Funny Events of the "Woke" world

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Phoenixmgs

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Gergar12

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If someone is pursuing further education for the purpose of attaining power, and places so much importance on their own specific idea of advancement that they would revolt and take over the country if they were unsuccessful, then I don't really think the problem is too much education. The problem is that that person is a sociopathic megalomaniac who direly needs therapy.



The... bikers...?

There's a lot to unpack here. You've clearly worked out a whole set of circumstances you imagine will lead to a mythical civil war, but it's just so entirely unrealistic.

Also: the purpose of funding the military isn't meant to be to ensure the military is on "our side" in some hypothetical civil war. You're describing a country being held hostage.
Donald Trump is said example. And I don't see him getting therapy plus mental health care is stigmatized and in short supply.


Radical mass politics in a country full of guns is a recipe for disaster. If you want political change vote for it, don't go to the streets and fight people. Also, many populists end up being dictators if they win. I would rather we not lose our democracy.

"An age of mass politics is not a bad thing. It has enormous dangers, but considering the existing "moderate" course of action will lead to the effective enslavement of most of humanity and catastrophic, permanent damage to the biosphere of the planet"

Very hyperbolic, and I would rather we deal with those issues via voting not having a demagogue that leads us into a dictatorship with a 50% chance that demagogue wouldn't even solve the problems of said economic slavery, and climate change.
 

Silvanus

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Donald Trump is said example. And I don't see him getting therapy plus mental health care is stigmatized and in short supply.
Donald Trump did not enter politics because he was unable to get a career that made the most of his education. The issues you're outlining never prevented him from doing whatever he wanted to do, and he had a remarkably easy ride in the business world due to inherited wealth.

He then got into politics because he's egomaniacal, and partly because a bunch of debts & legal troubles were catching up to him.
 
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Trunkage

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And this shows republicans are far-right and fascist...?
If you read the post...

Here was the claim

Donald Trump hangs around fascie people on Twitter. Eg. Some parts of Q, 3%ers, Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer etc. A bigger percentage of these groups are Far Right.

Do you deny that Donald Trump hasn't courted these groups (until very recently when he banned them from rallies)?

Do you deny that part of these groups are Alt-Right? Don't worry, I'll answer this one for you. Many of them proudly proclaim this. So it's yes. It's your choice on whether they're fascie.

Terminal's claim the Alt-Right over took the GOP. Everyone generally got in lockstep with Trump during his presidency. He even had members of the Alt-Right in his administration.

Do you deny there is a clear split between the GOP today? Eg. Trumpers vs Cheney. Trumpers vs Lincoln Project. Trumpers vs Kemp. Trumpers vs McConnell (I wouldn't say that these groups against Trump are the same group, with the same motivations. They just have a common enemy.)

My assessment of Terminal's quote would have been - 'overtook' is an exaggeration. Otherwise there wouldn't be these fights going on. But it didn't matter during the presidency as they everyone was forcee to work together. So overtook is probably limited to the Trump presidency and associated election campaigns

Edit: You are collapsing people's arguments to score argument points.
 
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Gergar12

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Donald Trump did not enter politics because he was unable to get a career that made the most of his education. The issues you're outlining never prevented him from doing whatever he wanted to do, and he had a remarkably easy ride in the business world due to inherited wealth.

He then got into politics because he's egomaniacal, and partly because a bunch of debts & legal troubles were catching up to him.
Yes, but he wanted more power in a country that has a limited supply of said power. Who knows how many Trumps are out there thanks to mass university education, and elite overproduction.

Edit: A political, and economic system can only produce so many elites before the system is overstressed. There can only be so many lawyers, executives, political leaders, etc. The people who don't take risks don't deserve to be elites, and a lot of it does come down to luck.
 
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Silvanus

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Yes, but he wanted more power in a country that has a limited supply of said power. Who knows how many Trumps are out there thanks to mass university education, and elite overproduction.
😂

Donald Trump was not made the way he was by his Bachelor's degree in Economics.

Edit: A political, and economic system can only produce so many elites before the system is overstressed. There can only be so many lawyers, executives, political leaders, etc. The people who don't take risks don't deserve to be elites, and a lot of it does come down to luck.
Sounds like sheer elitism.
 

Agema

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Not at all true.
Clearly somewhat true.

The Republican Party is overtly embracing significant far right rhetoric, with far right representatives winning election at all levels of government. The idea that the Republican Party just can't be far right is a sort of optimistic delusion - the idea that right wing nationalist authoritarianism is something that only occurs in other places. But history would show, time and time again, that when the wrong things happen any country can go there. Faced with the crisis, the mainstream right may resist, but can also easily fold and be co-opted.

Trump's nationalism and authoritarianism was only tempered by his fundamental incompetence. But despite his gross incompetence, that overt nationalism and authoritarianism was still enough to win over the Republican Party en masse. Even its grandees were complicit: unwilling to stand up to him in any meaningful way. The Republican Party is thus willing to wave a fascist into power. All Republicans candidates have seen where Trumpism will get them, and Trump 2.0 is unlikely to be as incompetent as Trump 1.0.
 
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Agema

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Whenever I mention elite overproduction the left, and center-left hate me, and people on the right agree with me, then agree with me based on the argument of ALL wokeness being bad as I have seen on many internet comment boards which is blatantly false, these same people would have argued against gay marriage, or the civil rights movement.
I don't hate this idea.

However, I'm not sure how strong it is. Partly in the sense that I think many people get degrees and expertise in the full knowledge they'll never become rich. (Surveys in the UK suggest a significant proportion of graduates don't think their degree was financially worth it, but a much smaller minority regret doing one).

Mostly, I think "elite overproduction" seems to me like a subsection of basic wealth inequality: the much wider phenomenon of wage depression in certain areas of the economy, with resultant impacts on living standards, home buying, debt pressure etc. and wealth and income acceleration at the top. Thus at the bottom, attainment is squashed by limitations of low salary, and near the top, middle class professionals are squeezed out by the super-rich (creating a ripple effect as they then take from the next lower social stratas and squeeze them out, and so on).
 

Agema

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Edit: A political, and economic system can only produce so many elites before the system is overstressed. There can only be so many lawyers, executives, political leaders, etc. The people who don't take risks don't deserve to be elites, and a lot of it does come down to luck.
There are sort of limits to these things, and yet in ways less than we might think.

For instance, if a society becomes richer and has more disposable income, one of the ways it can spend that money is fighting legal cases. Obviously there is a limit, and society can train more lawyers than it needs. But in practice, a country may be able to significantly increase the number of "elite jobs" it can support.
 

Buyetyen

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Clearly somewhat true.

The Republican Party is overtly embracing significant far right rhetoric, with far right representatives winning election at all levels of government. The idea that the Republican Party just can't be far right is a sort of optimistic delusion - the idea that right wing nationalist authoritarianism is something that only occurs in other places. But history would show, time and time again, that when the wrong things happen any country can go there. Faced with the crisis, the mainstream right may resist, but can also easily fold and be co-opted.

Trump's nationalism and authoritarianism was only tempered by his fundamental incompetence. But despite his gross incompetence, that overt nationalism and authoritarianism was still enough to win over the Republican Party en masse. Even its grandees were complicit: unwilling to stand up to him in any meaningful way. The Republican Party is thus willing to wave a fascist into power. All Republicans candidates have seen where Trumpism will get them, and Trump 2.0 is unlikely to be as incompetent as Trump 1.0.
I'm starting to suspect that Phoenix does not believe that the Republicans are far right because he himself is significantly further right than he pretends. Extremism doesn't sound that extreme when you agree with it.
 

Phoenixmgs

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If you read the post...

Here was the claim

Donald Trump hangs around fascie people on Twitter. Eg. Some parts of Q, 3%ers, Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer etc. A bigger percentage of these groups are Far Right.

Do you deny that Donald Trump hasn't courted these groups (until very recently when he banned them from rallies)?

Do you deny that part of these groups are Alt-Right? Don't worry, I'll answer this one for you. Many of them proudly proclaim this. So it's yes. It's your choice on whether they're fascie.

Terminal's claim the Alt-Right over took the GOP. Everyone generally got in lockstep with Trump during his presidency. He even had members of the Alt-Right in his administration.

Do you deny there is a clear split between the GOP today? Eg. Trumpers vs Cheney. Trumpers vs Lincoln Project. Trumpers vs Kemp. Trumpers vs McConnell (I wouldn't say that these groups against Trump are the same group, with the same motivations. They just have a common enemy.)

My assessment of Terminal's quote would have been - 'overtook' is an exaggeration. Otherwise there wouldn't be these fights going on. But it didn't matter during the presidency as they everyone was forcee to work together. So overtook is probably limited to the Trump presidency and associated election campaigns

Edit: You are collapsing people's arguments to score argument points.
What policies are being pushed anywhere that is right-wing? You might have an example here or there, just like you would for left-wing, but where's this overall push for right-wing policies being pushed by the republican party? What politicians say (to get votes) and actually do are 2 different things. Look at what the democrats say vs what they do as well. Just doing a quick skim of the Proud Boys, how are they fascists except for Wikipedia calling them neo-fascists? What are they for that is actually fascist? People throw around terms like fascism, socialism, communism without knowing what they are all the time. Like the right calls Bernie a communist for example. I'd say the same thing in reply to those calling Bernie a communist that I did here. When you go about labeling people with such terms, it only causes more polarization and you are less and less likely to listen to what someone is saying with an open mind and now it seems people write others off without even listening at all.


Stop getting news from twitter.


Clearly somewhat true.

The Republican Party is overtly embracing significant far right rhetoric, with far right representatives winning election at all levels of government. The idea that the Republican Party just can't be far right is a sort of optimistic delusion - the idea that right wing nationalist authoritarianism is something that only occurs in other places. But history would show, time and time again, that when the wrong things happen any country can go there. Faced with the crisis, the mainstream right may resist, but can also easily fold and be co-opted.

Trump's nationalism and authoritarianism was only tempered by his fundamental incompetence. But despite his gross incompetence, that overt nationalism and authoritarianism was still enough to win over the Republican Party en masse. Even its grandees were complicit: unwilling to stand up to him in any meaningful way. The Republican Party is thus willing to wave a fascist into power. All Republicans candidates have seen where Trumpism will get them, and Trump 2.0 is unlikely to be as incompetent as Trump 1.0.
Mainly what I said above to Trunkage. FDR was far more "fascist" than Trump.
 

Agema

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Mainly what I said above to Trunkage. FDR was far more "fascist" than Trump.
Sure sure. Next up, I expect to hear such gems of profundity as "It must be left-wing because they were the national socialist party", or "Hitler made welfare programs, liberals made welfare programs, liberalism is therefore fascism!" I can't help but point out that the USA did have a genuine fascist movement when FDR was around, what with it being the 1930s-40s and all. If nothing else we should respect fascists' ability to recognise their own, and needless to say FDR was very unpopular with them.

In a sense, pretty much no-one is a fascist in the traditional sense these days. Fascism was a creation of a particular time and situation (and with some varying characteristics by nation), which doesn't really map well onto the current era. But fascist (more strictly, neo-fascist or post-fascist) as right-wing authoritarian nationalism, along the lines of early-mid 20th century fascist parties, is a term with some justification for Trump, the Proud Boys, and numerous other elements of the US alternative right.

If you cannot see the ways that Trump was fascistic, then you don't get fascism. I don't think Trump was really fascist himself: after all, it's not like he has any coherent political ideology, he's mostly just a monstrous narcissist obsessed with his own self-aggrandisement and a crude demagogue's insight into mob manipulation. I might rather call him a proto-fascist, or someone with sorts of tendencies and techniques of fascists. But he's opened the door to someone worse, and his party has declined to close it, so be careful what you end up with.

I'm starting to suspect that Phoenix does not believe that the Republicans are far right because he himself is significantly further right than he pretends.
He's clearly got certain strong leanings towards or sympathies with the US right. But that's not necessarily the same as being right-wing overall, as individual political ideology can be very complex. In particular, some political beliefs cut across conventional political "sides" rather than between. This is part of why people can switch allegiances in what might seem very unusual ways: they're being motivated by some thing(s) that doesn't easily fit standard political or party discimination.