A Conservative Friend who Loves Trump posted the bolded text below.
It started me wondering who these people are that Hate the USA?
My simplistic answer would be the folks on the Far Left and Far Right. I mean both seem very unhappy with the USA as it is today.
The Far Left folks think Medicaid, welfare, free K-12 public education and a lot of other educational programs for the poor folks is NOT nearly generous enough. And they want to give government even more collection and distribution powers.
The Far Right folks of course think it is terrible that a woman gets to choose, the LGBTQ folks have equal rights / protections, that freedom of religion means freedom of all religions, that they have to pay enough taxes to avoid deficit spending, etc. And they seem to want to turn the USA into some Christian form of Sharia law and keep spending more than they pay.
Another friend pointed me to this wonderful interview with Thomas Friedman. Here is a wonderful portion.
“Only one thing worse, in my view, than one-party autocracy, which China has, is one-party democracy.” That’s because it is unable to produce the compromises that are embedded in America’s constitutional system.
Friedman says we are “undermining truth and trust and destroying our cognitive community— our ability to sort out fact from fiction— and our social community—our ability to come together to do big, hard things.”
“Politics has to be about something other than itself,” he said. “Politics has to have meaning and be productive.”
If Joe Biden is elected, Friedman would like him to form a “national unity government.”
“I hope the current version of the Republican party is crushed. I hope it fractures between the Trump cult and the moderate Republicans, and you get a whole new center.”
“For the health of conservative ideology,” Friedman says, “this Trump version has to be destroyed.”
Of course, this friend is pretty Progressive so he interpreted "Unity Government" to be Left Leaning. So I had to crush his dream by noting that a "Unity Government" would need to be made up of the "Happy People" from both sides. Those of use who think the USA is wonderful the way it is, and that only minor continuing adjustments should be made to make it better.
Unfortunately I fear that we are doomed to continue bouncing between "one-party autocracies" every 4 or eight years. :-(
22 comments:
Anti USA attitudes are common outside the United States, at least based on the TV shows I watch. For American bias spotters, British TV is a revelation. If there is politics, it is almost always of the left. Americans are always bad guy. There are not Tories. One wonders how they win elections.
--HIram
Anti Americanism is a label of course that refers to a far more complicated set of ideas, ideas that are hardly limited to America. It's always a qwestion of what we make the choice to apply it to. There is a sense out there that America is more a geographical concept than a body of people. America is vast open spaces, Wyoming and such, where there are vast spaces and few people. Because of perhaps their inherent virtue Tor American=ness, they have superior values and should have outsize say in our political system. 240 years ago, the founders liked those people best. Others of course, have a different undersstanding, that America is about people, that cities and population centers are just as much America as say an empty rach in Texas.
A while back, I watched the Russian movie version of "War and Peace". One of the great themes of the book, and to some extent, the movie is what is the real Russia, the cities or the countryside. It's the same issue we face. Indeed it's the issue everyone faces. I could go on about France as well. There was a fascintating documentary about Bondarchuk the director of the movie which was a huge enterprise. He had real problems making the movie because he was seen as hayseed from the provinces, out of step with Moscow sophisticates.
--Hiram
You seem to be forgetting that the vast majority of power in the USA is focused on the metro areas, since representatives are allocated based on population.
You seem to be forgetting that the vast majority of power in the USA is focused on the metro areas
In our consensus based system of government, rural areas retain huge amounts of power. In Minnesota, for example, the state senate, in combination with a large minority in the house, maintains a veto power over legislation. Since they mostly have a negative political agenda, this gives them an edge in power over the cities.
Because we don't reapportion states as we do with congressional districts, unpopulated areas have disproportionate power in Congress and presidential elections. When the constitution was being drafted this difference was amplified by the fact that slaves were not allowed to vote.
==Hiram
It isn't the rural counties who tip the scales. It is the huge number of us in the suburbs.
The suburbs voted for Hillary Clinton, yet the scales were tipped by others. The result is we have a minority president, who appoints nutcase minority justices. We are governed by a minority of minorities. And I really think that is what those who wrote the constitution, so desperate to hold their fellow human beings in bondage, had in mind.
--Hiram
I see it a little differently, to me it seems that the two extreme ends of the spectrum have undue influence because they are so loud and active.
And all of us HAPPY people are happy and therefore not very active. :-(
If the far left had that much influence on the Democratic Party, we would have Medicare for all. What does happen is that Fox News sifts through the news and finds people who are willing to say things that will upset their audience. The difference between the two parties is that in the Democratic Party, someone like ilhan is and isolated and unrespected back bench congressman. Her adversry and equivalent on the other side, Donald Trump was nominated by his party for president, and while unlike Ilhan, was unable to win the vote, still somehow managed to end up in the White House.
--Hiram
Hiram,
If the DEMs were not so worried about Trump winning...
I am pretty sure Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would have been their nominee...
Don't underestimate how much influence the DEM Socialists have in the party...
"Don't underestimate how much influence the DEM Socialists have in the party."
Reality shows this to be nonsense, but you do you.
Sean,
Are you denying that Bernie Sanders and Single Payer Healthcare had HUGE support in 2016 and 2020?
And apparently those FAR Left folks are still there working to drag the DEMs and USA out to sea...
"Are you denying that Bernie Sanders and Single Payer Healthcare had HUGE support in 2016 and 2020?"
The Democratic nominees in 2016 and 2020 were Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. The Democratic leadership in Congress is a bunch of old folks in their 70s and 80s. Sure, the 'far left' exists and probably represents ~30% of the party, but it ain't the majority.
I never said it is the majority... Not yet at least... :-)
"I see it a little differently, to me it seems that the two extreme ends of the spectrum have undue influence because they are so loud and active.
And all of us HAPPY people are happy and therefore not very active. :-("
The difference is that the Republican Party has been captured by their most extreme elements, while the Democratic Party has not.
I guess we will determine if that is true if the DEMs get control of the House, Senate and White House...
The DEMs were pragmatic in choosing Biden as their candidate, however that does not mean that they will have the self control to avoid over reaching and alienating us folks in the center.
From my view it is Trump's lying that is going to cost him the election, not any particular policy or change he made while in office.
Don't underestimate how much influence the DEM Socialists have in the party...
I would have a lot more confidence in that view if it wasn't pushed so hard by Fox News.
--Hiram
Since I do not watch FOX News, my view comes from the massive amount of support Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren received from Democratic votes...
What is the rationale for Sean and yourself denying this?
It is like when the GOPers deny that the Far Right has a lot of influence on the GOP...
Sanders and Warren got a smaller percentage of the vote in 2020 than just Sanders did in 2016. Sanders won 23 primaries/caucuses in 2016, Sanders and Warren won a combined 9 in 2020 (and the only others who won in 2020 besides Biden/Sanders/Warren were Buttigieg and Bloomberg, who are not of the "far left" variety).
There's no doubt that folks like "the Squad" do a great job of getting headlines (or being convenient targets for the right-wing machine). But they are not driving the agenda of the party. To the extent you're seeing folks in the Democratic Party move left, I would suggest that much of it is being driven by Republican behavior, not because they've got left-wing barking at them. If there's one thing we've got decades of history of, it's the Democratic Party ignoring the left wing of their party.
When you've got a milquetoasty guy like Chris Coons talking like this, you know they're done with McConnell's BS.FOX: Coons calls for effort to 'rebalance' federal courts
I think the difference is due to:
- fear of Trump
- Sanders and Warren gave up earlier
2016 Delegate Count
Clinton 2814
Sanders 1893
2020 Delegate Count
Biden 2671
Sanders & Warren 1136
Interesting thing... Your comment regarding Chris Coons reminds me of how the Far Right talks about Romney... :-)
I'm not dragging Coons's positions on issues, I'm saying he's a guy who always been a moderate everybody let's get along institutionalist. When you've got folks like that ready to burn the thing down, something has changed. (And it ain't because of the "far left")
I did not get "burn the thing down" from his comments...
I got... We lost our political advantage in the courts. Let's discuss how to get it back.
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