Democrats and Republicans, a story of 2 cults
What the hell is going on in American politics right now? Explaining the last 9 years of madness and nonsense.
In 2012, we had a presidential election between 2 absolutely fantastic candidates. Whatever your opinions about them, it’s hard to deny that both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are honorable men. (If your sister started dating somebody like Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, you’d be happy.)
4 years later, we had a presidential election between probably the 2 worst candidates you could conceive of. Hillary Clinton was super corrupt and extremely condescending. And Donald Trump is, like, the biggest asshole of all time.
It’s been that way ever since. In 2020 the Democrats trotted out the corpse of Joe Biden, got it elected president, and then played Weekend At Bernie’s with it for 4 years.
Once the jig was up, they replaced Biden’s corpse with a diversity hire. There were tons of qualified Democrats who could have been picked to be Biden’s VP — like Corey Booker and John Hickenlooper. Instead they picked Kamala Harris just because she checks both the “black” box and the “woman” box.
(They did this even though in 2020, Tulsi Gabbard sacrificed her own reputation and standing in the Democratic Party just to tell us that Harris was extremely corrupt, had no moral principles, and should under no circumstances become president.)
Meanwhile, the Republicans are still asking us to vote for Donald Trump, the biggest asshole of all time.
How did it get like this? And when does it end?
2 cults
The Republicans are a personality cult. They see Donald Trump as a savior who will somehow magically solve all their problems once he gets into office.
The Democrats are a suicide cult. They want to destroy meritocracy, law enforcement, freedom of speech, and everything else that hurts their feelings, even though society depends on all that stuff to function.
In other words, both sides are crazy.
Why are both sides crazy?
The first reason is that Americans are really angry right now. That’s mostly because of the economy: there aren’t a lot of middle class jobs available. People aren’t as rich as they were 20 years ago, so they’re voting for crazy people.
The second reason is that the American primary system incentivizes political parties to pander to extremists. The way you win a primary is by getting the most hard-core people to like you. The way you get the most hard-core people to like you is by taking extreme positions that alienate the middle.
And the third reason is that powerful people in Washington usually have no idea how people outside of politics think about politics. They only really talk to other Washington insiders, not actual voters.
Does it actually benefit either side to be crazy?
No!
The crazier you get, the less you win elections!
An American election is ultimately decided by swing voters. Most swing voters are pissed off at both the Democrats and the Republicans, and think they’re both corrupt and evil.
The same goes for if we have a civil war. An American Civil War will ultimately be decided by who the military sides with. If the military sides with the Democrats (who sign their paychecks), the Democrats win. And if the military sides with the Republicans (who they’re more sympathetic to), the Republicans win.
The military will probably side with whichever side is least wrong. If the Democrats are giving them illegal orders, the rank-and-file will rebel and side with the Republicans. If the Republicans are attacking the capitol and trying to overturn an election they clearly lost, the military will side with the Democrats.
So who’s gonna win?
American politics is basically a war where both sides are shooting themselves more than they’re shooting each other.
I don’t know who will win the 2024 election. But I do know which side will ultimately come out on top long-term, and set our culture for decades to come: whichever side gets their head out of their ass first!
Hey! Thanks for reading.
If you’re new around here, I’m Theo and every Monday I publish an article about something that was on my mind the week before. Usually about psychology or long-term trends in society.
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As a Republican "cultist" I'd like to add a few clarifying remarks.
I am certainly not a Trump cultist. He's bombastic, given to braggadocio, and someone whose personal life with the opposite sex has been certainly questionable, even if he seems more like Harlan Ellison who I heard say, he was always faithful when he was married, but slept with thousands of women when he wasn't.
Still, Trump's detractors make too much of his bombast. There is a reason one of his prominent supporters is Hulk Hogan. Trump has a long association with professional wrestling--a sport given to public bluster and showmanship, but not one exactly given to hidden or semi-hidden scandalous behavior as Hollywood whose purveyors wholeheartedly support Harris.
Next, your search for probity and personal morality in top politicians seems misguided. The man whom I consider the most moral and decent man to become president or even gain the nomination for president in my lifetime is undoubtedly Jimmy Carter, and his presidency was a disaster of absurd proportions. He managed to create the unprecedented combination of high inflation and stagnant growth simultaneously. His great moral decision to withdraw support for the brutal dictatorial Shah of Iran has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Middle East and continues to do so today. John McCain was a vile, vengeful man who ran his campaign for his last reelection to Senate in Arizona on the theme of repealing Obamacare and then cast the deciding vote against repeal out of his personal anger and spite for the President who had insulted him. Romney may be a good man personally, but how would I know after the press and the Democrats claimed he was a rich, entitled bully in his school days, and that he was a heartless fiend who strapped the family dog to the top of his station wagon to head out for a family vacation? As to Barack Obama, he is Eddie Haskell, the respectful, perfectly polite boy that your parents wish you were and the scheming jerk when they're not around.
Why would the Republicans, now no longer the party of the corporate boardrooms but the party of the hoi polloi, insist on such a crude candidate as Trump after folks such as Mitt Romney, John McCain, and even George W. Bush? Let me refer you to item 10 of the grievances against King George in the Declaration of Independence, "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." Has any other candidate for president other than Trump ever credibly vowed to reduce the bureaucratic state that has made the area around our Capital the wealthiest region of the country?
As to your thoughts about who would win a new Civil War, I disagree with your assessment that it depends on who the military sides with. Under what doctrine would they subdue the countryside? The divide in this country is not between red and blue states, but between deep blue large cities and deep red rural areas. Now the large cities have the tech and might have the bombs and missiles, but which side has the food? Any large scale action taken against the regions that grown the food you eat is suicidal. The best the radical fringe leftists have been and will be able to do is burn down their own neighborhoods.
Trump is a left field candidate, that's why the Democrats can't get a handle on him (nor the Republicans either!). The solution they could have tried was their own left-field runner - maybe George Clooney.