All six of these items point to legitimate areas of concern, but they are irrelevant against what Cathy Young lays out here. She is on point. However, to imply there are no fascists on the left, campus radicals are not a huge problem, etc. - like you have done here - is unsavory and dishonest. Just because the Trump faction is bad for America in so many ways, doesn't mean the illiberal, faux-left faction isn't as well.
Am I supposed to use this to acknowledge that "they are problems but"? Because, regardless of whether people believe they are or not, the fact is that they are red herrings that are either cherry-picked, overblown, or outright fabricated by a much more sophisticated and powerful propaganda machine than I myself can compete with. And they have all served a 40-year purpose of selecting for narrow ideological purity instead of for competence, which has culminated in the party collapsing into its present state.
The idea that there is some sort of competing "left wing fascism" is just unbelievably silly. But for that brand of centrist whose only objective is to wring their hands about "both sides," policy or politics aren't the point, are they?
I watched a limited series on Netflix this week called "Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War." It really does a great job contextualizing Putin, the War in Ukraine and what happened to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union through the lens of the development of the nuclear bomb.
Since I have lived most of my 71 years under the threat of nuclear annihilation and I know now that IF Russia had no nuclear bombs THEN Russia would never have invaded Georgia, Crimea or Ukraine and if they had the US and her allies would have responded more aggressively and driven the Russians out.
Our diplomatic approach would not have included looking into Putin's eyes and "seeing his soul" or handing out silly "reset buttons" while Russia was still prosecuting its take over of Georgia.
The whole world sees that by having nuclear arms they can forestall invasions by the United States or anyone else. It is not for nothing that Iran, North Korea and others are desperate to acquire the bomb. Even Ukraine probably regrets having given them up now.
Just like in the Cold War every relationship is being defined by MAD.
And pivotal to the outcomes of Putin's strategy is the election of Trump and the support of the Republican majority in the House and enough votes to stall anything in the Senate. He will no longer have to threaten nuclear war with which he holds the US at bay today. His recapture of the Baltic States will be much easier without NATO and a fractured EU and isolationist UK and the withdrawal of US forces from Europe. The Chinese will simply have to renegotiate their ownership of Taiwan and avoid an armed conflict with the US.
Thanks, Cathy, for this article. However I have noticed that Bulwark writers don't use the term that best fits the far right MAGA ideology such as it is. It is not conservative it is reactionary. By calling these people conservative we simply continue to mislead readers as to the nature of their ideology. Conservatives are on the normal liberal democratic spectrum. Reactionaries are not. As you say conservatives can love America as it is. Reactionaries can only hate America as it actually exists.
It strikes me that although George W Bush and Donald Trump are very different kinds of people, the majority of the same people support them. What accounts for this? I think it is rooted partly in simple partisanship and the two-party system ("George W Bush and Donald Trump are both Republican so I voted for both") and partly in the conservative memescape that simply declares "We Are Right" (W.A.R.).
What I call "memescapes" are collections of ideas that people tend to believe just because That's What We Believe. These ideas are raw assertions and subtexts that get repeated over and over ad nauseum, with the main "evidence" in favor of the claims being the repetition itself. Humans are naturally vulnerable to be sucked into memescapes unless they work to avoid it. Many people downright love their memescapes, in fact. It's not just that the more an idea is repeated, the more true it becomes. It's that if an idea belongs to My Memescape, I myself must repeat it and defend it!
One meme I think is particularly important was stated by Rush Limbaugh as:
> We live in two universes. One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie. Everything run, dominated, and controlled by the left here and around the world is a lie. The other universe is where we are, and that’s where reality reigns supreme and we deal with it. And seldom do these two universes ever overlap.
With this meme you can dismiss any given purported fact simply because it is "left wing". (Of course, the left has a similar meme in the form of "Reality has a liberal bias", and you can find people rejecting ideas simply because they are "right wing".)
These sorts of memes can lead people to a very wide variety of different conclusions because they minimize the importance of evidence, and even beliefs themselves. Instead they suggest that what's important is "who is on my team". I suppose Trumpists must have some reasoning going on like "Trump is on My Team, the Right team, so I will thoughtfully consider adopting his beliefs as my own. For example, surely the election was stolen as he says, and all these court cases are nothing but a witch hunt." (Not that Trump himself believes these things, but I think if you're meme-driven, you take his words at face value because he's On Your Team.)
In the end, just about everything is a meme, by the way. I generally agree with the sentiment "people should follow evidence wherever it leads" but it's still a meme―I just think it's a good meme, in part because it pushes back against toxic memescapes, but more importantly because it can lead people in completely different environments to reach similar conclusions, because of course evidence points toward truth.
The root of the word meme is mimeme in the Greek. To imitate.
I think it was Aristotle who taught that "Art is an imitation of life."
You are right that memes pervade our world. Shakespeare's St Crispin's Day oration in Henry V is repeated and adapted over and over again down to movies like "Brave Heart" and every bad historical military movie filmed day before yesterday.
The opening bars of Beethoven's 5th and Karl Orff's "Carmina Burana" used to signify a crisis, a villainous threat or heroic gallantry in many movie soundtracks are memes.
Some scholars consider that "Kilroy was Here" to be one of the first viral memes to spread around the world.
To me, the problem is that the memescape has taken over the world and "Life has become an imitation of art."
Even the events of January 6 look like a huge piece of performance art. The Republicans have subverted the House of Representatives into an extended limited series of performative acts not to actually govern but to illustrate their antisocial discontent.
I apologize I am not really quite able to clearly articulate what I mean.
Mike Godwin, who invented "Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies" in 1990 said in 1994 that all memes are not equal and that "The time may have come for us to commit ourselves to memetic engineering - crafting good memes to drive out the bad ones."
Hmmm? I am blocked from liking this comment! Still curious about George Bush not knowing why he did not know someone needs to kill this guy…when he stared into the eyes of Satan Incarnate How the world would be a better place. And have always wondered how much blood and treasure would have been saved if Truman had made like Michael Corleone in the Italian restaurant and ended histories biggest mass murderers reign of terror at Yalta…let alone, speaking of no threat of nuclear annihilation…but, then again , why did no good German whack the crime family boss after the night of the long knives, let alone any and everyday the German turd lived….who finally died… by his own hand.
And of course to refer to MAGA hat donning, Trump bumper sticker ice road trucker populists as “conservatives”, I would submit, is just another left wing smear of the entire Grand Ole Party. After all, even Rachel Maddow should admit there is nothing conservative about The Don. But it is not good on the ears of her drolling fanatics. Gotta run on. Peace through superior mental firepower
Oh, and to wit, like I have been saying for years DEATH TO PUTIN Can some so called leader in the still free western world please place a billion dollar Bitcoin bounty on Putins head…and may as many full metal jackets enter the skulls of Putins willing executioners…and can Biden throw that frrr Carlson in jail for not just betraying his country, but humanity. Thanks for taking my Unpopulist rant the so called Unpopulist.
A very insightful piece regarding the intellectual right's "hatred" for liberalism. I can only add what I regard as the view from the common person. There, the protestant religious' dominant base of the Southern Baptist Convention and its allies, hates the liberalism of the progressive track of present American culture and public policy as much as it hates Satan (or more?). Certainly the causes are complex, but our process of understanding the conflict from the conservative point of view is instructive.
Great article. The right has changed places with the left over the last hundred years. In the 1920's leftists were all agog about Russian communism, they were called "fellow travellers" for parroting the Kremlin's line. Now we have right wing fellow travellers (same country, different century, different political system - no longer communist, but still totalitarian) We should never forget that the communist left in Weimar Germany refused to ally with German moderates, because Stalin told them not to! That weakened the German democracy and paved the way for Hitler. Then the ultimate coup de grace was the reactionary right in Germany, which invited Hitler to become Chancellor after his Nazi party won a third of the vote. Luckily the left is no longer under the influence of the Russians, but the right is. And American reactionaries are enabling Trump, the same way that German reactionaries enabled Hitler. History repeats itself, and the second time as a farce!
Let's see, so, this article adduced evidence that, as far as Putin admiration goes, the right's most prominent politician for the last decade, Donald Trump, and arguably its most prominent media personality, Tucker Carlson, have been not just admirers but apologists.
Meanwhile, Trump's counterpart, Joe Biden, has been vocally anti-Hamas, and no notable liberal media personalities have offered Hamas admiration or apologia.
When you say "the right", you must address actual opinion on the right, which I provided through Pew polling. This shows that 67% of Republicans do not like Russia, and only 6% of Americans admire Putin.
In contrast, we see Biden pushing for a ceasefire in the Gaza war against Hamas before any hostages are released and before Hamas is defeated. You also have elected Democrats pushing for the same, namely VP Harris, Senate Majority leader Schumer, Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, Chair of Progressive Caucus Pramila Jayapal who represents 98 elected Democrat members of Congress in the Progressive Caucus. All left leaning newspapers such as NYT, Guardian, LA Times, Washington Post have supported a ceasefire now.
That's not only Hamas apologia, it's Hamas protection.
You have Israeli hostage families marching in the streets against Netanyahu’s rejection of various ceasefire proposals that would have gotten their family members back. I assume their calls for accepting ceasefire deals also makes them Hamas apologists who want to protect terrorists? Or are their other interests in play beyond your simplistic drivel?
Israeli families, understandably, want their family member(s) released, with or without a ceasefire. After ALL the hostages are released, the war can continue in full force as far as they are concerned.
The Hamas apologists in Congress and in the Biden administration, are demanding "ceasefire now", with no call to release the hostages and no call for Hamas to surrender. That's an entirely different animal.
The hostage families do not love Hamas. Rashida Tlaib does.
And it is Hamas leadership rejecting a hostage release, because the hostages protect them from Israel's full force. They want guarantees that Israel will not hunt them down, as just happened in Syria to an Iranian Quds general.
In other words you acknowledge that there are other interests in play beyond the unserious, simplistic drivel that anyone pursuing diplomatic resolutions and ceasefires, including the entire Biden administration and institutional Democrats, are Hamas apologists or protecting terrorists. Glad we could clear that up.
I am old enough to remember my old man railing against the Israelis for negotiating with an unapologetic, unrepentant terrorist [rotting in hell] Yasser Arafat. I am all for a Palestinian state that has a Bill of Rights modeled after our sacred First Amendment. Not until the day you and I can go on the internet, or go down to the Gaza public square and freely rail against, without any threat of bodily harm, the Palestinian powers that be and especially the black roped stoneage Romeo irreligious leaders, will there ever be peace in the so called Middle East. Viva Israel. Death to Hamas.
No, it constitutes Americans desire to avoid trading Chicago for Kiev in a confrontation with nuclear armed Russia. Prior to WW2, after the Nazi victory over France in 1940, 65% of Americans polled said keep out of the War in Europe. Were most Americans protecting Hitler? Or just calculating what was best for America.
Of course that isn't so. Perhaps you are the one in a bubble?
A recent AP POLL shows 55% of Republicans think aid to Ukraine is too much, the rest think it's about right or too little. Among independent voters 46% of Independents think Ukraine aid is too much, 48% think its about right or too little.
17% of Democrats think aid to Ukraine is too much.
It seems a significant number of Americans, including Democrats and Independents think Ukraine aid is too high. In fact, the polling among Independents closely mirrors the findings among Republicans, but Democrats are much more enthusiastic to get involved in providing weapons to Ukraine.
So while Democrats call for a ceasefire in Gaza, they DO NOT call for a ceasefire in the Ukraine war and they DO NOT call for a negotiated settlement for the Ukraine war. Instead, they dream of a Russian defeat, which is unlikely.
The meme that the right is in love with Putin is just that, a meme pushed by publications like the Guardian and the NYT. The data shows the opposite is true. While there are a few on the right who admire authoritarian states like Russia, there were far more on the left who admired Stalin. Americans of both parties do not like Russia.
Yes, just “a small fringe” that includes the party’s leader and 2024 presidential nominee, elected officials and appointees, and some of their biggest media personalities and influencers. You can claim the right doesn’t admire Putin or Orban all day long, but actions speak louder than responses to shallow polling questions. And when it comes to actions, the institutional right and its leaders regularly choose to serve Putin’s interests. As does your blind refusal to grapple with this reality. But keep on trotting out that poll about how much you don’t admire Putin. Patriotic America doesn’t care about your feels and would much prefer if you’d just stop making common cause with the guy.
Depends on the question. But yes, asking someone whether they admire Putin is an exceedingly shallow and meaningless polling question.
Admitting Putin is bad is the lowest of low bars, and it means very little coming from a committed anti-anti-Putinist. Its nice you don't admire him. Have a cookie. But the question of personal admiration doesn't matter much when every other word you say and thing you do serves his interests anyway.
You'd have to look at the crosstabs and see if there are any segments of the population (like self-idemtified progressives) with outsized support, that granularity is drowned out in tbe top line number.
The Right doesn't love Liberalism but it does love Liberty and the "Liberals" of today could learn a lot from the Right. Liberalism today is anything but freedom.
Soviet Unions used to be an inspiration for far-left populists and communists. While Russia is the same today for far-right populists and nationalists.
Because this is an open-comment post, I'm going to take the chance to head off the most useless apologia for autocrats at the path:
A. "Actually the left is the real fascists"
B. "But campus radicals!"
C. "This is just another Russia hoax"
D. "We're only responding to left wing authoritarianism"
E. "What about Democrat cities (defund the police)"
F. "Technically Stacy Abrams is an election denier too"
If you find any of these to be a convenient block to put between the facts and your feelings, just reply with the letter.
All six of these items point to legitimate areas of concern, but they are irrelevant against what Cathy Young lays out here. She is on point. However, to imply there are no fascists on the left, campus radicals are not a huge problem, etc. - like you have done here - is unsavory and dishonest. Just because the Trump faction is bad for America in so many ways, doesn't mean the illiberal, faux-left faction isn't as well.
"He didn't imply there are no fascists on the left," I said dryly.
Am I supposed to use this to acknowledge that "they are problems but"? Because, regardless of whether people believe they are or not, the fact is that they are red herrings that are either cherry-picked, overblown, or outright fabricated by a much more sophisticated and powerful propaganda machine than I myself can compete with. And they have all served a 40-year purpose of selecting for narrow ideological purity instead of for competence, which has culminated in the party collapsing into its present state.
The idea that there is some sort of competing "left wing fascism" is just unbelievably silly. But for that brand of centrist whose only objective is to wring their hands about "both sides," policy or politics aren't the point, are they?
A and D are correct.
Today, Scotland became the world's first transgenderist totalitarian state.
https://www.justthefacts.media/p/scotlands-war-on-women
You could be less weird if your fantasy universe involved you wearing a robe and wizard hat to the grocery store dude
I watched a limited series on Netflix this week called "Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War." It really does a great job contextualizing Putin, the War in Ukraine and what happened to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union through the lens of the development of the nuclear bomb.
Since I have lived most of my 71 years under the threat of nuclear annihilation and I know now that IF Russia had no nuclear bombs THEN Russia would never have invaded Georgia, Crimea or Ukraine and if they had the US and her allies would have responded more aggressively and driven the Russians out.
Our diplomatic approach would not have included looking into Putin's eyes and "seeing his soul" or handing out silly "reset buttons" while Russia was still prosecuting its take over of Georgia.
The whole world sees that by having nuclear arms they can forestall invasions by the United States or anyone else. It is not for nothing that Iran, North Korea and others are desperate to acquire the bomb. Even Ukraine probably regrets having given them up now.
Just like in the Cold War every relationship is being defined by MAD.
And pivotal to the outcomes of Putin's strategy is the election of Trump and the support of the Republican majority in the House and enough votes to stall anything in the Senate. He will no longer have to threaten nuclear war with which he holds the US at bay today. His recapture of the Baltic States will be much easier without NATO and a fractured EU and isolationist UK and the withdrawal of US forces from Europe. The Chinese will simply have to renegotiate their ownership of Taiwan and avoid an armed conflict with the US.
Thanks, Cathy, for this article. However I have noticed that Bulwark writers don't use the term that best fits the far right MAGA ideology such as it is. It is not conservative it is reactionary. By calling these people conservative we simply continue to mislead readers as to the nature of their ideology. Conservatives are on the normal liberal democratic spectrum. Reactionaries are not. As you say conservatives can love America as it is. Reactionaries can only hate America as it actually exists.
It strikes me that although George W Bush and Donald Trump are very different kinds of people, the majority of the same people support them. What accounts for this? I think it is rooted partly in simple partisanship and the two-party system ("George W Bush and Donald Trump are both Republican so I voted for both") and partly in the conservative memescape that simply declares "We Are Right" (W.A.R.).
What I call "memescapes" are collections of ideas that people tend to believe just because That's What We Believe. These ideas are raw assertions and subtexts that get repeated over and over ad nauseum, with the main "evidence" in favor of the claims being the repetition itself. Humans are naturally vulnerable to be sucked into memescapes unless they work to avoid it. Many people downright love their memescapes, in fact. It's not just that the more an idea is repeated, the more true it becomes. It's that if an idea belongs to My Memescape, I myself must repeat it and defend it!
One meme I think is particularly important was stated by Rush Limbaugh as:
> We live in two universes. One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie. Everything run, dominated, and controlled by the left here and around the world is a lie. The other universe is where we are, and that’s where reality reigns supreme and we deal with it. And seldom do these two universes ever overlap.
With this meme you can dismiss any given purported fact simply because it is "left wing". (Of course, the left has a similar meme in the form of "Reality has a liberal bias", and you can find people rejecting ideas simply because they are "right wing".)
These sorts of memes can lead people to a very wide variety of different conclusions because they minimize the importance of evidence, and even beliefs themselves. Instead they suggest that what's important is "who is on my team". I suppose Trumpists must have some reasoning going on like "Trump is on My Team, the Right team, so I will thoughtfully consider adopting his beliefs as my own. For example, surely the election was stolen as he says, and all these court cases are nothing but a witch hunt." (Not that Trump himself believes these things, but I think if you're meme-driven, you take his words at face value because he's On Your Team.)
In the end, just about everything is a meme, by the way. I generally agree with the sentiment "people should follow evidence wherever it leads" but it's still a meme―I just think it's a good meme, in part because it pushes back against toxic memescapes, but more importantly because it can lead people in completely different environments to reach similar conclusions, because of course evidence points toward truth.
The root of the word meme is mimeme in the Greek. To imitate.
I think it was Aristotle who taught that "Art is an imitation of life."
You are right that memes pervade our world. Shakespeare's St Crispin's Day oration in Henry V is repeated and adapted over and over again down to movies like "Brave Heart" and every bad historical military movie filmed day before yesterday.
The opening bars of Beethoven's 5th and Karl Orff's "Carmina Burana" used to signify a crisis, a villainous threat or heroic gallantry in many movie soundtracks are memes.
Some scholars consider that "Kilroy was Here" to be one of the first viral memes to spread around the world.
To me, the problem is that the memescape has taken over the world and "Life has become an imitation of art."
Even the events of January 6 look like a huge piece of performance art. The Republicans have subverted the House of Representatives into an extended limited series of performative acts not to actually govern but to illustrate their antisocial discontent.
I apologize I am not really quite able to clearly articulate what I mean.
Mike Godwin, who invented "Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies" in 1990 said in 1994 that all memes are not equal and that "The time may have come for us to commit ourselves to memetic engineering - crafting good memes to drive out the bad ones."
https://www.wired.com/1994/10/godwin-if-2/
Hmmm? I am blocked from liking this comment! Still curious about George Bush not knowing why he did not know someone needs to kill this guy…when he stared into the eyes of Satan Incarnate How the world would be a better place. And have always wondered how much blood and treasure would have been saved if Truman had made like Michael Corleone in the Italian restaurant and ended histories biggest mass murderers reign of terror at Yalta…let alone, speaking of no threat of nuclear annihilation…but, then again , why did no good German whack the crime family boss after the night of the long knives, let alone any and everyday the German turd lived….who finally died… by his own hand.
And of course to refer to MAGA hat donning, Trump bumper sticker ice road trucker populists as “conservatives”, I would submit, is just another left wing smear of the entire Grand Ole Party. After all, even Rachel Maddow should admit there is nothing conservative about The Don. But it is not good on the ears of her drolling fanatics. Gotta run on. Peace through superior mental firepower
Oh, and to wit, like I have been saying for years DEATH TO PUTIN Can some so called leader in the still free western world please place a billion dollar Bitcoin bounty on Putins head…and may as many full metal jackets enter the skulls of Putins willing executioners…and can Biden throw that frrr Carlson in jail for not just betraying his country, but humanity. Thanks for taking my Unpopulist rant the so called Unpopulist.
A very insightful piece regarding the intellectual right's "hatred" for liberalism. I can only add what I regard as the view from the common person. There, the protestant religious' dominant base of the Southern Baptist Convention and its allies, hates the liberalism of the progressive track of present American culture and public policy as much as it hates Satan (or more?). Certainly the causes are complex, but our process of understanding the conflict from the conservative point of view is instructive.
Great article. The right has changed places with the left over the last hundred years. In the 1920's leftists were all agog about Russian communism, they were called "fellow travellers" for parroting the Kremlin's line. Now we have right wing fellow travellers (same country, different century, different political system - no longer communist, but still totalitarian) We should never forget that the communist left in Weimar Germany refused to ally with German moderates, because Stalin told them not to! That weakened the German democracy and paved the way for Hitler. Then the ultimate coup de grace was the reactionary right in Germany, which invited Hitler to become Chancellor after his Nazi party won a third of the vote. Luckily the left is no longer under the influence of the Russians, but the right is. And American reactionaries are enabling Trump, the same way that German reactionaries enabled Hitler. History repeats itself, and the second time as a farce!
There is only a small fringe element of Putin admirers on the right. In contrast, Hamas has a huge following that is protecting them on the left.
Let's see, so, this article adduced evidence that, as far as Putin admiration goes, the right's most prominent politician for the last decade, Donald Trump, and arguably its most prominent media personality, Tucker Carlson, have been not just admirers but apologists.
Meanwhile, Trump's counterpart, Joe Biden, has been vocally anti-Hamas, and no notable liberal media personalities have offered Hamas admiration or apologia.
When you say "the right", you must address actual opinion on the right, which I provided through Pew polling. This shows that 67% of Republicans do not like Russia, and only 6% of Americans admire Putin.
In contrast, we see Biden pushing for a ceasefire in the Gaza war against Hamas before any hostages are released and before Hamas is defeated. You also have elected Democrats pushing for the same, namely VP Harris, Senate Majority leader Schumer, Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, Chair of Progressive Caucus Pramila Jayapal who represents 98 elected Democrat members of Congress in the Progressive Caucus. All left leaning newspapers such as NYT, Guardian, LA Times, Washington Post have supported a ceasefire now.
That's not only Hamas apologia, it's Hamas protection.
You have Israeli hostage families marching in the streets against Netanyahu’s rejection of various ceasefire proposals that would have gotten their family members back. I assume their calls for accepting ceasefire deals also makes them Hamas apologists who want to protect terrorists? Or are their other interests in play beyond your simplistic drivel?
Israeli families, understandably, want their family member(s) released, with or without a ceasefire. After ALL the hostages are released, the war can continue in full force as far as they are concerned.
The Hamas apologists in Congress and in the Biden administration, are demanding "ceasefire now", with no call to release the hostages and no call for Hamas to surrender. That's an entirely different animal.
The hostage families do not love Hamas. Rashida Tlaib does.
And it is Hamas leadership rejecting a hostage release, because the hostages protect them from Israel's full force. They want guarantees that Israel will not hunt them down, as just happened in Syria to an Iranian Quds general.
In other words you acknowledge that there are other interests in play beyond the unserious, simplistic drivel that anyone pursuing diplomatic resolutions and ceasefires, including the entire Biden administration and institutional Democrats, are Hamas apologists or protecting terrorists. Glad we could clear that up.
I am old enough to remember my old man railing against the Israelis for negotiating with an unapologetic, unrepentant terrorist [rotting in hell] Yasser Arafat. I am all for a Palestinian state that has a Bill of Rights modeled after our sacred First Amendment. Not until the day you and I can go on the internet, or go down to the Gaza public square and freely rail against, without any threat of bodily harm, the Palestinian powers that be and especially the black roped stoneage Romeo irreligious leaders, will there ever be peace in the so called Middle East. Viva Israel. Death to Hamas.
No, it constitutes Americans desire to avoid trading Chicago for Kiev in a confrontation with nuclear armed Russia. Prior to WW2, after the Nazi victory over France in 1940, 65% of Americans polled said keep out of the War in Europe. Were most Americans protecting Hitler? Or just calculating what was best for America.
You're not protecting Putin. You're just using deranged alarmism to justify doing everything possible to serve his interests.
Of course that isn't so. Perhaps you are the one in a bubble?
A recent AP POLL shows 55% of Republicans think aid to Ukraine is too much, the rest think it's about right or too little. Among independent voters 46% of Independents think Ukraine aid is too much, 48% think its about right or too little.
17% of Democrats think aid to Ukraine is too much.
It seems a significant number of Americans, including Democrats and Independents think Ukraine aid is too high. In fact, the polling among Independents closely mirrors the findings among Republicans, but Democrats are much more enthusiastic to get involved in providing weapons to Ukraine.
So while Democrats call for a ceasefire in Gaza, they DO NOT call for a ceasefire in the Ukraine war and they DO NOT call for a negotiated settlement for the Ukraine war. Instead, they dream of a Russian defeat, which is unlikely.
I prefer clarity to agreement, as Mike’s comment burst your thoughtless bubble.
Apples to Oranges comparison.
Hamas is not invested in influencing the outcome of the 2024 election.
Putin and his American fan boys are heavily invested in the outcome of of the 2024 election.
Since when can Trump's supporters be considered a fringe element on the right?
Pew research:
Pct of Americans with unfavorable view of Russia:
Democrats 71%
Republicans 67%
Pct of Americans with favorable view of Putin 6%
The meme that the right is in love with Putin is just that, a meme pushed by publications like the Guardian and the NYT. The data shows the opposite is true. While there are a few on the right who admire authoritarian states like Russia, there were far more on the left who admired Stalin. Americans of both parties do not like Russia.
Yes, just “a small fringe” that includes the party’s leader and 2024 presidential nominee, elected officials and appointees, and some of their biggest media personalities and influencers. You can claim the right doesn’t admire Putin or Orban all day long, but actions speak louder than responses to shallow polling questions. And when it comes to actions, the institutional right and its leaders regularly choose to serve Putin’s interests. As does your blind refusal to grapple with this reality. But keep on trotting out that poll about how much you don’t admire Putin. Patriotic America doesn’t care about your feels and would much prefer if you’d just stop making common cause with the guy.
"Shallow polling questions", right. But when the polling questions relate to abortion, they are not shallow. Gotcha.
Depends on the question. But yes, asking someone whether they admire Putin is an exceedingly shallow and meaningless polling question.
Admitting Putin is bad is the lowest of low bars, and it means very little coming from a committed anti-anti-Putinist. Its nice you don't admire him. Have a cookie. But the question of personal admiration doesn't matter much when every other word you say and thing you do serves his interests anyway.
You'd have to look at the crosstabs and see if there are any segments of the population (like self-idemtified progressives) with outsized support, that granularity is drowned out in tbe top line number.
The Right doesn't love Liberalism but it does love Liberty and the "Liberals" of today could learn a lot from the Right. Liberalism today is anything but freedom.
write about the Lend-Lease law that was signed on May 9th, 2022, and then killed, then, maybe, you'll get somewhere
Soviet Unions used to be an inspiration for far-left populists and communists. While Russia is the same today for far-right populists and nationalists.