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> America so thoroughly that the head of the “conservative” party is a three-times-divorced man of little character. I think that’s an interesting point. The p

> America so thoroughly that the head of the “conservative” party is a three-times-divorced man of little character. I think that’s an interesting point. The political window has shifted further and further left in recent years. The fact is he’s not the head of the conservative moment, he’s the head of the Republican Party. There are differing factions and he promised something most in the party could support. For example, he supported states rights during the pandemic and didn’t use force. Similarly, the focus was domestic production and an improved foreign policy. Finally, there was a decent support of policies for the working class. I’m not personally for the man, but I can see why there was support. It’s the most conservative president in decades by most measurements, though not personal life.

throwaway6734 5y ago
Support for states rights was wildly inconsistent and dependent on the issue. The focus on domestic production was largely via anti free-trade protectionist policies. The foreign policy was largely unipolar and anti-nato. Trump is absolutely not a small-c conservative. He's more like a European right wing populist than Reagan or Bush sr.
Ensorceled 5y ago
> The political window has shifted further and further left in recent years. As an outside observer, I'm Canadian, this viewpoint of many Americans that their politics has shifted "left" is flabbergasting. The SC has definitely shifted hard right and Roe v. Wade is essentially overturned, or being, overturned in many states. "Don't say gay" and other anti LGBQT+ laws are being passed. I feel you are using a very "true Scotsman" definition of Conservative in your world view in order to paint Republicans as "left".
- fnqra 5y ago
  - FridgeSeal 5y ago
    > it reverts to the centrist opinion of the 1990s/2000s I don’t know, sort of feels like we’ve largely moved on from the centrist opinions of the turn of the millennium. You’d get the half-shame branding of “metrosexual” for dressing better than average or liking things marginally off the mainline of masculinity, wasn’t exactly a particularly supportive attitude back then. > Brigaded in less than a minute. Well done, LGBTQIA+ KGB. Not exactly doing yourself any favours here. Behaving like this makes your point get lost in the emotional hysteria of your reaction.
    - Epiphany21 5y ago
      >You’d get the half-shame branding of “metrosexual” for dressing better than average "Better than average" is highly subjective. There have always been expectations in every society about how you're supposed to dress and comport yourself in public. The styles and forms these expectations take are largely arbitrary and in constant flux, but the uniformity they provide is anything but. The reason why that kind of uniformity is naturally desirable is because being the odd one out is more often dangerous than it is advantageous. The world is an incredibly dangerous place, so if you exhibit aberrant and/or disruptive behaviors from the majority population, their default response is going to be to shame you, or shut you up, or make you go away. It doesn't matter what the behavior is, only that it deviates from the norm. There have always been hippies, flamboyant gays, and other eccentric types who have found themselves the odd one out (hello there). But I would argue that their status in society is really determined by the relationships they have with others. If you build up a decent rapport with someone, they'll usually tolerate more of your aberrant behaviors, and might not mind them at all since said behaviors are coming from you specifically. To tie this back into some of the previous posts, being gay is a quality but it's not a redeeming one, and it doesn't make up for a person's negative traits. There seems to be this expectation from very sheltered people that being the odd one out should afford them certain privileges, often related to some kind of victim status. In reality, people will just see you as weak and bully you for those perceived weaknesses. Just my two cents as someone who eschews the LGBTBLAHBLAH+++ label for myself, since I don't want to be associated with a cult of corporate and pseudo-academic pandering that deprives me of my agency makes certain assumptions about my morals and politics.
- lettergram 5y ago
  > "Don't say gay" and other anti LGBQT+ laws are being passed. The law could be described as “baring presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-10 year olds” After the age of 10 discussions in the classroom can occur. And at any age (5-10), children can ask about sex, but the teachers cannot say “don’t tell your parents”. Which was happening... Anyway, it has support from all sides. It’s actually a great point about how far the political window has moved. A large segment of the population believes we shouldn’t be discussing anything related to sex, religion or politics in the classroom at any age.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    > The law could be described as “baring presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-8 year olds” One of the authors of the bill was asked if a math textbook that had a word problem saying "Jimmy and his dads go to the store..." would be in violation of this law. He responded that this was precisely the sort of thing the law was intending to prevent. The law is very much not just about direct sex education prior to 3rd grade.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      Such subversively worded math problems should be avoided, no matter who the named parties are. "Jimmy, Jack, and John go to the store..." would be just as effective of a setup for a story problem without sneaking in moral displays.
      - UncleMeat 5y ago
        Regardless of your opinion of the "subversive" nature of such a word problem, it becomes exceedingly clear that the bill is about more than "presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-10 year olds", as the parent claims.
      - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
        Are they also going to avoid tacit mentions of heterosexual relationships?
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  "Don't say gay" used to be the rule not just in elementary schools but in most organizations in the US. Up until 2011, you would be immediately dismissed from the military if you said gay under the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. The Democratic president at the time claimed to have a Bible-based belief that marriage is between one man and one woman, although a lot of commentators suspect he was lying for political advantage. I wouldn't claim that there's no issues the US as shifted right on, and you're right that abortion is a big one, but I don't think anyone who remembers what the country was like a decade or two ago could deny a general leftwards shift.
- sanderjd 5y ago
  The culture has shifted fairly significantly left while a backlash to that, in conjunction with a bunch of weird details about our system of government and just the random timing of elderly people passing away, has shifted political power significantly to the right.
  - Ensorceled 5y ago
    Agreed, the Americans I routinely encounter are not that different from Canadians but US politics is off the charts to the right at the moment.
- usrn 5y ago
  Canadian politics are extremely different from American politics so even though other aspects of our culture are shared you have to pay much closer attention to understand what's going on over the border. (This goes both ways, it took me years to understand how on earth your current PM could get elected.) One other issue is that both sides will focus on what's happening in individual states and act like the whole country is behaving that way. What's really happening is that people are taking mutually exclusive extreme positions and it's influencing the state laws. This is by design and allows people who disagree to live in harmony.
throwaway_srb 5y ago
Can you please distinguish between the ex-presidents’s words and actions? He supported domestic production, but failed to do anything meaningful. He claimed to support the working class but then passed the TCJA which benefited the owners of capital more than labor. He did get a few things right like Operation Warp Speed, but it’s overshadowed by the sheer incompetence of the implementation of other actions (ref. CARES act). I’m not trying to start a flame war nor am I insinuating that you are presenting arguments in bad faith; I’m merely stating that the actions need to be contrasted with the words. The real puzzle to me is the level of support he enjoys after a term in the office. IMO there are much better people to implement the policies that he claims to champion (eg Ron DeSantis, Tom Cotton) who also happen to be vastly more competent.
DebtDeflation 5y ago
>Finally, there was a decent support of policies for the working class. Please provide actual policy examples. I don't mean like when he put on a hard hat and pretended to dig coal with an imaginary shovel while on stage, I mean actual tangible policy proposals that would have improved the lives of working folks. Tariffs were very likely a net negative. Tax giveaways to build domestic factories almost never resulted in actual factories being built or jobs being created. I can't think of anything else.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  Stopping mass illegal immigration that undercuts native workers, and pushes up living costs, especially housing.
  - coryrc 5y ago
    There were fewer deportations per year under TFG than Obama. Not sure if you've checked what happened to living costs and housing during that administration, because they sure went up a lot.
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      The parent was asking about “policy proposals”. I imagine lack of success of President Trump in implementing his proposals has made many of his voters unhappy. That said, if you don’t focus on deportations, but instead look at the entire picture, note that the total net illegal immigrant flow was significantly lower during President Trump than it was during President Obama, and has jumped through the roof as soon as President Biden took over.
      - coryrc 5y ago
        > I imagine lack of success of President Trump in implementing his proposals has made many of his voters unhappy Somehow that hasn't happened.
      - Workaccount2 5y ago

throwaway6734 5y ago

Support for states rights was wildly inconsistent and dependent on the issue. The focus on domestic production was largely via anti free-trade protectionist policies. The foreign policy was largely unipolar and anti-nato. Trump is absolutely not a small-c conservative. He's more like a European right wing populist than Reagan or Bush sr.

Ensorceled 5y ago

> The political window has shifted further and further left in recent years. As an outside observer, I'm Canadian, this viewpoint of many Americans that their politics has shifted "left" is flabbergasting. The SC has definitely shifted hard right and Roe v. Wade is essentially overturned, or being, overturned in many states. "Don't say gay" and other anti LGBQT+ laws are being passed. I feel you are using a very "true Scotsman" definition of Conservative in your world view in order to paint Republicans as "left".

fnqra 5y ago
- FridgeSeal 5y ago
  > it reverts to the centrist opinion of the 1990s/2000s I don’t know, sort of feels like we’ve largely moved on from the centrist opinions of the turn of the millennium. You’d get the half-shame branding of “metrosexual” for dressing better than average or liking things marginally off the mainline of masculinity, wasn’t exactly a particularly supportive attitude back then. > Brigaded in less than a minute. Well done, LGBTQIA+ KGB. Not exactly doing yourself any favours here. Behaving like this makes your point get lost in the emotional hysteria of your reaction.
  - Epiphany21 5y ago
    >You’d get the half-shame branding of “metrosexual” for dressing better than average "Better than average" is highly subjective. There have always been expectations in every society about how you're supposed to dress and comport yourself in public. The styles and forms these expectations take are largely arbitrary and in constant flux, but the uniformity they provide is anything but. The reason why that kind of uniformity is naturally desirable is because being the odd one out is more often dangerous than it is advantageous. The world is an incredibly dangerous place, so if you exhibit aberrant and/or disruptive behaviors from the majority population, their default response is going to be to shame you, or shut you up, or make you go away. It doesn't matter what the behavior is, only that it deviates from the norm. There have always been hippies, flamboyant gays, and other eccentric types who have found themselves the odd one out (hello there). But I would argue that their status in society is really determined by the relationships they have with others. If you build up a decent rapport with someone, they'll usually tolerate more of your aberrant behaviors, and might not mind them at all since said behaviors are coming from you specifically. To tie this back into some of the previous posts, being gay is a quality but it's not a redeeming one, and it doesn't make up for a person's negative traits. There seems to be this expectation from very sheltered people that being the odd one out should afford them certain privileges, often related to some kind of victim status. In reality, people will just see you as weak and bully you for those perceived weaknesses. Just my two cents as someone who eschews the LGBTBLAHBLAH+++ label for myself, since I don't want to be associated with a cult of corporate and pseudo-academic pandering that deprives me of my agency makes certain assumptions about my morals and politics.
lettergram 5y ago
> "Don't say gay" and other anti LGBQT+ laws are being passed. The law could be described as “baring presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-10 year olds” After the age of 10 discussions in the classroom can occur. And at any age (5-10), children can ask about sex, but the teachers cannot say “don’t tell your parents”. Which was happening... Anyway, it has support from all sides. It’s actually a great point about how far the political window has moved. A large segment of the population believes we shouldn’t be discussing anything related to sex, religion or politics in the classroom at any age.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  > The law could be described as “baring presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-8 year olds” One of the authors of the bill was asked if a math textbook that had a word problem saying "Jimmy and his dads go to the store..." would be in violation of this law. He responded that this was precisely the sort of thing the law was intending to prevent. The law is very much not just about direct sex education prior to 3rd grade.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Such subversively worded math problems should be avoided, no matter who the named parties are. "Jimmy, Jack, and John go to the store..." would be just as effective of a setup for a story problem without sneaking in moral displays.
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      Regardless of your opinion of the "subversive" nature of such a word problem, it becomes exceedingly clear that the bill is about more than "presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-10 year olds", as the parent claims.
    - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
      Are they also going to avoid tacit mentions of heterosexual relationships?
SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
"Don't say gay" used to be the rule not just in elementary schools but in most organizations in the US. Up until 2011, you would be immediately dismissed from the military if you said gay under the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. The Democratic president at the time claimed to have a Bible-based belief that marriage is between one man and one woman, although a lot of commentators suspect he was lying for political advantage. I wouldn't claim that there's no issues the US as shifted right on, and you're right that abortion is a big one, but I don't think anyone who remembers what the country was like a decade or two ago could deny a general leftwards shift.
sanderjd 5y ago
The culture has shifted fairly significantly left while a backlash to that, in conjunction with a bunch of weird details about our system of government and just the random timing of elderly people passing away, has shifted political power significantly to the right.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  Agreed, the Americans I routinely encounter are not that different from Canadians but US politics is off the charts to the right at the moment.
usrn 5y ago
Canadian politics are extremely different from American politics so even though other aspects of our culture are shared you have to pay much closer attention to understand what's going on over the border. (This goes both ways, it took me years to understand how on earth your current PM could get elected.) One other issue is that both sides will focus on what's happening in individual states and act like the whole country is behaving that way. What's really happening is that people are taking mutually exclusive extreme positions and it's influencing the state laws. This is by design and allows people who disagree to live in harmony.

throwaway_srb 5y ago

Can you please distinguish between the ex-presidents’s words and actions? He supported domestic production, but failed to do anything meaningful. He claimed to support the working class but then passed the TCJA which benefited the owners of capital more than labor. He did get a few things right like Operation Warp Speed, but it’s overshadowed by the sheer incompetence of the implementation of other actions (ref. CARES act). I’m not trying to start a flame war nor am I insinuating that you are presenting arguments in bad faith; I’m merely stating that the actions need to be contrasted with the words. The real puzzle to me is the level of support he enjoys after a term in the office. IMO there are much better people to implement the policies that he claims to champion (eg Ron DeSantis, Tom Cotton) who also happen to be vastly more competent.

DebtDeflation 5y ago

>Finally, there was a decent support of policies for the working class. Please provide actual policy examples. I don't mean like when he put on a hard hat and pretended to dig coal with an imaginary shovel while on stage, I mean actual tangible policy proposals that would have improved the lives of working folks. Tariffs were very likely a net negative. Tax giveaways to build domestic factories almost never resulted in actual factories being built or jobs being created. I can't think of anything else.

xyzzyz 5y ago
Stopping mass illegal immigration that undercuts native workers, and pushes up living costs, especially housing.
- coryrc 5y ago
  There were fewer deportations per year under TFG than Obama. Not sure if you've checked what happened to living costs and housing during that administration, because they sure went up a lot.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    The parent was asking about “policy proposals”. I imagine lack of success of President Trump in implementing his proposals has made many of his voters unhappy. That said, if you don’t focus on deportations, but instead look at the entire picture, note that the total net illegal immigrant flow was significantly lower during President Trump than it was during President Obama, and has jumped through the roof as soon as President Biden took over.
    - coryrc 5y ago
      > I imagine lack of success of President Trump in implementing his proposals has made many of his voters unhappy Somehow that hasn't happened.
    - Workaccount2 5y ago