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Post by jdredd on Jul 3, 2019 3:42:37 GMT -5
Warning: The following may contain vast generalizations that may or may not be true.
I've been reading hard lately to try to understand the incomprehensible: Conservatism. First, I decided it was all about property. But then I realized there was more to it than that: It's property plus nationalism plus religion. Not necessarily in that order. And then I realized I had stumbled on an entertaining way to analyze all isms. For instance: There is more than one variety of Fascism. Spanish Fascism, like conservatism, sits on a stool with the three legs of religion, Nationalism and Property. But German Fascism (Nazism), rejected the religious leg.
On the other end of the spectrum, original Communism rejected all three legs. (It was for survival that Stalin rehabilitated the Nationalist leg, that is, Mother Russia). As for Chinese Communism, they rehabilitated both Nationalism and Property for survival (Like the Nazis! THAT should make the China-bashers happy), whereas Cuba and North Korea only did the Stalin thing. So where does Liberalism stand? I actually call it Progressivism to distinguish it from classical European Liberalism. Progressiveism is right where you think it is: Somewhere between Conservatism and Communism, as is Socialism. Progressives still believe in RNP (Religion, Nationalism, and Property), just not to the extent of Conservatives. And interestingly enough, Libertarians are bedfellows with conservatives only because they both are passionate about Property, but true Libertarians reject Nationalism (open borders, anyone?).
Still more isms to go.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 3, 2019 14:25:21 GMT -5
Warning: For entertainment purposes only.
To continue analyzing isms with my dubious RNP System:
Trumpism: Trump is pretty much RNP Conservative, but with some interesting nuances:
!. While Trump gives lip service to Christianity, he is heavily supported by the religious right. But he is an anti-Islam bigot.
2. Trump has emphasized Nationalism, whereas many mainstream conservatives have been OK with globalism.
3. While Trump supports Property in general, with his tariffs (which are taxes, hated by the Propertied classes) he is almost agreeing with Unions, those foes of Property.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 15, 2019 15:38:04 GMT -5
www.nationalreview.com/corner/national-conservatism-conference-why-nationalism-and-why-now/"Washington, D.C. — The second day of the National Conservatism Conference opened this morning with a series of short talks addressing why speakers believe a renewed commitment to American national identity is the solution to the present social and political divison in the U.S. David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel and a member of the conference presidium, spoke about Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, all of whom he said were economic nationalists. “ The woke Left is bullying us into a neo-segregation in which we are judged by the color of our skin and not the content of our character,“ Brog said. He noted that patriotism, unlike nationalism, isn’t enough to fix the divisions in America: “Patriotism asks us to love our country. What we need now is more than love of country. We need to love our fellow citizens. We must feel connected to each other and a connection that is deep enough to overcome our superficial differences.” The Limbaugh/Trump right and their religious hypocrite allies call the left the nastiest names it can think of daily and engages in no-prisoners-taken partisan politics as it gerrymanders the country with SCOTUS approval, and yet they want us to "feel connected to each other"! And how do they want to do that? With that leg of the conservative stool, nationalism. And they are whining about the Left bullying them?
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Post by jdredd on Aug 1, 2019 13:38:38 GMT -5
Speaking of the Business Community looking the other way with our unhinged President as long as the Stock Market is up, the Religious Community seems to be doing the same thing as long as Trump helps them get their Holy Grail, outlawing abortion. And the "Love it or leave it" types are of course thrilled with him. Property, Religion, and Nationalism.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 8, 2019 1:31:27 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/opinion/trump-el-paso-dayton-shootings.html"So in trying to construct a new conservatism on the ideological outline of Trumpism, you have to be aware that you’re building around a sinkhole and that your building might fall in. The same goes for any conservative response to the specific riddle of mass shootings. Cultural conservatives get a lot of grief when they respond to these massacres by citing moral and spiritual issues, rather than leaping straight to gun policy (or in this case, racist ideology). But to look at the trend in these massacres, the spikes of narcissistic acting-out in a time of generally-declining violence, the shared bravado and nihilism driving shooters of many different ideological persuasions, is to necessarily encounter a moral and spiritual problem, not just a technocratic one. But the dilemma that conservatives have to confront is that you can chase this cultural problem all the way down to its source in lonely egomania and alienated narcissism, and you’ll still find Donald Trump’s face staring back to you." Here's Russ trying to revive the religious leg of conservatism, as Trump is obviously spiritually vacant. As I said, conservatism isn't what it used to be.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 13, 2019 13:38:07 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/opinion/sunday/religion-extremism-white-supremacy.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"Unlike Islamist jihadists, the online communities of incels, white supremacists and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists make no metaphysical truth claims, do not focus on God and offer no promise of an afterlife or reward. But they fulfill the functions that sociologists generally attribute to a religion: They give their members a meaningful account of why the world is the way it is. They provide them with a sense of purpose and the possibility of sainthood. They offer a sense of community. And they establish clear roles and rituals that allow adherents to feel and act as part of a whole. These aren’t just subcultures; they are rches. And until we recognize the religious hunger alongside the destructive hatred, we have little chance of stopping these terrorists.Now more than ever, the promises religion has traditionally made — a meaningful world, a viable place within it, a community to share it with, rituals to render ordinary life sacred — are absent from the public sphere. More and more Americans are joining the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated. There are more religious “nones” than Catholics or evangelicals, and 36 percent of those born after 1981 don’t identify with any religion. These new reactionary movements, with their power to offer answers at once mollifying and vituperative to the chaos of existence, is one of many ways that Americans are filling that gap." Ms. Burton is trying to tell us that religion is the solution for "domestic terrorism". So how does she explain that it was the evangelicals who gave us Trump?
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Post by jdredd on Aug 30, 2019 16:00:41 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/opinion/trump-religion.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage "White evangelical Christians, the rotting core of Trump’s base, profess to be guided by biblical imperatives. They’re not. Their religion is Play-Doh. They have become more like Trump, not the other way around. It’s a devil’s pact, to use words they would understand. In one of the most explicit passages of the New Testament, Christ says people will be judged by how they treat the hungry, the poor, the least among us. And yet, only 25 percent of white evangelicals say their country has some responsibility to take in refugees. Evangelicals give cover to an amoral president because they believe God is using him to advance their causes. “There has never been anyone who has defended us and who has fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump,” said Ralph Reed at a meeting of professed Christian activists earlier this summer. But what really thrills them is when Trump bullies and belittles their opponents, as counterintuitive as that may seem. Evangelicals “love the meanest parts” of Trump, the Christian writer Ben Howe argues in his new book, “The Immoral Majority.” Older white Christians rouse to Trump’s toxicity because he’s taking their side. It’s tribal, primal and vindictive."
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Post by jdredd on Sept 17, 2021 20:56:47 GMT -5
I love it: American and Australian Nationalism countering Chinese Nationalism by betraying French Nationalism. Isn’t Nationalism fun?
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Post by jdredd on Dec 6, 2021 14:37:30 GMT -5
Should any of us be surprised the working class has moved to the right? I admit I was. But why not? They have always been suckers for religion and Nationalism, except for a short time when “Workers of the world, unite” was popular with some of them. As for property, they want as much as they can get., I never really understood Marx’ s call for the elimination of private property, which is why I was never a Communist.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 6, 2023 16:11:45 GMT -5
I’m picking up on a story on Fox News from 9 days ago called “This is a disheartening poll for America”. It claims to measure Amserican attitudes on Patriotism, Religion, and “Family values”. The “importance” of patriotism is supposed to have dropped from 70% in 1998 to )38% in 2023, while the “importance” of religion has dropped from 62% to 39%, and that of “family values” (including having children) has dropped from 59% to 30%. Whether that is bad news or good news is up to you. I’m more interested in the reasons, and I can only speculate. From where I sit, what has patriotism bought us in the last 25 years? The right has always claimed to be “more patriotic than thou”, and are using as a club on the “woke” (not to mention as a marketing tool). Were our pointless wars since 1998 a factor? As for religion, perhaps religious support of Trump may have been a reason. And the sex-obsessed Catholic clergy. “Family Values” is pretty broad category, but maybe the failures of the nuclear family is part of the problem. I can also understand why the world as it is now could discourage having children, plus how expensive they have become in our hyper-consumerist society. And hyper-individualism may be something. Maybe it’s all just evolution.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 27, 2023 16:16:48 GMT -5
Been looking back at the Spanish Civill War recently, and I was wondering if a similar thing could happen here. For instance, what if Trump loses? No doubt it will blamed on voter fraud (again), and will the Trump cultists take it sitting down? The crucial thing, of course, is where the military would stand. My money is not on the insurrectionists. The Republican side in the SCW was not called the “Loyalists” for nothing.
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Post by jdredd on Jan 14, 2024 15:17:15 GMT -5
I think I’ll use this moribund thread to whine about Nationalism. Nationalism has definitely become the fad of 21st Century, as globalism has weakened. Even China, which benefits so much from globalism, is putting itself at risk over the crappy rouge island of Taiwan. But they don’t have the immigration “problem” that much of the world has driving nativist sentiment. As I’ve said before, Nationalism is extremely seductive for the fearful. But as I’ve said before, Nationalism almost always leads to war. Look at Palestinian nationalism versus Jewish nationalism at war in Gaza. And Americans on the far right talk about a civil war to “save” America, even though civil war would be a surefire way to destroy America IMHO.
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