Bush Jr lied his ass off to start the stupid pointless war in Iraq. Conservatives - well, Republicans in the US - have been choosing power over truth for a while now.
I don't really consider his statement a position on theology, as Trump has the most rudimentary version of faith possible (good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell, and nothing else). I instead consider it a statement of Trump reflecting on his own morality, which is itself a shock as I didn't think Trump had it in him to reflect, but I guess seeing the end makes you do these kinds of things. But this new found regret isn't actually changing his moral behavior. He isn't stopping his theft and he isn't telling his kids to change their ways to learn from his poor example. I think he thinks these peace plans he is trying to make all over the world is a way for making up for all his ill deeds without having to give up any of the benefits those deeds gave to him and his. I think his moral avatar is Darth Vader, who did one noble act to successfully redeem himself of the countless millions of lives he destroyed.
Clinton wasn't exactly known for his truth. But, I do believe there is a distinct difference between a political lie and complete bullshit. Trump is something different, in just about every negative way imaginable.
Saw them 3 weeks ago. Ripped through all the favorites with almost no banter. The only thing they didn't play I wanted to hear was UMass.
I don’t think Bush knew any better. He was just a tool. I’m no fan, but he just rubber stamped whatever the warmongers put in front of him. Much like Biden and Obama did afterward. Then all the Bush neocons became democrats during the Trump era. They’re still out there peddling disinformation in places like The Bulwark, National Review, The Atlantic, and wherever Jonah Goldberg moved his grift to.
The correct refence should have been "goats go to hell" but I was pulling that reference from memory. Ope.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevef...etting-elected-makes-a-major-war-more-likely/ That didn't age well, did it?
That's from the Bible. Kryptonite got it backwards - it's "sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell", as memorialized in the song by Cake, but the original reference is from Matthew 25, the parable of the sheep and the goats. I mean, it looks like you're not familiar with the Bible, but a lot of us are.
I'm fairly sure the only part of the Bible the right-wing crowd knows is "straights go to heaven; gays go to hell".
In general I think many of the NeverTrumper conservatives have blinders on in terms of how some of their own policy beliefs have led us to this point. These are folks who were mostly fine with or even majorly supportive of Dubya, a man whose presidency definitely helped lay the foundation for the current mess.
There are a lot of studies which show Iraq as a key step in wrecking trust in institutions but it's worth pointing out that if you see the rise of fascism as a movement across the west, then in the UK both Iraq and the GFC both happened on Labour's watch and not the Tories. Yet it's the Tories getting cannibalised by the blackshirts with the rest of their voters fleeing to the liberals. IMO what we are looking at is the collapse of liberalism, first on the centre right, but increasingly also on the centre left
I would say he is the logical conclusion of he foundations laid by the Tories in the last fifteen years.
Personally I think NM's theory is too simplistic. The foundations in the UK are Iraq and the GFC - when Labour was the government. Of course Osborne and Cameron made it worse with a lost decade of "expansionary austerity", but you have to factor in that Cameron held the Brexit referendum in the first place because he thought he could crush the insurgency on his right. All the Tories who opposed Faragism have been purged. Right of centre liberalism has been crushed between the far right and the liberal left - a fate Merkel skillfully avoided for years.
Yes, famously the Obama and Biden presidencies, where we withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan, were notorious "rubber-stamped" warmonger presidencies.
It's worth remembering that prominent never trumper Stuart Stevens wrote a seminal book called "It was all a lie" “All of these immutable truths turned out to be marketing slogans. None of it meant anything. I was the guy working for Bernie Madoff who actually thought we were really smart and just crushing the market.” Stevens believes Donald Trump “just removes the necessity of pretending” Republicans care about social issues. Instead, it’s all about “attacking and defining Democrats”. The idea that “character counts”, so prominent in earlier decades, is forgotten.
I realise i spent too much of the end of times listening to the Bulwark. We are living history with the collapse of the dominant post war form of government - hence my interest. But the idea they are ignoring their role in these things misses the entire point of the podcast - it's a podcast about how and why conservatives slid into fascism. Where else are you going to find an hour long deep dive into how some obscure conservative think tank became a breeding ground for fascist ideology? Taking the point NM cites - Longwell talks about how she was a part of a large number of young conservatives who were were handpicked and indoctrinated in conservative thought. Her example is federalism. i.e the dangers of you know ... federal overreach - just like the actual fascism we are seeing. She's fully aware of how federalism was misused for racial animus. That's her whole point. They love federalism when its time to disband the department of education but then texas invades another state. The idea she is ignoring her part in this is bizarre to me.
Not sure you mean when you talk of Liberalism'. If you mean the old British Liberal party, they didn't invent 'The Laffer Curve' to argue for unfunded tax cuts or start a moral panic over young black kids smoking weed. The abandonment of truth and the embrace of lying and obfuscation is something almost entirely associated with the right. If you mean that it didn't start with Reagan, then, OK... that's true. Nixon's 'southern strategy' consisted of glorifying the 'achievements' of historic racism and lying about how white people had been put upon by the civil rights act.
I thought I'd made it clear but, obviously not. I am NOT saying that old-fashioned conservatives like Longwell are the SAME as Trump. They're clearly not. I'm saying that the techniques of lying and obfuscation they used to achieve political power have been extended and expanded by Trump to a quite staggering degree but are essentially the same system... just carried to its logical conclusion.