No it isn't. They just found two metrics that both correlated with mindless Republican loyalty.
Impeachment 2, the reckoning revenge redemption.
- Thread starter Worgen
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And I told you that was a bullshit stretch of a hypothesis then, and it's even more of a bullshit hypothesis now, given subsequent revelations from John Bolton.
Yes, it is. There is clear evidence that the Tea Party had internal conflicts, and some early adherents felt it had been hijacked. But that is what evolution is. The early, more purist libertarian Tea Party begat the small government, social conservative Republican Tea Party and that begat Trumpers. A child may grow into an adult, but it's still the same person.
Cursing at the truth doesn't make it less true.
So modern Democrats are really still the same segregationist party then, right? Still the same group, right?
Making up absurd speculation doesn't make anything true at all.
Yes, correct, the modern Democratic Party evolved from the segretationist Democratic party of yesteryear.
But not even I connect the motivations of the two. I don't think AOC is some natural outgrowth of Lyndon Johnson.
You don't think there's any link between AOC and stuff like the "war on poverty" the civil rights movement? Well, that's up to you.
There's no meaningful difference between Lyndon Johnson and Donald Trump. If you want say AOC is basically Trump, feel free.
I wouldn't like to say where you got that idea from, but it's clearly a load of bobbins.
Even were the preamble to that true, have you never heard of divergent evolution?
Well, in terms of personality they’re probably the two most similar presidents in history give that they were both aging narcissists but politically they were obviously very different men, especially considering that, realistically speaking, LBJ’s entire political platform was “win the Cold War” while Trump’s was “become richer and make people love me.” LBJ was also not as much of a legacy or popularity guy, so he comes off as less of a narcissist at a glance.
If the limit of similarity is that Trump is the most narcissistic president ever and LBJ is the second most narcissistic, that's something, but yes, it's hardly grounds to say that there's politically little difference between Trump and LBJ. And I agree, one might point out that those two ambitions almost automatically reveal quite a gulf in the level of narcissism between Johnson and Trump.
Out of interest, was LBJ all the way the 2nd most narcissist President that the US has ever had, or at least widely regarded as such? Not heard that before.
Absolutely. Maybe one of the 19th century guys was as bad as him, but he’s the clear winner of 20th century presidents.
Shall I throw some fun anecdotes at you?
During the 60s, some legislators went to Johnson and requested a commission to study the reasons behind and effective solutions to the racial unrest of the time. Johnson said sure and appointed that commission, but he included one of the guys who requested it and told him "Fred, remember you're Johnson man, and if you forget it I'm going to take out my pocket knife and cut your dick off." When the commission finished, their primary conclusions were that America had a problem with racism, particularly in policing and hiring, and that most of the unrest could be solved by eliminating police brutality and getting people jobs. Johnson, even in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination, ignored the report he had commissioned because he thought it made him look bad.
Lyndon Johnson would famously try to end arguments by literally pulling his penis out in from of others. He was allegedly once challenged about why we were in Vietnam, and his answer was "this is why" and unzipped his pants in front of the crowd.
Lyndon Johnson, seemingly jealous of Kennedy's playboy reputation, claimed he had slept with more women by accident than JFK had on purpose.
The first major piece of legislation under Johnson was a sweeping tax cut. He hurriedly involved himself into any major legislation after that because he had no particular care what the policy was, as long as he felt it made him personally look good. I understand there's some divergence of policy between the two presidents here, but that's not because Trump wouldn't have signed all sorts of bills, but rather because the legislature wouldn't give Trump bills to put his name on. The stimulus and the prison reform bills are the only real examples we have of Trump being given an opportunity to get credit for something, and he certainly acted just like LBJ would on both of those.
The biggest difference between the two is foreign policy, and I think any sane person prefers Trump's foreign policy.
This is complete political theater when you have Rahm Emanuel spewing Obama lines such as "we are looking forward" at the same time. Legit totally insignificant. I'd rather they put the taxes they'd waste pursuing this line in a lottery and give it to some random fired worker.
And that whole civil rights thing Trump never respected and wouldn't have signed. Or LBJ never once sending an angry mob loose on the capitol.
LBJ was supposedly a very unpleasant person but he seemed to have done the right thing in the end domestically. I don't think it was all just one big vanity project for him and that he would end democracy if he didn't get his way.
LBJ was a sincerely racist man. He once called a black man "boy", and was offered the man's name in response. His reaction:
"As long as you are black, and you’re gonna be black till the day you die, no one’s gonna call you by your goddamn name. So no matter what you are called, n*****, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it. Just pretend you’re a goddamn piece of furniture."
He opposed every prior Civil Rights bill while he was in the legislature, every single one, and referred to them as n***** bills. He was factually picked as Kennedy's vp to try and keep the segregationist vote in spite of Kennedy's positions.
The man wasn't just unpleasant. He had a long record of working directly opposed to the causes you're giving him credit for. He ultimately only flipped positions because he knew carrying Kennedy's legacy was popular and would make him look good, and that is all he cared about. What about that doesn't sound like Trump, who still actively brags about the good he's done for the black community because he thinks it makes look good.
You may as well not have bothered.
LBJ may have been a coarse, crude, self-aggrandising racist, but he did have a moral centre and a genuine desire to offer people opportunities and routes out of poverty. And as part of a party which shared those aims, he delivered. People who are in ways awful human beings can still in other ways be compassionate, constructive, even heroic.
Look at what LBJ achieved and what Trump did, that LBJ had the drive, diligence and conviction to achieve. Whatever his flaws, it is accepted that LBJ, from his upbringing and teaching career, genuinely did have huge central, moral belief that the USA should do better by its people to give them opportunities and routes out of poverty. As part of his party, he delivered. I don't think there's any meaningful similarity between that and the lazy, unprincipled, naked self-centredness of Donald Trump - who as a result, has left a legacy mostly of rancour, chaos, division and national shame.
You can't possibly believe that. He literally cheated his way into the senate.
LBJ deserves credit for nothing. He capitalized on the political will cultivated by Kennedy, and stuck his name on it.
And in a prior run, he was literally cheated out of it, too. This is because the party primaries in Texas of that era were pretty much institutionally fraudulent. Secondly, there's a general fallacy here of assuming that a person who is bad in one way must be bad in another: as if someone who sneaks a dollar out of his mother's purse must therefore also be willing to commit murder.
And he didn't have to put his name on it and pursue it so energetically, did he? Nor did he have to add a load of his own on top of it afterwards, either.
There are plenty of biographies of LBJ, and as far as I am aware few dispute that he had a genuine, deep compassion and conviction to improve the lot of poor Americans.