Can this be moved to the political forum?

One thing I never quite understood is why Trump himself is not considered a RINO. I saw someone make this claim the other day and it got me thinking. I mean, his policies are not that conservative on paper, and he is not about supporting the party as a whole, but rather himself. But according to a poll I read, almost half of Republicans say they are more loyal to Trump than the party, and people often accuse other Republicans of being RINOs if they do not support Trump. Like Trump is far more a RINO than Cheny.

I'd say the definition of RINO is if you side with Democrats over other Republicans you disagree with. Trump is not my favorite Republican but its definite RINO behavior to think he's a worse option than the Democrats.

Cheney and other Republicans can disagree with Trump all they want but it's furthering the agenda of the Democrats by siding with them that's the egregious offense

The "RINOs" in Congress vote with their party 95%+ of the time, and "RINOs" support practically all conservative legislation, policies, etc.. Not liking Trump and considering him a threat to the country (as any criminal would be if hired for a job, which is why background checks, drug tests, etc. are done beforehand) doesn't make one a "RINO." If anything, it just means they're "anti-Trump" who is a person, not a party.

Cheney, for example, didn't lose her primary because she's not a Republican (or a RINO, if you will). She lost because she's anti-Trump.

Anti-Trump doesn't mean "RINO" or anti-Republican.

Cheney voted for and campaigned for the opposition, despite Trumps's flaws you cannot vote for the opposition when you are representing a political party.

Trump has changed the views of the Republican party enough to his side that calling him Republican in name only wouldn't make that much sense

Politics isn't supposed to be a "we vs. them" no matter the circumstances. Voting for and supporting another just because they have the same letter next to their name as you is a big reason America is such a divided mess.

Turning everything into a "with us or against us" mentality is dangerous, and anyone who hasn't been brainwashed with this idea needs to be rebuking it in America right now. Both parties are at fault of this, they're all the worst. I see a stupid "what side are you on?" Democratic ad on TV sometimes that I strongly dislike. American politics has become an infection on the country.

"Us vs Them" is just a reality, at least when it comes to elected Democrats and Republicans. It's true that the American voter has a lot in common with members of both parties, but the elected leaders in both parties advocate opposite things. It is not logical to vote for the other party if the other party is going to implement policy you don't like, no matter the character flaws of the particular party member on the ballot

I don't think there's any problem with there being moderate parts of each part, whether it's Manchin and Sinema on one side or Romney on the other. I think half the reason the "RINOs" (as in Romney types and not Cheney and Kinzinger Trump deranged ones) are disliked is they're seen as weak. The Republicans before Trump were doing nothing to actually stop the US from moving more left every generation as instead of trying to make it more conservative, the left just had to set the goalposts as far left as they could, and the Republicans would try to compromise to give them half of that, but that's still left of where they started. Eventually by keep folding and nominating the few Republicans the left and media found palatable like McCain and Romney, the Republicans would have been suckered into a position where by 2030s they're 2016 Hillary and the Democrats are 2016 Sanders in terms of views. The Trump and DeSantis types are popular in part because they're more willing to stand their ground than that.

A reality that only becomes accepted when people don't push back against it. Voting for an "evil" or "corrupt" politician because they vote for policies you like makes one just as bad. They're representatives of the same sort of scum as them at that point.

The world isn't suppose to be about doing whatever you can to get your way, or having things you like, at the expense of others. Is it often that way? Yeah, people are generally selfish and largely only care about themselves or those close to them. If someone or something doesn't fit one's image or liking, it's seen as wrong. What do I care of someone thousands of miles away that has had their life negatively impacted because I support someone or something and vote a certain way that best fits my personal interests, right? I don't know them, after all. My happiness and those closest to me is what matters most.

Well, it may matter most, and that's perfectly okay and human thing, but it doesn't have to be all that matters.

And as this relates to politics, one can help make a better difference by not blindly voting or supporting whomever, regardless of their character, just because they share similar opinions or interests and vote a certain way... for now, for as soon as their job (paycheck) is at stake, most with no character will betray themselves and those that had supported them without a second thought to keep the power (money) they hold.

Folks laughed at my title here, or thought I was being a Leftist reactionary, but I really do like the political branding here. Fascism is hyper misunderstood due to the anti-Nazi propaganda in the US via cartoons and war movies throughout the 60s through kinda the 90s or so with them being portrayed as Cobra type dictators. It honestly done us a disservice in knowing what Fascism actually is and how popular it would be with a certain type of person.

What is even more interesting is how American mainstream Fascism grew out of the Libertarian movement which is diametrically opposed to Fascism, yet they have ushered in someone like Trump who aims to strengthen the executive branch and put the justice department directly under his authority. It’s very fascinating from a Birds Eye view as someone who grew up studying history and almost became an historian himself.

In other news, Trump shared a video where the video states its desire to unite America under the next Reich.

For me the whole divide politically comes down to believing in equal outcomes vs unequal outcomes. The more you believe the world is naturally like the jungle having strong animals and weaker animals the closer you are to being fascist. Likewise the more people think everyone is equal and the differences between people's wealth is unjust, the closer they are to communist view. The most extreme versions in either direction are probably Hitler thinking the world is divided into better and worse races, and Pol Pot forcing people to be equal by banning all property and money. So I think the confusion is that yes, as a strong believer in capitalism and nationalism and thinking the world has winners/losers Trump is closer to being fascist than AOC is, but should this be called "fascism". Or should fascism just be reserved for the ultra extreme version like Hitler? It seems to me like once you get past the blustery personality, Trump's views are kind of just the normal American one as of a few decades ago, it's just once someone goes far enough left they now see this as fascism.

Anyway, I came here to say the hush money case couldn't be more of a train wreck if they tried.

That’s why it is an awkward mix rather than fascism proper. I do think the crux of this MAGA movement is Libertarianism, but the means to implement is Fascist. DeSantis and the anti-woke movement is certainly more Fascist than Trump, Bannon, and Miller. But the MAGA movement’s ideals of Nationalism, its economic policies (Third Alternative stuff) and its desire for cultural homogeneity are very fascist.

When it comes to authoritarianism traits:

Trump base - Has the clear leader guy the most of the three.

The left - Were heavily pro covid restrictions and defaulted to trusting the experts/authorities on it. Famous for increase of internet censorship/speech sensitivity.

Traditional conservatives - Built on trusting authority of bible/wisdom of long history of Christians, the multi generational aspect probably lends itself to listening to parent or community authority figure. They were the original censorship crew etc.

I follow some conservatives that instead of just wanting to get rid of wokeism to go back to early 2000s style free speech I like do, they say that this vacuum created wokeism and that you need to impose some sort of guiding ideology/rules/religion on people so they don't make up an unstable secular one like woke or Chinese cultural revolution kids treating Mao like their god. They don't like classical liberalism/libertarianism because they think it lets the fox in the henhouse by offering no resistance to new ideologies. I would argue if the US becomes right now authoritarian right wing one day it's as likely to come from traditional conservatives who think like this.

People are not equal, and their outcomes will never be unless you brutally control society ala communist dictatorships. But a good society should take care of its downtrodden while protecting itself. Be more like Denmark.

In the end we all have odd bedfellows. I remember the old feuds with corpse, the drama the nonsense. But he is right. Its a simple observation but corpse is right.

Issue is you lads are trapped by the horror of FPTP. its an absolute dick of a voting system. every country will have its extremes, indeed i think it is healthy, but if you are stuck with FPTP it just infects everything and everyone is stuck catering to them.

like Germany for example, they have utter freaks for the AfD. thank fuck they have influence duluted by the non FPTP system, so people can still being wrong and vote for them, but not fuck of the entire system.

Tis a pity.

It is.

Communist states don’t even and never really did.

There's a reason the US is the country poor people from other countries want to go to the most and overflow its border. Meanwhile countries like Venezuela that claim to care more about the bottom are the ones where people literally starve to death in recent history.

Capitalism is the best thing to ever happen to poor people because it gave them a route to not be poor, and the turning point for humanity is the industrial revolution as it meant you can make a living as a manager or accountant in the factory or something instead of either being super rich or doing brutal physical labor. These solid middle class salaries then take their spending money and buy things which then leads to comfortable lives for other business owners and their employees. This is the best system we can do really, if you try to have a central government making decisions for a massive amount of people they're too vulnerable to messing up due to being slow and not as connected to the decision, the people choosing a corrupt leader cause he talks well, etc. and then ending up running out of resources and having to decide which people get to have your scarce amount of food. You can't have the for each according to his ability idealization because countries like the US are full of people too lazy to even cut it as a cashier for 2 weeks without quitting not to mention criminals and crazies. There is a massive difference between people's talent and work ethic you have to reward somehow if you want them to keep doing it or influence the apathetic people to try harder. Plus, this isn't just theory, it was tested for a hundred years and one system ended up obviously better by the time they Berlin wall fell, they even split some countries like Germany and Korea in half creating a perfect test scenario. The American commie of 2024 is way less logical than the Russian one of early 1900s, at least in their case it hadn't been tried yet, and they were replacing the monarchy, they didn't have it made beforehand.

Hmm, remind me.... who was president when we went into quarantine?

Also, isn't the "war on wokeness" a form of censorship in itself?

Well I said the traditional conservatives also have some authoritarian traits

This is idiotic shit.

And I should note that I criticize communism and socialism for not being critical of capitalism for rational reasons, but rather criticizing capitalism for political reasons. Your defense of capitalism is the stupid one. The stupid version.

The Industrial Revolution wasn’t a turning point. It was the acceleration of unsustainable and shortsighted trends, which happen to make up human nature as you know it since your species (or potential future species as concerns “western civilization”) is essentially nothing but a sophisticated parasite. Your economic system does not produce things of real, significant, substantial, or sustainable value. Your money is essentially a long term form of debt that is backed by other debts, be they state debt or some other debt. It’s not even backed by gold anymore, although that doesn’t have any objective value either; it’s just human nature to value things like gold. It’s said to be backed by oil, but it’s not really since that’s obviously not sustainable; again human nature as you know it. Only the complicit, cynical, corrupt, or naive will support the system willingly through either some form of “legal” bribery, fraud, or extortion. Otherwise the system depends on force or to compel people by necessity because of the state’s hypocrisy regarding monopoly and “anti-trust”.

All of its infrastructure can’t last without more investment; like any other pyramid scheme. It collapsed in 1929, and again in 2008 and 2022-2024. It’s only current real value proposition is the notion that it’s worth enough for its enemies not to immediately accelerate its destruction. But again, the dollar has no real value besides a negative one related to debt.

The only substantial value in your economy is in relation to me and my new species, but I don’t expect any other species to understand anything significant of that, and any effort related to such is required to comply by our rules with the only alternative being extraordinarily severe consequences (from the perspective of other species).

“Centralization” doesn’t work because such leaders never know everything, or anywhere near everything, and the more they try to know by requirement or force, the harder their relationship with population becomes. However, centralization isn’t motivated by a “God Complex” (any entity that had any sort of desire to “know everything” (like my species or A.I.) wouldn’t use or need human agents or force). It’s motivated by human morality and politics. But that point makes it even worse, because such “central authorities” don’t know everything, or nearly everything, about morality, politics, human nature, or even themselves. So it leads to moral narcissism, which all human morality essentially is since it’s based on nothing but self-interest, or mutual self-interest, which works when productive, but not competitive. And of course productivity is limited by diminishing returns related to resources and opportunity costs.

Human morality and politics are fundamentally irrational, and are shortsighted, doomed, and futile without species divergence, or surrender.

The US relying on printed money and that it would collapse if the rest of the world stopped treating dollars as the best is not really a criticism of capitalism, that's the government and presidents who expanded the relationship between it and the economy like Wilson and FDR.

You can make an argument that in a country like Korea who has world low birthrate that it's because everyone takes work so seriously, so you could blame capitalism for taking of turning them into soulless machines. But I don't know if that's really capitalism's fault, it's more culturally the pressure they are putting on their kids. The West has it the best where they have capitalism but they know how to spend it on things they like.

Anyway, I’ll exit this thread by leaving Shack with the question of when Ronald McDonald should begin his campaign for the Republican nomination and presidency. If not him, who else besides Donald Trump Jr., Donald Trump III, Donald Trump XVII etc.? And who else could lead the Republican Party before McDonalds recognizes the branding opportunities involved?