Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged MAGA

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Javier E

Opinion | The Republican Party's Problem With the Elite Begins With Its Own - The New Y... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-trump-republicans-elite.html

GOP anti-intellectualism elite culture crisis politics ivy league

shared by Javier E on 25 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • This puts those Republican politicians saddled with inconvenient Ivy League degrees in an awkward position, like the guy who shows up in a tux for a rodeo wedding. In order to stay in office and on message, they must reject the very thing that propelled their own careers.
  • Remember, Ron DeSantis once eagerly joined one of Yale’s secret societies and told classmates he’d dreamed of attending Harvard Law. He founded a tutoring firm offering “the only LSAT prep courses designed exclusively by Harvard Law School graduates.
  • But once in office, he made a show of distancing himself from his academic credentials.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “I viewed having earned degrees from Yale and Harvard Law School to be political scarlet letters as far as a G.O.P. primary went,” DeSantis wrot
  • His Ivy League brethren, Ted Cruz (Princeton, Harvard Law), Josh Hawley (Stanford, Yale Law) and Tom Cotton (Harvard, Harvard), take similar pains to wash off the taint of East Coast academia with good-ol’-boy cred.
  • The latest standard-bearer for regular-folk Republicans is a down-home J.D., now JD — no periods, dude — who went to Yale Law School only with the help of student loans and side jobs. What’s more, JD Vance first got a humbler degree at Ohio State through the G.I. Bill. At the Republican National Convention, Yale barely came up.
  • Gone is the bushy-tailed Vance who wrote in “Hillbilly Elegy,” “The coolest thing I’ve done, at least on paper, is graduate from Yale Law School, something 13-year-old J.D. Vance would have considered ludicrous.” The up-and-comer who, in thrall of Yale’s “aura,” confessed that he “wanted to go to Yale more than any other school.”
  • The Vance who emerged as a MAGA politician is one who, after reaping the benefits and connections of an elite graduate education, turned around and gave a speech in 2021 called “The Universities Are the Enemy.”“How ridiculous is it that we tell our young people to go to college, to get brainwashed?” he asked the crowd, going on to quote Nixon: “The professors are the enemy.” For Vance, the biggest takeaway from his Ivy League education is the monumental chip on his shoulder.
  • he Republican Party has turned ignorance into a point of pride.
Javier E

Opinion | In Indiana, the MAGA Revolution Eats Its Own - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ionalist-republican-party.html

revolution gop division 2024 extremism politics US history crisis

shared by Javier E on 21 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • According to the Public Religion Research Institute’s 2023 American Values Atlas, 55 percent of Trump supporters are Christian nationalists, as measured by their agreement with statements like “Being Christian is an important part of being truly American” and “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.”
  • The Christian right increasingly sees American politics as zero-sum, meaning it is either going to triumph or face subjugation. As Justice Samuel Alito of the Supreme Court was recorded saying, “One side or the other is going to win.”
Javier E

The Infantile Style in American Politics - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...678844

left us progressivism style culture politics history

shared by Javier E on 01 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • Too many on the left wing of American politics have become inured to the effect of their overheated rhetoric and histrionic displays of fealty to in-group norms
  • Bowman’s supporters sought easy explanations for his defeat, including that redistricting had shifted his district northward out of much of the Bronx and into Westchester. But Bowman in fact had fared well in the predominantly Democratic suburban county in his 2020 and 2022 campaigns.
  • claims that the massive spending of pro-Israel groups was responsible for Bowman’s defeat warrant skepticism
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Bowman also indulged a penchant—again shared broadly on the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist left—for performative and self-righteous politics.
  • For weeks, prominent left-wing organizers on social media slammed Latimer, a centrist liberal, as a reactionary white man backed by billionaires. The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which endorsed Bowman, decried Latimer as an AIPAC-picked, MAGA-bought racist.
  • using the term genocide has become de rigueur for candidates seeking an endorsement from DSA and Justice Democrats. Bowman obliged, repeatedly.
  • Bowman’s rhetoric was undisciplined and incendiary, while Latimer was a popular local politician whose internal polls showed him leading by double digits before AIPAC spent anything.
  • “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” A modern left-wing update might be titled “The Infantile Style in American Politics”—as the conspiratorial mixes with obstinacy and braggadocio.
  • The Bronx rally offered a glimpse, too, of the sectarianism that routinely afflicts the left. Pro-Palestine protesters from Within Our Lifetime showed up and beat drums and chanted throughout the rally, doing their best to disrupt the proceedings. They denounced Bowman, Ocasio-Cortez, and Sanders as “Zionists” who backed “Genocide Joe” for president.
  • victories coexist with a growing shrillness and insistence by many on the left upon political purity. So longtime liberal Democratic politicians find themselves denounced as pro-genocide for supporting Israel and Biden’s position on the Gaza conflict.
  • Many mainstream Democrats seem less and less patient with the activist left. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader and possible future speaker, would have none of the Bowman camp’s talk of martyrdom.
  • Jeffries took a noticeably removed and dispassionate view of that loss. “The results speak for themselves. The voters have spoken,” he said, sounding less than distraught. A senior Jeffries adviser later noted on social media that the minority leader has now supported six candidates challenged by DSA, and his candidates have won all six races.
Javier E

The Normalization of the Exception - Homepage Christian Lammert - 0 views

www.christianlammert.com/...normalization-of-the-exception

polarization both-sides US evaluation right-wing left politics history culture

shared by Javier E on 17 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • There's now a disturbingly quick acceptance of the argument that "both sides are to blame." It was and remains the Republicans and Trump who have labeled the media as enemies of the people, politicians and refugees as vermin, and have spoken of bloodshed should Trump lose again in the next election. This discourse sharply contrasts with that of Democratic elites and Biden, who critique President Trump based on his policies (see Project 2025), labeling him a potential dictator and a threat to democracy. This critique remains within the bounds of normal political discourse and does not dehumanize political opponents or other demographic groups, as Trump's rhetoric frequently does. Such rhetoric has become "normal" and mainstream within the Republican Party but remains either non-existent or exceptionally rare among Democrats. This clearly indicates an asymmetric radicalization of our political discourse.
  • The ideological positioning of the two parties also reflects this asymmetry. Empirical analyses by notable U.S. political scientists show that the Republicans have moved significantly further to the right ideologically compared to the leftward shift of the Democrats. In certain segments, the ideological positions of MAGA representatives in Congress no longer fit within this spectrum, having departed from democratic norms.
  • Republicans have successfully shifted the discourse to place equal blame on both sides for polarization and radicalization, but this narrative does not reflect reality and must be addressed. It is the right-wing political spectrum and its associated media network that questions fundamental pillars of democracy and the rule of law. Similar challenges are not found within the left-wing political spectrum
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • What the Republicans denounce as Marxist or socialist would be considered moderate social democracy in Germany. Since the 1980s and 1990s, with figures like Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich, political radicalization has been a deliberate strategy to mobilize their voter base. Right-wing media significantly amplify this strategy. Without understanding this context, meaningful solutions to the problem cannot be found
  • Currently, it is the right that is mounting a fundamental assault on the system of checks and balances in the United States. They seek to greatly enhance the powers of the executive branch through the presidency, drastically reduce the size of the administration while ensuring loyalty to the president, expand presidential influence over the judiciary, and eliminate the independence of law enforcement and security agencies. These goals run counter to longstanding U.S. political traditions and the ideas of the Founding Fathers.
Javier E

Opinion | How Kamala Harris Can Win - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...kamala-harris-strategy.html

harris campaign theme inspiration message project culture

shared by Javier E on 28 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • f disempowerment underlies the Republicans’ most potent issues in this campaign: inflation and immigration.
  • If Ms. Harris continues to repeat economic facts without acknowledging most voters’ feelings, she will fail to address the mood of discontent that has her running just behind Mr. Trump in the polls. Low unemployment, robust job growth, rising wages — by the usual metrics, the economy has been a success during the Biden years. And yet inflation looms so large for voters that most disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy. Why
  • Because inflation is not merely about the price of eggs. Many voters experience it as an assault on their agency, a daily marker of their powerlessness: No matter how hard I work or how much I make, I can’t get ahead or even keep up.
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • And why was the surge in illegal border crossings so troubling, even for voters who live far from the southern border? Not because they believe Mr. Trump’s florid demagogy about criminals, rapists and residents of mental hospitals pouring in but because they see a country unable to control its borders as a country unable to control its destiny
  • and as a country that treats strangers better than some of its citizens.
  • they are part of the same political project. Economic arrangements not only decide the distribution of income and wealth; they also determine the allocation of social recognition and esteem.
  • Democrats need to acknowledge that the neoliberal globalization project they and mainstream Republicans pursued in recent decades brought huge gains for those at the top but job loss and stagnant wages for most working people
  • The winners used their windfall to buy influence in high places. Government stopped trying to check concentrated economic power. The two parties joined forces to deregulate Wall Street. And when the financial crisis of 2008 pushed the system to the brink, they spent billions of dollars to bail out the banks but left ordinary homeowners mostly to fend for themselves.
  • Rather than contend directly with the damage they had done, both political parties told workers to improve themselves by getting college degrees.
  • The elites who offered this advice missed the implicit insult it contained: If you’re struggling in the new economy, it’s your fault.
  • as president, despite his centrist career, Mr. Biden turned away from the policies that had prompted populist backlash and empowered Mr. Trump.
  • Mr. Biden’s ambitious public investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, jobs and clean energy recalled the muscular role of government during the New Deal. So did his support for collective bargaining and the revival of antitrust law. It made him one of the most consequential presidents of modern times.
  • Still, he remained unpopular. Mr. Biden and his team thought the problem was one of timing: Public investments take time to produce jobs and tangible benefits.
  • But the real problem was more fundamental. Mr. Biden never really offered a broad governing vision, never explained how the policies he enacted added up to a new democratic project.
  • Mr. Biden offered no comparable story.When he broke with the era of neoliberal globalization, reasserting government’s role in regulating markets for the common good, he did so with little fanfare or explanation. He did not acknowledge that his own party had been complicit in the policies that had deepened the divide between winners and losers
  • in the end, it all made for impressive policy but themeless politics. His presidency was a legislative triumph but an evocative failure.
  • This made him a weak match for Mr. Trump, a candidate with little policy success but whose MAGA movement spoke to the anger of the age.
  • what does all of this mean for the Harris campaign?
  • Defeating Mr. Trump means taking seriously the divide between winners and losers that polarizes the country. It means acknowledging the resentment of working people who feel that the work they do is not respected, that elites look down on them, that they have little say in shaping the forces that govern their lives.
  • To do so, Ms. Harris should highlight a theme that has long been implicit but underdeveloped in Mr. Biden’s presidency: the dignity of work.
  • The Harris campaign should not only defend these achievements but also embark on something more ambitious: a project of democratic renewal that goes beyond merely saving democracy from Mr. Trump
  • democracy in its fullest sense is about citizens deliberating together about justice and the common good. The dignity of work is important to a healthy democracy because it enables everyone to contribute to the common good and to win honor and recognition for doing so.
  • For Ms. Harris, offering concrete proposals to honor work — and to reward it fairly — could force Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance to choose between the working-class party they hope to become and the corporate Republican Party they continue to be.
  • She should be asking questions that would invigorate progressive politics for the 21st century: If we really believe in the dignity of work, why do we tax income from labor at a higher rate than income from dividends and capital gains? Shouldn’t the federal minimum hourly wage be higher than $7.25?
  • Mr. Trump has proposed exempting tips from taxes. Well, here’s a bolder suggestion: Why not reduce or eliminate the payroll taxes employees pay and make up the revenue with a tax on financial transactions?
  • Beyond tax measures: What about public investment in universal child care not only to support those who work outside the home but also to improve the pay and working conditions of caregivers?
  • Democrats could promote sectoral bargaining so that fast food workers can negotiate wages and working conditions across their industry rather than company by company. Democrats could require companies to give employees seats on corporate boards and classify gig workers as employees
  • On climate change, rather than imposing top-down, technocratic solutions, what if we tried listening to those who fear their livelihoods will be upended — creating local forums that give workers in the fossil fuel industry and agriculture a chance to collaborate with community leaders, scientists and public officials in shaping the transition to a green economy?
  • The election season is too short, they might argue, and the stakes are too high; elevating the terms of public discourse is a project for another day.
  • But this would be a political mistake and a historic missed opportunity. Taunting Mr. Trump as a felon would rally the base but reinforce the divide. Offering Americans a more inspiring democratic project could change some minds, win over some voters and offer some hope for a less rancorous public life.
Javier E

Opinion | Hulk Hogan Is Not the Only Way to Be a Man - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hulk-hogan-vance-harris.html

man masculinity GOP Democratic party culture politics trump

shared by Javier E on 28 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • The Democratic Party must join the battle for the hearts and minds of young men. It matters not just for this election, though the vast and growing gender gap means that disaffected men could hand Donald Trump the presidency. It matters for how we mentor young men, and it matters for how we view masculinity itself.
  • If you ever wondered whether the Republican Party sees itself as the party of men, I’d invite you to rewatch the last night of the Republican National Convention. Prime time featured a rousing speech by the wrestling legend Hulk Hogan, a song by Kid Rock and a speech by Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championshi
  • Republican manliness was the capstone of the convention.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • But what kind of men were featured? They’re all rich and powerful, and as a longtime fan of professional wrestling, I loved watching Hogan as a kid, but none of them are the kind of man I’d want my son to be. White was caught on video slapping his wife. Kid Rock has his own checkered past, including a sex tape and an assault charge related to a fight in a Nashville strip club. Hogan faced his own sex scandal after he had a bizarre sexual relationship with a woman who was married to one of his close friends, a radio host who goes by “Bubba the Love Sponge.”
  • We know all about Trump, but it’s worth remembering some of his worst moments — including a jury finding that he was liable for sexual abuse, his defamation of his sex-abuse victim, the “Access Hollywood” tape and the countless examples of his cruelly insulting the women he so plainly hates.
  • I highlight McRaven for a reason; he has perfectly articulated how to attack MAGA masculinity. Ten years ago, he gave one of the most powerful commencement speeches in recent American history. He addressed the graduates of the University of Texas, Austin, and three YouTube versions have racked up more than 70 million views combined.
  • It’s known — oddly enough — as the “Make Your Bed” speech. While it wasn’t aimed only at men, every person who forwarded it to me was a man. It appealed to universal values, but it connected with men I know at a deep and profound level.
  • McRaven draws on his SEAL training to teach students how to change the world. It begins with the small things, like accomplishing that tiny first task of making your bed, because “if you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right.”
  • Each new principle is rooted in his experience, including “If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not by the size of their flippers.” Here’s one that’s particularly salient in the face of Trumpist bullying: “If you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks.”
  • The address builds to a conclusion that is alien to Trumpist masculinity: “Start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone. Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often. But if you take some risks, step up when the times are the toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden and never ever give up — if you do these things, the next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today.”
  • Trumpist masculinity is rooted in grievance and anger. McRaven’s message centers on honor and courage.
  • When you center masculinity on grievance and anger rather than honor and courage, you attract men like Hogan and Kid Rock and White. Worse, that is how you mold the men in your movement, including men like Vance.
  • Many conservatives rightly decry the way in which parts of the far left tend to use the words “straight white male” as a virtual epithet, as if there were something inherently suspect in the identities of tens of millions of men and boy
  • if men feel that Democrats are hostile to them, they’ll go where they feel wanted, the gender gap will become a gender canyon, and more men will embrace Trumpism because that’s just what men do.
  • We aren’t simply electing women and men; we’re electing role models, and Trump has unquestionably been a role model for countless men. He has molded not just the policies but also the ethos of the Republican Party. But America’s men need different role models and a different ethos.
  • let’s return for the moment to the Navy SEAL who served his country for decades, who helped kill one of America’s deadliest foes and who declared to American college graduates, “You must have compassion. You must ache for the poor and disenfranchised. You must fear for the vulnerable. You must weep for the ill and infirm. You must pray for those who are without hope. You must be kind to the less fortunate.”
  • I wonder if Democrats should answer the Republican men’s night with a men’s night of their own — a night that features heroes instead of bullies and showmen, a night that answers the Republican appeal to men’s basest instincts with an appeal to their highest ideals.
  • there’s a better way for men — for all of us. It’s rooted in honor, courage and love. Or as McRaven put it, “For what hero gives so much of themselves without caring for those they are trying to save?
Javier E

Opinion | How 'Twisters' Failed Us and Our Burning Planet - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ers-failed-climate-change.html

movie artistic depiction climate change crisis environment response denial

shared by Javier E on 30 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • Extreme weather events are on the rise. Headlines this summer have been filled with news of devastating hurricanes, droughts, flash floods and wildfires. If ever the time was right for Hollywood to take on the one disaster that affects us all, this is surely it.
  • In a poll conducted between April 25 and May 4, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 62 percent of registered voters “would prefer to vote for a candidate for public office who supports action on global warming.”
  • That number includes 47 percent of respondents who identified as a liberal or moderate Republican. Only 15 percent of registered voters believed the U.S. government “is responding well to global warming.”
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Nevertheless, in more than two hours of extreme-weather depiction, the makers of “Twisters” opted to exclude even the tiniest nod to the chief driver of extreme weather.
  • In an interview with CNN’s Thomas Page, the movie’s director, Lee Isaac Chung, said, “I just don’t feel like films are meant to be message-oriented.”
  • It is not — and does not aspire to be — high cinematic art.
  • It is, however, a golden opportunity to talk about what scientists know and don’t know about how climate change might be affecting the formation, strength, frequency and geographic distribution of tornadoes, or why they now tend to develop in groups.
  • There’s a lot of talk in this movie about how tornadoes are getting bigger and more frequent, how they’re popping up in places, like New York City, that don’t historically experience the meteorological conditions that would spawn a tornado
  • There’s no talk at all about the science of global climate breakdown and what it will mean for people in the path of its destruction. That’s all of us.
  • if these filmmakers had allowed their characters — who include, after all, research scientists and climatologists — to muse aloud about how climate change might be affecting their work. In between lines like, “We’ve never seen tornadoes like this before,” would it have hurt to introduce, however briefly, the idea that something much bigger than a tornado threatens the planet those scientists are studying?
  • I’m guessing the decision to exclude even a passing reference to climate change in a film about weather disasters has very little to do with cinematic art, or even with climate science, and everything to do with avoiding the cross hairs of political polarity.
  • artifacts of popular culture have always had immense power to articulate changing attitudes, engage empathy and open firmly resistant minds. Think about how swiftly Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” changed attitudes toward the fragile natural world and led to new regulations of synthetic pesticides
  • how Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and John Prine’s “Paradise” expanded awareness of the environmental movement.
  • the CBS drama “Madam Secretary” proved that even a single episode with a climate-based story line could significantly affect viewers’ understanding of the human costs of climate change.
  • his is why Percy Bysshe Shelley called poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” When art changes opinions or opens hearts, it changes the world as profoundly as any legislation does.
  • With MAGA politicians at every level denying that climate change even exists, real climate legislation is now nearly impossible to pass. And with the Supreme Court determined to quash all executive-branch efforts to address the changing climate, too, we seem to be at the mercy of artists to save us.
  • In a missed opportunity the size of an F5 tornado’s debris field, we got no help from the makers of “Twisters.”
« First ‹ Previous 81 - 87 of 87
Showing 20▼ items per page