4 ms·

A well known risk of democracy is populist nonsense laws that appeal to a vocal minority or entrenched voting block. The legislator who pushed this turd of a l

A well known risk of democracy is populist nonsense laws that appeal to a vocal minority or entrenched voting block. The legislator who pushed this turd of a law knew what he was doing and the consequences were moot. Getting re elected was more important. The modern Republican party of small government and low taxes is long gone. in its stead is basically a zombie that shambles from culture war to culture war in a desperate bid to remain relevant to anyone who still thinks cutting a billionaires taxes makes any sense in 2023. It advances dead cat legislation and reactionary edicts against the very first amendment it insists it champions.

fredsmith219 3y ago
[flagged]
- mindslight 3y ago
  The bulk of the Party doesn't even seem to actually care about the 2nd amendment - see the outpouring of support for the police summarily executing individuals exercising their right to bear arms. The topic has become something more like a performative security blanket of imagining some heroic last stand as a simulation of fighting tyranny.
- nxx788 3y ago
  And there's a second amendment contingent on the left now too. Organizations like the socialist rifle association (SRA), Pink Pistols, John Brown Gun Club (JBGC) and several others. It's far from the majority position left of center, but there's plenty of folks who recognize the disproportionate impact gun laws have on minorities, and the difference in arms between an increasingly violent right and the minority groups in America.
givemeethekeys 3y ago
Always has been a part of all parties in every country and always will be.
4RealFreedom 3y ago
Where have you ever seen a mainstream republican candidate for small government? Reagan is the only one in my lifetime and even that is questionable. Both parties have always been about using the power of government for their own purposes. This is why the federal government never gets smaller. It's unfortunate because both parties are heavy handed in their pursuit of power. It's unavoidable because people always want action even to the determent of reason. This is not republican or democrat - this is human nature.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  Most of them. Not that they actually implement small government when they get into office, but they'll scream it from the rooftops because to the "small town folks," small government equates to turning a blind eye to social justice issues. Cutting spending is never eliminating waste from government, because they'd never think of cutting the military budget. They always specifically target social services due to Reagan's welfare queen mythology that exists to this day. Reagan wasn't "small government" either, by the way. He expanded the government faster than any other POTUS in history outside of world wars. His economic policies also gave both parties the green light to spend like it's going out of style, although Republicans are notably bad when it comes to actually making economic sense with their taxes versus their expenditures.
  - 4RealFreedom 3y ago
    He talked about "small government". He didn't actively work on reducing the size of government at all. That's why I wrote that it was questionable.
- femiagbabiaka 3y ago
  Reagan had gun control, the War on Drugs, 40% higher military spending, top down union busting via legislative technicalities. He’s wasn’t for small government at all, just lower taxes really.
  - 4RealFreedom 3y ago
KennyBlanken 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Anon_Forever 3y ago
  "Christofascists" is the leftist version of "Judeo–Bolshevism". Stop using reddit-tier rhetoric.
dimitrios1 3y ago
And the modern Democratic party is...? Just curious where you stand and what your biases are.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > the modern Democratic party is An amorphous blob. A winning strategy against an opponent who cedes the centre.
- Tanoc 3y ago
  A right of center stone dais. The majority in the Democrats don't actually want progress, they just want to maintain the previous "normal." That is despite their opposition pushing further and further right and making parts of the new "normal" facets of the old extreme. Most of this ceding of ground and drift further right has been to foster a large authoritarian surveillance system that they both benefit from. It's hard to tell if the cooperation with the Republicans towards that system is fully intentional or just a useful secondary effect of the Democrats' tactics of trying to appeal to the broadest voter base possible. Maybe a bit of both depending on the official (such as Joe Manchin).
- dclowd9901 3y ago
  A foil to capture people who don’t identify as Republican, but with actions that align pretty firmly on “right of center”.
- nxx788 3y ago
  Center right, by any reasonable analysis. Largely pro corporate, fairly disinterested in change from the status quo. Very, very few even question capitalism, let alone call for its replacement.
  - junofan 3y ago
    A more accurate answer is that the Democratic Party is a coalition party with several factions. As a coalition party, it’s not driven by an ideology.
tacticus 3y ago
[flagged]
- throw__away7391 3y ago
  Politics is fundamentally about control of resources. Any kind of ideology is in essence a side show while the real meat is where funding goes. Ideological culture war and identity-politics issues are fantastic for both parties because they motivate supporters without expending any resources. Ideologically motivated voters are sitting at the kids table eating scraps while the adults divvy up the good stuff. Party ideology will shift and twist to follow the fashions and whims of these folks as well as put forward new more effective narratives when possible, while the real interest groups who are after resources are more stable in their needs.
- bruce511 3y ago
  Small government is code of sorts for "rich over poor". The "size" of govt doesn't really matter. It's a money issue (isn't it always?) The phrase "small govt" is a proxy for a) lower taxes and b) the ability to exploit then environment, workers, immigrants, whatever without interference. I should be allowed to sell snake oil (no FDA), plunder a forest (no National Park nonsense), polute air and water (no EPA), build substandard housing, unsafe mines, and so on. Most of all taxes should be low, or preferably non-existent. And if they must be collected they must be used to help me, not just given to my neighbor, or worse, my employees. Small govt means taxes should help the rich not the poor. This is a perfectly legitimate political position for a party to take. If a majority agrees, thats democracy in action. It has served the majority well for decades, as long as the majority saw themselves as rich, or pre-rich. Unfortunately now though the majority does not see themselves as rich anymore. Gone are the factories, the solid middle-class jobs, the affordable housing. Now the majority are poor, or pre-poor. Ironically (on paper) the budget solution is obvious. Gut the military budget. There's $500 billion easy right there. (That can't really be done because the military budget is a back-door welfare program. Lots, and I mean Lots, of people get their salary from that budget.) I know, I know, the military fights for our freedoms. They keep us safe. But pretty much no US military interventions since 1945, even more since 1990, have actually "protected Americans". Protected Kuwait (1st gulf war) sure. But how did Korea, Vietnam , Loas, Cambodia, Iraq or Afghanistan "protect Americans"? I'm NOT ragging on the troops here, they go where they're sent . They do their jobs. We rightly respect them for doing a dangerous job. But the military is, at best, bloated and a money pit. Functionally it is a way of funnelling money to the rich, not the troops in harms way.
nonethewiser 3y ago
[flagged]
- philips 3y ago
  Not OP but I share their sentiments. At this point my political activism is all in on: - Getting rid of first past the post for anything else like RCV or STAR or approval - The national popular vote interstate compact to rid the winner take all issues with the presidency. Until both these things happen the political parties will both continue to degrade.
  - dcow 3y ago
    I wish Unity would come back for 2024.
  - tw04 3y ago
    You also need to ban lobbying and overturn Citizens United to have any chance of saving Democracy in the US long term.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - Qwertious 3y ago
      Those would definitely help, but a USA with actual majority-rule and viable third-party voting would have at least some chance of improving over time - if nothing else, there could be a federal "ban lobbying and overturn citizens united" party that people could first-preference.
    - nrclark 3y ago
      It's unfortunate that both of those would need to be done by congressmen, and congressmen are the ones benefiting from our current situation.
- dangus 3y ago
  You ask if we lament the fact that Republicans don’t do all the small government low tax stuff, and to that I would say that I lament the fact that they do not have policy at all, so much so that they reused their platform from 2016 for 2020 [1]. That’s right, to prepare for a billion dollar national election campaign, they wrote a single page document telling you to refer to their previous platform. [1] https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_2020.pdf https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_202...?
dclowd9901 3y ago
> a zombie that shambles from culture war to culture war I’m just going to applaud your literary sense here for a sec. Beautifully written and explained thought about this completely new and troubling phenomenon. Mostly troubling because it does seem to be working insofar as the zombie won’t goddamn die.
- smcin 3y ago
  Yes, a great analogy > ... It advances dead cat legislation and reactionary edicts... The legislative circus is a sideshow to the main event, which is fundraising from a small core of donors (which is a perversion of 1A, but we digress...).
legitster 3y ago
> The modern Republican party of small government and low taxes is long gone. A better way to think of the Republican party platform is "anti-reactionary". This descriptor makes more sense for how they seemingly jump from topic to topic. Which, credit where it is do, is probably fine in the long run in a functional political system where they can act as ballast against excesses. But as a weirdness of our time, foreign and economic policy between the two parties are pretty largely aligned so if you represent a fluid anti-reactionary platform, the only thing of value you can provide are culture war issues.
- yesbabyyes 3y ago
  Would you mind shedding light on how you find the republican party "anti-reactionary"? In my mind, they are quite reactionary.
  - legitster 3y ago
    Sorry, don't know why I phrased it as anti-reactionary. I distinctively meant reactionary.
dools 3y ago
The culture war bullshit is how they convince people to vote for small government which is against almost everyone’s financial well-being except for a vanishingly small number of rich arseholes. The core mission of the movement is still anarcho capitalism.

fredsmith219 3y ago

[flagged]

mindslight 3y ago
The bulk of the Party doesn't even seem to actually care about the 2nd amendment - see the outpouring of support for the police summarily executing individuals exercising their right to bear arms. The topic has become something more like a performative security blanket of imagining some heroic last stand as a simulation of fighting tyranny.
nxx788 3y ago
And there's a second amendment contingent on the left now too. Organizations like the socialist rifle association (SRA), Pink Pistols, John Brown Gun Club (JBGC) and several others. It's far from the majority position left of center, but there's plenty of folks who recognize the disproportionate impact gun laws have on minorities, and the difference in arms between an increasingly violent right and the minority groups in America.

givemeethekeys 3y ago

Always has been a part of all parties in every country and always will be.

4RealFreedom 3y ago

Where have you ever seen a mainstream republican candidate for small government? Reagan is the only one in my lifetime and even that is questionable. Both parties have always been about using the power of government for their own purposes. This is why the federal government never gets smaller. It's unfortunate because both parties are heavy handed in their pursuit of power. It's unavoidable because people always want action even to the determent of reason. This is not republican or democrat - this is human nature.

MisterBastahrd 3y ago
Most of them. Not that they actually implement small government when they get into office, but they'll scream it from the rooftops because to the "small town folks," small government equates to turning a blind eye to social justice issues. Cutting spending is never eliminating waste from government, because they'd never think of cutting the military budget. They always specifically target social services due to Reagan's welfare queen mythology that exists to this day. Reagan wasn't "small government" either, by the way. He expanded the government faster than any other POTUS in history outside of world wars. His economic policies also gave both parties the green light to spend like it's going out of style, although Republicans are notably bad when it comes to actually making economic sense with their taxes versus their expenditures.
- 4RealFreedom 3y ago
  He talked about "small government". He didn't actively work on reducing the size of government at all. That's why I wrote that it was questionable.
femiagbabiaka 3y ago
Reagan had gun control, the War on Drugs, 40% higher military spending, top down union busting via legislative technicalities. He’s wasn’t for small government at all, just lower taxes really.
- 4RealFreedom 3y ago

KennyBlanken 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Anon_Forever 3y ago
"Christofascists" is the leftist version of "Judeo–Bolshevism". Stop using reddit-tier rhetoric.

dimitrios1 3y ago

And the modern Democratic party is...? Just curious where you stand and what your biases are.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> the modern Democratic party is An amorphous blob. A winning strategy against an opponent who cedes the centre.
Tanoc 3y ago
A right of center stone dais. The majority in the Democrats don't actually want progress, they just want to maintain the previous "normal." That is despite their opposition pushing further and further right and making parts of the new "normal" facets of the old extreme. Most of this ceding of ground and drift further right has been to foster a large authoritarian surveillance system that they both benefit from. It's hard to tell if the cooperation with the Republicans towards that system is fully intentional or just a useful secondary effect of the Democrats' tactics of trying to appeal to the broadest voter base possible. Maybe a bit of both depending on the official (such as Joe Manchin).
dclowd9901 3y ago
A foil to capture people who don’t identify as Republican, but with actions that align pretty firmly on “right of center”.
nxx788 3y ago
Center right, by any reasonable analysis. Largely pro corporate, fairly disinterested in change from the status quo. Very, very few even question capitalism, let alone call for its replacement.
- junofan 3y ago
  A more accurate answer is that the Democratic Party is a coalition party with several factions. As a coalition party, it’s not driven by an ideology.

tacticus 3y ago

[flagged]

throw__away7391 3y ago
Politics is fundamentally about control of resources. Any kind of ideology is in essence a side show while the real meat is where funding goes. Ideological culture war and identity-politics issues are fantastic for both parties because they motivate supporters without expending any resources. Ideologically motivated voters are sitting at the kids table eating scraps while the adults divvy up the good stuff. Party ideology will shift and twist to follow the fashions and whims of these folks as well as put forward new more effective narratives when possible, while the real interest groups who are after resources are more stable in their needs.
bruce511 3y ago
Small government is code of sorts for "rich over poor". The "size" of govt doesn't really matter. It's a money issue (isn't it always?) The phrase "small govt" is a proxy for a) lower taxes and b) the ability to exploit then environment, workers, immigrants, whatever without interference. I should be allowed to sell snake oil (no FDA), plunder a forest (no National Park nonsense), polute air and water (no EPA), build substandard housing, unsafe mines, and so on. Most of all taxes should be low, or preferably non-existent. And if they must be collected they must be used to help me, not just given to my neighbor, or worse, my employees. Small govt means taxes should help the rich not the poor. This is a perfectly legitimate political position for a party to take. If a majority agrees, thats democracy in action. It has served the majority well for decades, as long as the majority saw themselves as rich, or pre-rich. Unfortunately now though the majority does not see themselves as rich anymore. Gone are the factories, the solid middle-class jobs, the affordable housing. Now the majority are poor, or pre-poor. Ironically (on paper) the budget solution is obvious. Gut the military budget. There's $500 billion easy right there. (That can't really be done because the military budget is a back-door welfare program. Lots, and I mean Lots, of people get their salary from that budget.) I know, I know, the military fights for our freedoms. They keep us safe. But pretty much no US military interventions since 1945, even more since 1990, have actually "protected Americans". Protected Kuwait (1st gulf war) sure. But how did Korea, Vietnam , Loas, Cambodia, Iraq or Afghanistan "protect Americans"? I'm NOT ragging on the troops here, they go where they're sent . They do their jobs. We rightly respect them for doing a dangerous job. But the military is, at best, bloated and a money pit. Functionally it is a way of funnelling money to the rich, not the troops in harms way.

nonethewiser 3y ago

[flagged]

philips 3y ago
Not OP but I share their sentiments. At this point my political activism is all in on: - Getting rid of first past the post for anything else like RCV or STAR or approval - The national popular vote interstate compact to rid the winner take all issues with the presidency. Until both these things happen the political parties will both continue to degrade.
- dcow 3y ago
  I wish Unity would come back for 2024.
- tw04 3y ago
  You also need to ban lobbying and overturn Citizens United to have any chance of saving Democracy in the US long term.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Qwertious 3y ago
    Those would definitely help, but a USA with actual majority-rule and viable third-party voting would have at least some chance of improving over time - if nothing else, there could be a federal "ban lobbying and overturn citizens united" party that people could first-preference.
  - nrclark 3y ago
    It's unfortunate that both of those would need to be done by congressmen, and congressmen are the ones benefiting from our current situation.
dangus 3y ago
You ask if we lament the fact that Republicans don’t do all the small government low tax stuff, and to that I would say that I lament the fact that they do not have policy at all, so much so that they reused their platform from 2016 for 2020 [1]. That’s right, to prepare for a billion dollar national election campaign, they wrote a single page document telling you to refer to their previous platform. [1] https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_2020.pdf https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_202...?

dclowd9901 3y ago

> a zombie that shambles from culture war to culture war I’m just going to applaud your literary sense here for a sec. Beautifully written and explained thought about this completely new and troubling phenomenon. Mostly troubling because it does seem to be working insofar as the zombie won’t goddamn die.

smcin 3y ago
Yes, a great analogy > ... It advances dead cat legislation and reactionary edicts... The legislative circus is a sideshow to the main event, which is fundraising from a small core of donors (which is a perversion of 1A, but we digress...).

legitster 3y ago

> The modern Republican party of small government and low taxes is long gone. A better way to think of the Republican party platform is "anti-reactionary". This descriptor makes more sense for how they seemingly jump from topic to topic. Which, credit where it is do, is probably fine in the long run in a functional political system where they can act as ballast against excesses. But as a weirdness of our time, foreign and economic policy between the two parties are pretty largely aligned so if you represent a fluid anti-reactionary platform, the only thing of value you can provide are culture war issues.

yesbabyyes 3y ago
Would you mind shedding light on how you find the republican party "anti-reactionary"? In my mind, they are quite reactionary.
- legitster 3y ago
  Sorry, don't know why I phrased it as anti-reactionary. I distinctively meant reactionary.

dools 3y ago

The culture war bullshit is how they convince people to vote for small government which is against almost everyone’s financial well-being except for a vanishingly small number of rich arseholes. The core mission of the movement is still anarcho capitalism.