• CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    …and their base DGAF about helping anyone, even themselves, apparently. As long as they think they’ll get to “own the libs” and be allowed to unleash all their fantasies on women, gays, POC, immigrants, etc…they’ll vote for whoever they think will give them that…

    • hydrospanner@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      …and their base DGAF about helping anyone, even themselves, apparently.

      I’m just as anti-Trump as any rational creature, but I think you’ll find a lot of conservatives, even/especially the ones who don’t like Trump, would not even see the above quote as objectionable, and it’s less “hurr Republican bad” and more that they don’t think that’s the job of government.

      I’m not saying I agree with either the principle or practicality of their position, but one doesn’t have to subscribe to their school of thought to understand it, and insofar as the idea of the government helping people goes, staunch conservatives generally oppose it. Not (explicitly) because they want to bring hardship upon people, but rather because they see “government help” as an overreach of their responsibilities, essentially raising taxes to essentially give those same dollars back to people who would have presumably been better off had the government simply never intervened in the first place and not taken taxes.

      This is, of course, a gross (and often maliciously intentional) oversimplification on their part, because it invites a rebuttal that points out how those with need require more dollars in aid than they contribute in taxes…which of course steers the discussion in the direction of redistribution of wealth, socialism, communism, etc. at which point the argument usually becomes more rhetorical than anything.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I didn’t mean it in the narrow form of “handouts”, however. Government can and does do very much to decide how things are run. I know the Galt’s Gulch type of cons/libertarians think that should not even be a thing, but of course they are completely delusional about large systems. If they think government should have no role in something like international trade agreements or where defense money gets allocated, I don’t even know where to begin with them.

        The point is that ultimately every middle and low class person needs a job with dignity and that has safety measures, access to affordable health care, food and water that is not contaminated, etc…and nearly everything about the Republican platform is about making any of that harder and harder. Of course they are going to make paeans to the magic of voodoo economics and “small government” but all that is simply absurd. First of all, if anything, the Republicans aim to make government even bigger, but just far more ideological, and secondly, Galt Gulch fantasies are ridiculous pap that just won’t work for anyone but the Musks of the world.

        Ultimately, the draw is about racism and their culture wars. They’ll be even worse off than they currently are, but apparently they just don’t care.