US 2022 Mid-Term Election

[Lone MacReady]

Trump is not a conservative, for sure. That said, even to the likes of myself who would prefer a Solon, the real estate tycoon and reality television star is a damn sight better than the corrupt and belligerent geriatric kleptocrats currently pillaging the nation from within while barbarians gather in the distance.

They're already inside the damn gates, and they are actively let in by the "guards".

 

[More AWS-8Q Than You]

I think we are somewhat talking past each other.

An American traditionalism could have worked, but conservatives aren't traditionalists. What happened in both the USA and the UK is that the reaction against liberalism coalesced ideologically and organizationally around the principle of being completely against action. Liberals act, conservatives slam on the brakes. When you're ideologically against action, you're also against seeking and using power. Conservatism, referring here to that Burke-descended ideology that has had the American right by the throat for over a century, has no intrinsic principle motivating its adherents to try and obtain power. Power is a means, and conservatism has no ends. Thus conservatives found themselves incrementally expelled from every institution.

In politics, whoever has the initiative has an advantage. If I have an agenda, and your only agenda is to stop me, then the natural outcome is for me to get at least part of what I want. The Trump administration is a good example of this. The entire force of American government was arrayed against him, but their only agenda was to stop him. He was able to get part of what he wanted on the border, trade, and war because the only agenda anyone else had was "not that!"

What we see is that when you have a vision and a goal, something motivating you to get power and use it, you can get somewhere.

A very large and very wise man once said something about how the business of progressives was to go on making mistakes and the business of conservatives was to prevent those mistakes from being fixed. The last century has certainly proven him correct.

 

[OrangeJuliusEvola]

I think we are somewhat talking past each other.

An American traditionalism could have worked, but conservatives aren't traditionalists. What happened in both the USA and the UK is that the reaction against liberalism coalesced ideologically and organizationally around the principle of being completely against action. Liberals act, conservatives slam on the brakes. When you're ideologically against action, you're also against seeking and using power. Conservatism, referring here to that Burke-descended ideology that has had the American right by the throat for over a century, has no intrinsic principle motivating its adherents to try and obtain power. Power is a means, and conservatism has no ends. Thus conservatives found themselves incrementally expelled from every institution.

In politics, whoever has the initiative has an advantage. If I have an agenda, and your only agenda is to stop me, then the natural outcome is for me to get at least part of what I want. The Trump administration is a good example of this. The entire force of American government was arrayed against him, but their only agenda was to stop him. He was able to get part of what he wanted on the border, trade, and war because the only agenda anyone else had was "not that!"

What we see is that when you have a vision and a goal, something motivating you to get power and use it, you can get somewhere.

Okay, now this is getting interesting. What do you consider an "American traditionalism"? Because I think it's something a lot of people want to tack towards, but very few people have spent time and energy to adequately define in an operative sense, in my opinion, because its really damn hard to do without starting an internal argument. It's a lot easier to get a bunch of people to work together on an agreement of "we don't like this new thing" than sit down and iron out a set of core principles a Wyoming Rancher, a Southern Baptist Preacher and a lapsed Catholic Construction Worker from Staten island could agree on if we're talking about the modern day. Not saying that this compromise didn't fail, but it's understandable why they did it.

 

[Raoul_Duke]

Okay, now this is getting interesting. What do you consider an "American traditionalism"? Because I think it's something a lot of people want to tack towards, but very few people have spent time and energy to adequately define in an operative sense, in my opinion, because its really damn hard to do without starting an internal argument. It's a lot easier to get a bunch of people to work together on an agreement of "we don't like this new thing" than sit down and iron out a set of core principles a Wyoming Rancher, a Southern Baptist Preacher and a lapsed Catholic Construction Worker from Staten island could agree on if we're talking about the modern day. Not saying that this compromise didn't fail, but it's understandable why they did it.

If you want to be simple, it'd be either Jacksonianism, or an oligarchic republic as of the beginning of the country.

 

[GreenJacket]

Okay, now this is getting interesting. What do you consider an "American traditionalism"? Because I think it's something a lot of people want to tack towards, but very few people have spent time and energy to adequately define in an operative sense, in my opinion, because its really damn hard to do without starting an internal argument. It's a lot easier to get a bunch of people to work together on an agreement of "we don't like this new thing" than sit down and iron out a set of core principles a Wyoming Rancher, a Southern Baptist Preacher and a lapsed Catholic Construction Worker from Staten island could agree on if we're talking about the modern day. Not saying that this compromise didn't fail, but it's understandable why they did it.

I'd say the core principle of Americanism WAS a nation of empowered yeomen. Men of the land who worked for themselves and by extension each other, and were enfranchised by right of speech and vote to act as a small yet vital part in a local and national governing body. Men of the land had destinies in the land, and so their interests and the interests of the state were aligned.

This concept is dead and has been for a long time. I am unsure if we could ever return to it, but I find a lot of the values reactionaries cling to are counter-productive because such a world no longer exists. Perhaps we could 'retvrn' to such a life-style, but I myself am quite dubious.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

This concept is dead and has been for a long time. I am unsure if we could ever return to it, but I find a lot of the values reactionaries cling to are counter-productive because such a world no longer exists. Perhaps we could 'retvrn' to such a life-style, but I myself am quite dubious.

We cannot, and the reason why is because of technology. Things "conservatives" love like America re-industrializing or going back to the 50s or whatever can't happen because it's insanely inefficient to pay an American worker who knows how much and apply silly concepts like pollution mitigation when China can hire some poor sap from a village who works for 50 cents an hour and mitigates pollution by paying off the local CCP boss. Similar thing with farming--it's pretty goddamn expensive to be a farmer now with all the equipment needed, and it's no surprise most farmers sold to big agribusiness (or these days Bill Gates apparently).

And that's even getting into the impact technology has on social values, where social media by its very existence speeds up the atomization of a community into countless others. The amount of data gathered on each of us is used by corporations--and increasingly governments and politicians--to manipulate each of our lives down various algorithms chosen. One key reason the American Right fails is because they have no idea how to adapt to this other than keep wishing it was still the 50s. The Left, on the other hand, knows exactly how to deal with these problems, and it's the exact ideas that Klaus Schwab is advocating.

 

[Eggplant Wizard]

I guess the Dixiecrat split was something, but they were pretty much still Democrats and most ended up joining the Republican Party anyway.

I think you'd just get both parties swapping ideologies again, where the Democrats truly become the party of big business and upper middle class elite who tell poor people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps while the Republicans get more economically left. This won't be Republicans passing out gibs to blacks and illegals, but it would be a lot of economic nationalism and subsidies that benefit (traditional) families, small business, and rural areas.

There wasn’t a major side swap in the Southeast. What happened is that when the Dems laid the blame for racism at the feet of the South, all of the people who grew up being forced to play ball essentially drove the Dems out of office. Everyone that wasn’t voting age during the Civil Rights movement grew up and were able to vote in droves. This combined with the black population remembering who was trying to ruin them for the crime of being alive led to the South flipping red.

The “Southern Strategy“ was essentially the GOP waltzing in on the “we don’t randomly hang black people and will actually listen to your needs” platform. There was never an ideology swap, that was made up by the media because the Dems always controlled the media, which means they got to control the rebranding of their party.

This is the short and brutal version of events, btw.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

There wasn’t a major side swap in the Southeast. What happened is that when the Dems laid the blame for racism at the feet of the South, all of the people who grew up being forced to play ball essentially drove the Dems out of office. Everyone that wasn’t voting age during the Civil Rights movement grew up and were able to vote in droves. This combined with the black population remembering who was trying to ruin them for the crime of being alive led to the South flipping red.

The “Southern Strategy“ was essentially the GOP waltzing in on the “we don’t randomly hang black people and will actually listen to your needs” platform. There was never an ideology swap, that was made up by the media because the Dems always controlled the media, which means they got to control the rebranding of their party.

This is the short and brutal version of events, btw.

The ideology swap was definitely a thing. Herbert Hoover worked alongside Democrat governors who believed in low taxes and small government, and this even included things like disaster relief where they'd just leave it to charity. That faction of Democrats was the first to really switch sides, and they were eventually joined by the Dixiecrats as they disintegrated and that's where you get Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and even fucking David Duke (although he was just an opportunist and joined some other party after a few years). I think Robert "Exalted Cyclops" Byrd was one of the few notable Dixiecrats to stay with the Dems long-term. This left the Southern Democrats as the remaining Dixiecrats (who literally died of old age) and what became of the Kennedy Democrats, the mainstream Democrats.

Spoiler: Backstory

The Southern Strategy worked because the Southern Democrats were split between Dixiecrats trying to downplay their previous ideology (which didn't work because most of the population was sick of the race shit and wanted it all to go away) and Kennedy Democrats who were viewed as being too elitist/vaguely commie (the race issue)/carpetbaggers. Meanwhile the Republicans came in as respectable moderates, nicely dressed businessmen like the nice guy who owned the store you shop at who liked the idea of leaving you alone (including on the racial issue for those concerned).

Nothing to do with blacks, since they hated Republicans ever since Herbert Hoover's failed flood relief programs after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 which basically involved letting plantation owners enslave blacks to clean shit up and fix the levees. Even though the local politicians were Democrat (including a lot of small-government Democrat types), he got called out in black-owned media and pretty much singlehandedly started driving blacks toward the Democrat plantation nationwide. Blacks in the South started voting Democrat because of both that and the fact it was mostly Democrats (black and white) who went down South to march alongside them and help them vote. Plus some blacks always voted Democrat even pre-Civil Rights since local political bosses let them vote so they'd help them stuff ballot boxes.

 

[Eggplant Wizard]

A few Democrats did go over to the Republican side, but the Republicans didn’t suddenly start adopting Old South policy. Hence why it wasn’t an ideology swap. Remember, the Democrat party blocked the signing of the Civil Rights bill until they had a Democrat in office as POTUS, that way they could take credit and rebrand themselves. The Southern Strategy at its core was to stop fighting over New York and California for the big Electoral College points and actually play ball with the Southeastern US.

This led to attention being taken away from New York and California, aka, where the big media lived. Spurning a nobody journalist these days causes a massive tantrum to be thrown, spurning the industry as a whole, even slightly, back then made them some enemies.

Gonna also remind people that MLK Jr. voted Republican, yet was a communist. Most black civil rights institutions were infected by communism due to segregation being a wonderful vector for infiltration. After all, communism promises equality for all, where everyone could take their children to the amusement park and have fun.

Remember how commies were working through the media industry and academia to become embedded? Well guess how many commies were in black leadership and therefore black media?

Democrats cut black urban leaders a deal called welfare, among other things. The black leaders keep their positions and the money that comes with it, the whites get the vote because of the D next to their name. Chicago style politics revolve around exactly this. Chicago was the only place MLK failed in completely due to a similar deal being struck between the leader of the Chicago black community and the white leader in Chicago’s upper crust.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

 

[Unyielding Stupidity]

Place your bets - what black gangbanger will be gunned down by the police to try and whip the liberals into a frenzy so they vote? My money's on some hoodrat in Chicago being shot during an attempted theft at a liquor store.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

A few Democrats did go over to the Republican side, but the Republicans didn’t suddenly start adopting Old South policy. Hence why it wasn’t an ideology swap. Remember, the Democrat party blocked the signing of the Civil Rights bill until they had a Democrat in office as POTUS, that way they could take credit and rebrand themselves. The Southern Strategy at its core was to stop fighting over New York and California for the big Electoral College points and actually play ball with the Southeastern US.

This led to attention being taken away from New York and California, aka, where the big media lived. Spurning a nobody journalist these days causes a massive tantrum to be thrown, spurning the industry as a whole, even slightly, back then made them some enemies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Vote_totals - Southern Republicans almost all voted no while a few Southern Democrats voted yes. Now to be fair most of those few Southern Republicans were more or less just remnants of the Whig Party in Appalachia who joined up with the Republicans after the Civil War. And those Southern Democrats were Kennedy Democrat types.

Republicans adopted a lot of Old South policy (not really race, but people like Thurmond, Helms, etc. did find a home in the Republican Party), but that was more the late 70s when the Rockefeller Republicans started dying off and the Religious Right came out. This is why the Republican Party in New England died/turned into glorified Democrats like Charlie Baker, because New England hasn't been full of hardcore religious conservatives since Boston stopped being full of neo-puritans/tradcaths like 60-70 years ago.

Gonna also remind people that MLK Jr. voted Republican, yet was a communist. Most black civil rights institutions were infected by communism due to segregation being a wonderful vector for infiltration. After all, communism promises equality for all, where everyone could take their children to the amusement park and have fun.

Remember how commies were working through the media industry and academia to become embedded? Well guess how many commies were in black leadership and therefore black media?

This part is true, WEB DuBois was a commie and the early NAACP was full of it (later NAACP was just under their influence, most weren't really commies as much as opportunists/power seekers besides maybe like Jesse Jackson). Now to be fair, some black commies did have good points about race like some of what Malcolm X said (ever wonder why Malcolm X was always portrayed in the media as some dangerous radical, and also why the government killed him). Although even MLK Jr. said a lot of good things, hence why he was also assassinated by the government.

Democrats cut black urban leaders a deal called welfare, among other things. The black leaders keep their positions and the money that comes with it, the whites get the vote because of the D next to their name. Chicago style politics revolve around exactly this. Chicago was the only place MLK failed in completely due to a similar deal being struck between the leader of the Chicago black community and the white leader in Chicago’s upper crust.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

This goes back to the Jim Crow South I believe, where like I mentioned (white) Democrat bosses paid the poll tax/gave blacks passing marks on literacy tests/etc. so they could vote where of course they voted for the white Democrat's chosen guy (against non-connected Democrats usually). I have no idea who pioneered this (definitely not Chicago). It might have been Memphis, Tennessee where a political boss named EH Crump employed a lot of blacks in his rule over the city, one of which was a political organizer named Lewie Ford whose descendents are the notorious Ford Family who currently run the city and help elect people like Steve Cohen when they aren't getting arrested for corruption.

But to the point, welfare and other gibs is just the modern form of this.

 

[Eggplant Wizard]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Vote_totals - Southern Republicans almost all voted no while a few Southern Democrats voted yes. Now to be fair most of those few Southern Republicans were more or less just remnants of the Whig Party in Appalachia who joined up with the Republicans after the Civil War. And those Southern Democrats were Kennedy Democrat types.

Republicans adopted a lot of Old South policy (not really race, but people like Thurmond, Helms, etc. did find a home in the Republican Party), but that was more the late 70s when the Rockefeller Republicans started dying off and the Religious Right came out. This is why the Republican Party in New England died/turned into glorified Democrats like Charlie Baker, because New England hasn't been full of hardcore religious conservatives since Boston stopped being full of neo-puritans/tradcaths like 60-70 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1957

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1960

Note the difference in numbers from the Democrats when these bills came up, also note how Wikipedia doesn’t give the same type of breakdown that 1964’s was given. Political bullshit was on the table with that last particular bill, people know it was facing some stonewalling until after Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson was in power. Johnson threw his weight around to get a Senator with brain cancer that couldn’t speak wheeled in to break the Democrat filibuster that was holding the 1964 bill back.

This goes back to the Jim Crow South I believe, where like I mentioned (white) Democrat bosses paid the poll tax/gave blacks passing marks on literacy tests/etc. so they could vote where of course they voted for the white Democrat's chosen guy (against non-connected Democrats usually). I have no idea who pioneered this (definitely not Chicago). It might have been Memphis, Tennessee where a political boss named EH Crump employed a lot of blacks in his rule over the city, one of which was a political organizer named Lewie Ford whose descendents are the notorious Ford Family who currently run the city and help elect people like Steve Cohen when they aren't getting arrested for corruption.

But to the point, welfare and other gibs is just the modern form of this.

No, not the Jim Crow paid voter method, that was easily backed with the threat of violence as well. I mean the whole putting black leadership in charge to “fight for black rights” while accomplishing nothing meaningful. That is what Chicago pioneered. Essentially, before welfare came around black leaders in Chicago held power over their part of the city. They would “talk things out” with the white leaders and be able to get “concessions” that did nothing in the long run. Look at the inner city black communities now, they are all run with Chicago-style politics, which shuts out potential black leadership that actually has a clue and ensures that people like Stacy Abrams are the only option you have. The reason it can work without the local population walking out is because welfare and reparations are one hell of a carrot.

To stay on topic is why Trump’s increase in male black voters scares the Democrat party. It is showing that the carrot no longer works and even when it comes to the Midterms, they won’t be able to count on the black vote to pull them across the finish line much longer.

 

[The Ugly One]

Republicans adopted a lot of Old South policy (not really race, but people like Thurmond, Helms, etc. did find a home in the Republican Party), but that was more the late 70s when the Rockefeller Republicans started dying off and the Religious Right came out. This is why the Republican Party in New England died/turned into glorified Democrats like Charlie Baker, because New England hasn't been full of hardcore religious conservatives since Boston stopped being full of neo-puritans/tradcaths like 60-70 years ago.

The Democrats embraced the politics of the Sexual Revolution after about 1972, when the McGovern wing of the party ascended to power. Prior to the Democrats going all-in on divorce, abortion, fatherlessness, etc, evangelicals split about 50/50 Democrat vs Republican. There hadn't been an anti-religious force in politics, so there hadn't been any reason for religion to become a political faction. Lee Atwater saw the way social trends were going, and saw that on everything from family issues to martial valor, the South was becoming more aligned with the Republicans than the Democrats year after year. This largely annoyed the Republicans, who never really wanted to stop being the party of big business and international trade.

 

[Yamma Damma]

Place your bets - what black gangbanger will be gunned down by the police to try and whip the liberals into a frenzy so they vote? My money's on some hoodrat in Chicago being shot during an attempted theft at a liquor store.

(off-topic but midterms aren't close enough to talk about yet)
That's a bet you will lose and deservedly so. Chicago's black-on-black crime is so prevalent that blm's entire grift would crumble in days. Every day to every weekend the gun injury/death toll beats its record while the nationwide news networks and blacktivists shut their mouths, turn around and whistle a tune.

The last time they got eyes looking at chicago was when a gangbanger in training beanlet got gunned down for shooting a gun in a alley at 2AM. The story was hushed up real quick due to it happening during fentayl floyd's riots and I think that other black chick got gunned down (almost conveniently) and was being chanted about next.

If blm is going to play more of their riot games (despite their dem masters being in charge and their lesbo leaders in money trouble), it's """"victim"""" is damn sure not going to be from chicago. It's going to be in some bumfuck town where there's less blacks and more whites to guilt trip into milking more kang bux from. Bet on one of those.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

The Democrats embraced the politics of the Sexual Revolution after about 1972, when the McGovern wing of the party ascended to power. Prior to the Democrats going all-in on divorce, abortion, fatherlessness, etc, evangelicals split about 50/50 Democrat vs Republican. There hadn't been an anti-religious force in politics, so there hadn't been any reason for religion to become a political faction. Lee Atwater saw the way social trends were going, and saw that on everything from family issues to martial valor, the South was becoming more aligned with the Republicans than the Democrats year after year. This largely annoyed the Republicans, who never really wanted to stop being the party of big business and international trade.

Evangelicals were pretty divided on abortion, like the Southern Baptist Convention president at the time didn't believe a fetus was a person. IIRC it was seen as a Catholic position. Back then, evangelicals were more concerned about government intervention in their churches/schools (and to a degree among some Southern Evangelicals, race) because Bob Jones University kept having to deal with court cases over their ever-changing segregation policy. Roe v. Wade became an issue largely because of people like C. Everett Koop (Ronnie Raygun's future surgeon general) who sent out a lot of anti-abortion videos to churches.

McGovern was a disaster though. How or why he was nominated is just weird, since my boomer father said he barely saw any support for him but during the primaries his town had tons of people passing out Muskie stickers (and the campaign even visited his high school since the 26th Amendment had just been passed) which he and his friends would slap on everything.

If blm is going to play more of their riot games (despite their dem masters being in charge and their lesbo leaders in money trouble), it's """"victim"""" is damn sure not going to be from chicago. It's going to be in some bumfuck town where there's less blacks and more whites to guilt trip into milking more kang bux from. Bet on one of those.

Minneapolis wasn't exactly a wypipo town. But I see your point, for radicalizing the non-true-believing white liberals and black people I'd pick a Southern city. Maybe Charlotte, Nashville, etc. Or Louisville because of Breonna Taylor.

 

[The Ugly One]

Evangelicals were pretty divided on abortion, like the Southern Baptist Convention president at the time didn't believe a fetus was a person. IIRC it was seen as a Catholic position. Back then, evangelicals were more concerned about government intervention in their churches/schools (and to a degree among some Southern Evangelicals, race) because Bob Jones University kept having to deal with court cases over their ever-changing segregation policy. Roe v. Wade became an issue largely because of people like C. Everett Koop (Ronnie Raygun's future surgeon general) who sent out a lot of anti-abortion videos to churches.

No, Roe v. Wade became an issue because states had laws restricting abortion to various degrees, and these laws were popular, just like the laws against birth control the Supreme Court struck down in 1965, the laws against sodomy struck down in 1986, and the laws on marriage struck down in 2015. Liberals have this story they like to tell that your average midcentury American Christian was perfectly fine with birth control, no-fault divorce, cohabiting, homosexuality, and abortion, and that the Supreme Court was leading this huge wave of democratically popular change against laws that fuddy-duddy reactionary governments tenaciously refused to repeal for no real reason.

This story doesn't hold up with any information we have about politics at the time. Koop's main contribution was to politically organize increasingly disaffected evangelicals and turn them into Republican stalwarts. The reality is the needle hasn't moved much on abortion in 50 years. The Religious Right didn't actually have an effect at all. The really interesting thing is that, despite religion in America collapsing, abortion on demand still isn't very popular. What actually happened was that "Families are good, babies are good, and unmarried people should be looking for spouses, not sex partners" was the cultural norm in America until the Sexual Revolution, whether you were a Democrat or a Republican, so thinking it was scandalous that your 25-year-old unmarried daughter was living with two guys wasn't "political." That isn't the case any more.

 

[Meat Target]

 

[Mothra1988]

So, if I'm translating this correctly, he got mad about the Babylon Bee, which has now established his credentials as a dyed-in-the-wool DARK MAGA supporter intent on bringing a new dawn of conservatism to America and the West, and he's beginning that quest by buying Twitter and making it a bastion, a CITY UPON A HILL if you will, of right-wing thought? This is what you gathered from him being mad about the Babylon Bee?

I said he was mad about what happened to the Babylon Bee, as in they were banned from Twitter for making a troon joke. It's not my fault you can't read English. Holy shit. I also like you were so damn lazy you didn't even look up anything about what I said because apparently you you're fine with not knowing what you are talking about.

 

[George Lucas]

I don’t know what you faggots are talking about but I hate niggers and taxes and I’ll vote for whoever is putting the niggers away and lowering taxes.

It’s really that fucking simple and is why Ron DeSantis is such an effective politician.

 

[mario if smoke weed]

I don’t know what you faggots are talking about but I hate niggers and taxes and I’ll vote for whoever is putting the niggers away and lowering taxes.

It’s really that fucking simple and is why Ron DeSantis is such an effective politician.

DeSantis is a man like no other. He might not be as amazing as some people put him but he's the only guy who's not afraid to call it like it is. When the wokescolds say the sky identifies as three shades of plum with some hints of yellow, he'll straight up say that sky is blue. He's got some balls and that's what we need, more guys with balls.