamala Harris. Crazy how things have changed so much. The left unanimously viewed Bush and Cheney as obviously psychopathic war criminals, and now almost all the Neocons have jumped over to the Democrats. The left used to be extremely skeptical of globalization as evident by the Seattle WTO Protests, mass immigration as evident by Bernie Sanders' comments on its effect on workers' wages, and Big Pharma's perverse incentives to keep people sick and regularly consuming drugs. Yet the media has utterly psyop'd the progressives... it's kinda disturbing.

>>exover+Hd
Authoritarianism is also popular with the democrats right now, but I don’t see how anything I said is name calling: I used terms with a specific meaning appropriate for the context- the only reason they have a negative connotation is because of what they actually mean. Do you know of other terms with the same meaning and more neutral connotations?

>>Univer+Ni
If you go by Trump's actions in his first term he was a pretty standard Republican, and mostly just cut taxes, with a lot of wild rhetoric which is part of his deal making shtick. In real terms I don't see Trump as uniquely authoritarian, probably less so than Biden, Obama and Bush. He seems to support free speech far more, which is the foundation for all other freedoms. He makes his money from the leisure industry, so his interests are aligned with Americans doing well and having disposable income. And he supports decentralization, so liberal states can adopt liberal policies, and so forth.

It seems people forget about the insane infringements of civil rights through the Patriot Act, NDAA, mass surveillance, lockdowns, firing people over vaccine mandates, etc. A poll showed about half of Democrats supported putting Americans into camps if they didn't take the vaccine, and a third supported seizing custody of their children. Democrats supported mass censorship and state control over media, which is far more authoritarian and fascist than anything the Republicans were doing.

>>exover+gY1
I'll leave the authoritarianism aspect to someone else but I'll point out that the part of your comment where "he makes his money from the leisure industry, so his interests are aligned with Americans doing well and having disposable income" is not representative of his ability let alone judgement in planning/making decisions that reflect those interests. You can be in favor of something and completely botch the execution.

The PATRIOT Act was introduced by a Republican and signed into law by a Republican and had wide support from both parties. 62 Democrats and 3 Republicans voted against it in the House (there was only a single senate vote against it), and you can't have a discussion about the Patriot Act's introduction without bringing up the fact that it was enacted at the height of the post-9/11 fear. It has always been a controversial and flawed bill.

Most of today's social issues aren't about left versus right, they are about class.