Just something MAGA-people seem to have a hard time with sometimes. Probably not as much when Americans are speaking to themselves, but as a non-American, sometimes it’s challenging to get “those people” to admit that there is indeed anything wrong with the US. As in they won’t accept a single criticism, and will loudly proclaim “America is the greatest country in the world”, while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, which for me pretty explicitly means America isn’t great, if it has to be made to be such again.
Their claim is that the country has been ruined by the left, and they want to restore it to its former glory. It requires ignoring the fact that the country has taken a hard right shift since the time they are idealizing.
As for the cognitive dissonance, Stephen Colbert (during The Colbert Report) played around with this self-contradiction. His book is titled “America Again: Re-becoming The Greatness We Never Weren’t”
Edit: autocorrect
They also never call out by what metric America isn’t great anymore. There are plenty of metrics it’s not, but they won’t call those out.
Is it peacetime? Because we’re the most peaceful we’ve ever been right now. Is it the economy? It’s the strongest now than it ever was. Is it family values? First quantify what that means. Is it divorces? Those are down for the first time. Is it orpahaned families or something? Education? Well those are liberal values so they can’t use those.
Or is it all just racist and homophobic dog whistling, meaning they want to go back to white nuclear families - they just can’t say that.
Really it’s all just “My nostalgia is more fun than dealing with today’s problems”. Nostalgia just ignores all of the problems at the time. “The 60s were better!” Just ignore Vietnam, the separate drinking fountains, the upcoming cold war, also the fact that the reason you had a good childhood was because of the social protections you had that you dismantled
Is it peacetime? Because we’re the most peaceful we’ve ever been right now.
Maybe with other countries. We seem pretty much on par with civil war days in terms of internal conflict.
And there’s a bunch of proxy conflicts the US is definitely involved in and at least partly responsible for. Not to mention the “global war on terror”.
Just because US soldiers aren’t dying en masse doesn’t mean it’s peacetime.
Has it taken a hard right shift? There’s far more civil liberty (the underlying thing most loud conservatives want to curtail) than “back in the day”.
Sure, there’s a much greater schism between ideologies these days, what with the normalization of social media and media in general… but I’d be hard pressed to say that the country is a lot more right leaning than it used to be.
You bring up a valid point. There are many facets of life and a left/right divide, and some of them did shift left.
But compared to the 50s (which is when many right wingers idolize), particularly starting with Reagan, we’ve seen:
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Push for theocracy
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The war on drugs
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Less “society” and more individualism. This is especially true regarding regulation of harmful activities for profit, such as corporate pollution
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Reduced enforcement of those laws that we do have, as long as it’s a corporate entity and/or for profit
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Massive consolidation of all industries. Competition is now mostly an illusion.
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Strong push against workers’ rights. Reduction in union protections, minimum wage laws, OSHA powers, etc
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Active, planned takeover of media. This was started by (IIRC) Roger Ailes that if the right controlled the media, Nixon would not have been impeached. He went on to found Fox News with that philosophy, and proved it correct with Trump. See also: Sinclair
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While this mostly happened at a state/local level, it has been nationwide. Government was intentionally ruined as an effective organization, and now provides way fewer/worse services
These are just a few ways that the country has shifted right, but they are so impactful to the average person’s daily life.
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I think they’re probably referring to tax brackets and how much the ultra wealthy were taxed back in the 50s or something
Ah, so one of many factors means a hard right turn…
The left-right analogy was always about economics. And the backsliding of union participation and regulatory capture, lack of antitrust enforcement etc is definitely a shift to the right. Basically the New Deal has been allowed to be dismantled.
I mean, if right wing people want to admit they are against civil liberties and they want to go back to the good old days of no civil rights then I wouldn’t interrupt them while they make that mistake.
This one is easy to explain away… If you’re ranking countries on greatness, then you put America at the top. But then unfortunate things happen, like minority presidents and gay marriage and solar panels, so that makes America not quite as great, but still far better than everyone else. But if we could roll back the clock, maybe to some time before women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement, that would make America return to the extra high standard that it’s capable of achieving.
One of the funny things about the whole MAGA thing is that they’re clamoring for a return to something like the 50s or 60s… but only the shitty parts. These idiots seem to be under the impression that everything will be better once we re-implement institutionalized racism and sexism, but ignore the fact that the “better times” they want to bring back ALSO included like a 90% tax rate for the wealthy, and pensions for, like, literally everyone (or more accurately, every white male). But of course, that’s communist talk, and we can’t have that!
Welcome to the paradoxical nature of fascism the greatest and most powerful country on earth is at risk from a secret cabal of highly intelligent, highly organized criminals led by the dementia riddled criminal mastermind Joe Biden crime family who’s actually being being puppeted by AOC and is a mouthpiece for Obama, and who are sending lazy, job stealing, taxpayer benefit robbing Mexicans to bring hard core drugs like marijuana and fentanyl across the wide open red carpeted border so that they can vote for democrats in elections that are also rigged in favor of democrats because that…
So yeah you get the point, fascists don’t make any sense to anyone who stops and thinks for more than a minute. Their logic is non-existent, they parrot whatever talking point they hear on their propaganda network of choice is convenient.
Ohh, don’t forget the lazy uneducated immigrants who come and live off welfare while also stealing all the hard working jobs!
Managing Partner of my company came in today. He sounds just like this every time he talks politic. Every time I say “The Earth works on rather straightforward logic for us, correct?”
“Yes”
“What’s more straight forward? That Trump staged this entire shooting to “play dirty” with the democrats and expose them? Or that some depressed young adult searched for any person of fame near him to suicide by cop?”
It always locks him up for a second saying “No, no, no, you see- shifts position as brain attempts to boot”
Another good brain reboot comment to make would be “if Republicans actually trained with their guns and the shooter was a better shot, trump would have been dead.”
They’re trapped between breaking the facade of Republicans having all the guns and going to win the civil war because they know their guns, and breaking unquestioning loyalty to dear leader Trump.
They must all be so miserable all the time
Miserable in a Sysiphean way. Like their existence is absolutely isolating and alone, but they get to be secure in their convictions by cutting ties to people that think differently from them or harassing others long enough they just leave them, further proving them right that everyone else is either duped by the conspiracy of overwhelmingly strong weaklings or is in on the conspiracy.
