So...I've kind of bristled a few conservative feathers recently in calling out MAGA. Got into a debate about Biden's immigration policy in which I defended Biden's position as the reasonable moderate position, while condemning MAGA's position as "fascist" and referring to those prisons he's building as "concentration camps." They genuinely think that's disrespectful and hyperbolic rhetoric. I fundamentally disagree.
The fun fact is, I have all the reason in the world to call this stuff out. I used to be a Reagan/Bush conservative back in the day. I know their arguments. I know what they were for. And I know that the party has changed. Our overton window has gotten so far right that apparently being a mild social democrat is unthinkable, but then people who outright call for authoritarianism and building a series of camps for minorities who they want to deport is "disrespectful." Well, as I told said conservatives, I'm not changing my rhetoric. While a lot of the fascists tone police saying "STOP CALLING US FASCISTS", my own response is "stop doing fascist things." I don't use the term lightly, nor do I think all conservatives are fascists. As I've explained before with my 7 point Likert scale of political ideologies, I tend to view the 2-6 ideologies as compatible with liberal democracies, but then the 1 and 7 are so beyond the pale that they're fundamentally incompatible. MAGA is around a 6.5 right now and kind of edging up to 7. They're not as explicit or overt as the nazis of old (well, at least most of them aren't), but they're definitely dog whistling in that direction.
But first, I wanna discuss Reagan conservatism. For most of my life, conservatives have been so called "constitutionalists." They worshipped the constitution and the founding fathers to an annoying degree, arguing that any interpretation that doesn't align with their 1789 idea of what the United States is is bad, while rule policing the left to ridiculous degrees and screaming that WE'RE the authoritarians (remember when Obama was the "imperial president" who was overstepping his executive authority?), and arguing for things like states rights because we wanted black people to have civil rights, gay people to get married, people to be free to get abortions, and people to have healthcare. Remember that? Pepperidge farms does. As does anyone over age 30.
And again, the rule policing was annoying, but I kinda understood it. At the core of their ideology was a fear of tyranny. As they saw it, we broke away from England to do away with monarchy and dictatorship, and to have a constitutional democracy based on constitutional rights, rule of law, and limited government. And they really, REALLY loved the limited government, because they feared that if we gave the government too much power they would use it tyrannically.
The problem is, over the course of my lifetime, the GOP has become increasingly radical. Even if we use the 2000s as a baseline as it's MY baseline, and it's also before all the modern crazy crap, the modern GOP is barely recognizable on this one dimension. The tea party started this process of radicalization, and then Trump realigned the GOP into something much darker. And yes, 2016 was a realignment, it just wasn't the one I was hoping for.
The fact is, the populace started clamoring for a strong leader. In some respects, i get it, when your politics are weak liberals who dont wanna do anything, and conservatives who basically invoke the constitution any time liberals even try, people get tired of the status quo, they get desperate, and they want change. i was right there with the populace. But I never wanted a dictator. I wanted another one of those many strong executives who we've had throughout history, who kind of bent the rules, but never broke them, changing the system in beneficial ways, but then ceding power back to the people when they were done. Abraham Lincoln got a lot of criticism for his authoritarian measures during the civil war, but it was also...the civil war. FDR got screamed at a lot for imposing a New Deal and trying to pack the court when they tried to mess with him. I'm down for a leader who is willing to get down and dirty with the other branches if need be. But again, I never wanted a dictator.
Trump is a dictator, or at least a wannabe dictator. he's a dude who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, who was never told no, who can't handle being told no, and wants to be in charge. he wants to run the country like he runs his businesses, and keep in mind, businesses are basically mini dictatorships. He hates dealing with the press, with his approach to them similar to Hitler calling them the "lugenpresse." Internationally, he aligns himself more with the likes of Kim Jong Un and Putin, rather than other liberal democracies. He hates dealing with congress. he hates dealing with advisors in his own party. And during his first term, he was contained. But then when he lost the 2020 election he called it "fake news" and incited his followers to LITERALLY STORM THE CAPITOL. And it took Mike Pence, an old school constitutionalist conservative, to tell him no to his plans to steal the election. I might not like Mike Pence, or agree with him on much of anything, but you know what? He is a PATRIOT. He is NOT a fascist. he is a conservative. And what he did helped save democracy that day. Which is why the trumpers wanted to hang the guy on literal gallows that they brought outside of the capitol building. Again, not all conservatives are fascists. Nor do I claim them to be. But MAGA is going that way.
After 2020, Trump plotted his revenge, and came back in 2024 with a new agenda, enshrined in project 2025. He claimed project 2025 wasnt indeed his agenda, but as of writing this he's implemented like half of it. Key to that theory is basically unitary executive theory, which is a maximalist position that as much power should be concentrated in the executive branch as possible. But oh wait, i thought that republicans hated presidents who strongly used their executive powers? Guess that changed. And yeah. Trump has done as much as he can to purge the federal bureaucracy and install it with loyalists, many of whom arent qualified. His cabinet is unqualified, and full of idiot podcasters and the like. He's scared and intimidated congress into going along with them and fearing to step out of line. Those that do face his wrath. Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned after invoking his wrath, and Thomas Massie basically recently had a tweet suggesting if he randomly "commits suicide", he didn't actually do it. Yeah. MAGA is not all right.
The Supreme Court has given him broad executive immunity, claiming we can't prosecute the president as long as what he does is within his job. A dissenting member of the court mentioned that this potentially includes him killing his political opposition.
Trump is literally the most dangerous politician our country has ever seen. Again, we've had leaders who kind of overstepped for all the right reasons but never really went against the SPIRIT of American democracy, but Trump is just consolidating power under him. He's targetting the media, trying to pull licenses of shows who go against him. He's trying to undermine and threaten educational institutions. He's putting people who have progressive views on terror watch lists. He recently arrested Don Lemon for terrorism when in reality he was just doing journalism. He's sending armies of national guardmen and ice agents to swarm american cities, but only in blue and swing states. he's intimidating them into giving up their voter data. He's working with palantir, which is building a massive 1984esque blackmail database on all Americans. He's claiming voter fraud to try to make voting more restrictive, which is just intended to disenfranchise the opposing side. I mean, he's trying to be a dictator. HE'S TRYING TO BE A DICTATOR.
And let's be blunt about his immigration policy. Biden WAS a moderate. The conservatives I was arguing with were saying he let too many people in because of his refugee policy. He let in refugees because of international law. We have a moral duty to let them in and process their claims. They claim there's too many claims to process. I shot back that we seem to have all of this money for concentration camps, but we can't seem to process the claims? What?
Which brings us back to the problem with MAGA. It's not that he wants border control, or whatever. As I said I'm flexible on immigration, I have no dog in the fight. I go where the political winds blow. You can only really piss me off if you either go full fascist, or full open borders, and MAGA is full fascist.
It's not about the law for them. They're just rounding people up, racially profiling, putting people in camps, deporting them to concentration camps in other countries with no due process. Then creating more of those camps here. People bristle at calling them camps, but they are. When you dont follow proper legal procedures, you're just arresting people willy nilly, and locking them up with no due process, often racially profiling while doing so, they're camps. This is Hitleresque. And as I like to tell people. Hitler didnt start with gas chambers and crematoriums. he ended with them. He started out by deporting people. Then he invaded other countries, took them over, and put them in camps. And eventually, the mass death began. We're not at that stage yet, but we seem to be building toward some dark, authoritarian crap.
What should a sane immigration policy look like? If you ask me, it's following rule of law and proper legal procedures, arresting people who shouldn't be here, giving them hearings, and then deporting them if they qualify. He isn't doing that. And he's also doing stuff like going after naturalized citizens, there were stories of him arresting people after the judge let them go and said they can stay. Yeah. Crazy stuff. I mean, these are lines we should never cross. Again, it's the lawlessness and indiscriminate nature of this stuff, and when you operate this way, what's to stop him from delcaring a national emergency, and putting all those people on his little terror watch list into these camps? Seriously. You see the danger. A constitutionalist conservative, a principled one, would say "yeah this isn't okay." But that's what Trump is doing, and the GOP is just going along with it.
I'll say it again. Donald Trump is perhaps the greatest internal threat to this country that I think we've ever had. Maybe you can argue the civil war was worse with the confederacy. Idk. But barring possibly that, yeah, his presidency is a massive constitutional crisis. His actions are consistent with leaders who have tried to break democracies and establish dictatorships like Putin, Orban, or even Hitler or Mussolini. And at this point, I dont shy away from the references. Again, if you dont wanna be called a fascist, stop doing fascist things. It's that simple. I'm going to call a spade a spade. And if you're offended by it, I encourage you to read this again, and if a leftist was doing this to conservatives, what would you think? Because I look at it a lot like the end of democracy and free society and the start of an authoritarian dictatorship.
And btw, i didn't even touch on how the DHS is nazi posting on social media, how more and more conservatives are outing themselves as fascists that wanna end democracy, or all the concentration camp jokes they're making in group chats. Seriously, I had another discussion with another guy who quoted ronald reagan claiming when fascism comes to the US it will come from the left. I asked for his argument to which he responded cancel culture. Which...I aint a huge fan of cancel culture because I do care about freedom of speech, but then when I agreed with him cancel culture goes too far, suddenly he's like 'well not all authoritarianism is bad", and then started saying we should be more like Victor Orban's party in Hungary, and how communists deserve to be cancelled. Assuming he means tankies, I'm not opposed to "cancelling" people with outright illiberal opinions, but that includes fascists and even this guy. hell, the whole justification for cancel culture is the so called "paradox of intolerance" and how we cant tolerate the intolerant. While the left is overreactive with that stuff, having a zero tolerance policy toward unpopular personal opinions, I am becoming increasingly okay with "cancelling" through informal means of course, not state sanctioned punishment, people with opinions fundamentally incompatible with liberal democracy.
Hell, if we really want to start putting people on terror watch lists, those are the people that belong on them. Not normal lefties critical of christianity, maga, or white nationalism, but the most extreme and illiberal elements that pose a serious threat to our way of life. Again, the 1 and 7 people on my political scale. 2-6...youre fine. 1 and 7....not fine. Even then, only arrest them if they do wrong and respect their rights as much as possible. Just pointing out the FBI and DHS are going after the wrong people. Go after the people who literally want to destroy our free and open society. Not the people trying to protect that society from those people through peacefully expressing their first amendment protected views.
Again, if you cant see how MAGA is an authoritarian movement at this point and an actual legit threat to national security and our constitution and our actual important values, idk what to tell you. All I know is i aint shutting up as long as I still got my rights left.
No comments:
Post a Comment