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.
I had to stop reading at “despite a booming economy.” It may be booming for Paul Krugman and the wealthy, but for the rest of us it sucks. No amount of gaslighting will convince the 750k unhoused, the 65% living paycheck to paycheck, the 50% of renters that cant afford rent (soon to possibly be homeless,) the skyrocketing auto repos and credit card usage for necessities that the economy is doing well.
He may as well include BlueMAGA in that statement of ‘based on fear,’ thats how the DNC holds onto power, by selling fear. Fear of what that other guy might do, while we do the same thing.
The Democrats are not bluemaga, they operate and reason out policies completely differently, and don’t pretend that you not reading makes you an authority on the matter.
Please provide evidence, especially relative to the number of maga and the real world consequences of maga that have occurred?
It sure wasn’t Blue maga, a made up group, that violently stormed the capital trying to overturn an election, or blue maga, a made-up group, that mailed forged election certificates to the national archives and the vice president.
I cannot in good conscience upvote the OP, bc of exactly that sentence. However, their (NYT) gaslighting I think is of a different kind. For one, there are THREE entities involved here - which they hoped you would not notice: there are MAGA Republicans, there are the Dems, and then there are the billionaires who control both regardless of who wins (guess who owns the NYT btw:-P). The billionaire class would like it very much - please!? - if you would pretend that they did not exist, and were not the cause of there being no money available for common folks to eat/breathe/everything else, as they send rockets into space, self-admittedly bc they have literally no idea how to spend all that amount of money…
But as for BlueMAGA, there I disagree with you, bc the two sides are nowhere close to being equal. You might have no idea how close this country came to an actual coup - and I don’t even mean merely January 6. The Republicans winning is worth being afraid of, and I mean literal and actual fear not figuratively by any means. As in by-by democracy as Trump declares himself dictator for life, and then we have a literal civil war over it. It’s no joking matter, in that direction. While if Democrats win, school shootings won’t diminish in any way, so… also not great, but again nowhere close to being equal.
The BlueMAGA cult is as deranged in their loyalty to anything with a D in their name as a mainstream MAGA.
Nearly 100% of the stuff claims he will do cant happen. If the President had that type of unilateral power to change stuff without Congress why hasnt Biden exercised it? He couldn’t even repeal the ACA with a Republican Congress.
There was no coup or coup attempt, there was a bunch of hillbillies that stormed the Capital building. And the same gaslighting media like the NYT, among others, see dollar signs from liberals and call it coup. In the end we will see the entire Jan 6 dog and pony show was just a distraction to keep the rabid dogs at attention and barking.
Ignoring the likelihood that you are trolling me at this point, and responding solely to the issues at hand:
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you are entitled to your opinion, but so too can people down-vote and block you; but why not choose to educate yourself on these matters before speaking, rather than make others do that work for you? Seriously, you will find that others listen to what you say much more readily when you are very careful to ensure that they match only existing facts. Ignorance is no excuse, outside of the kiddie playground areas. Then again, I misspelled “by-by” (should have been “bye-bye”), so like, nobody’s perfect or at least *I* am not:-P, though still there’s something to this so I hope you will think about it.
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some of his supporters are that way yes - but the only time stereotypically identifying the most extreme behavior out of an entire population and trying to pass it off as the “norm” works is in… well, politics. WE should hold ourselves to a higher standard than THEM though, no?
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ofc he can’t do half the stuff he promises - but neither can Trump, who is even older and even more rambling-er-est, and in a contest of lying wins hands-down. Ofc I can call Biden a poopie-head McButtFace (anytime I want! especially in my own head! you can’t stop me, muwhahaha!:-P) but… why lower the discourse to that level? They both have their issues… though nowhere near equally. And some of those issues they have in common with one another, as with most politicians before and surely most after them as well.
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I specifically said that I was not talking about January 6. I’ll leave this to you to research - you shouldn’t trust me anyway, so best to find out for yourself:-).
Oh well, my conscience is clear - I tried to help. Make of all this what you will ofc.
In other surprising news, water is wet.
This article could have been written in 2017 and everybody would have gone “no shit Sherlock”
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.
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.
