Trumps zweite Amtszeit hat die konservative Ära beendet

Gift link. Excerpt:

> Donald Trump spent his first term as the frustrated caretaker of the decaying Victorian mansion called the American conservative movement — floating plans to tear it down and build anew but mostly just knocking down a few walls, adding a gilded bathroom, doing some renovations that the residents had long desired (the Federalist Society Ballroom got a special shine-up) while letting mold and time do their work on the Limited Government Wing.

> His second term has been a different story. The smoke of demolition is everywhere, cranes are swinging wildly, and if the shape of the original building is still vaguely visible through the smoke, it’s clear that the final renovation is going to be radical. More of the original residents have fled to nearby properties (you can see a bunch of them clustered in the Mike Pence Gazebo), while others have barricaded themselves inside the True Conservatism Suite, where folks are pouring tea and wearing earplugs. A bunch of newcomers are throwing up competing additions (the A.I. Tower is a shiny spire overshadowing the Based Medieval Turret and the Garden of Cronyism), and the contractors are having a fistfight in the Hall of Christian Zionism.

> Out front, emblazoned with the Trump logo, a builder’s sign promises, “Future Home of American Nationalism Inc.”

> […]

> It’s not that Trump alone is the decider, since the overall process of destruction and renovation is linked to the deeper forces that have made nationalism potent the world over. Against that backdrop, we can predict that a nationalist right will be more intensely focused on American interests in foreign policy, less internationalist and idealistic than prior incarnations of conservatism. We can assume that it will be more open to government interventions in the economy than the laissez-faire or libertarian style of right-wing politics. We can take for granted that it will be more concerned with issues of immigration and national identity and less engaged with the cultural issues that motivated the religious right. And we can expect it to be more radical — more reactionary in some ways, more futurist in others than — than the Burkean conservatism it has seemingly displaced.

Cue the fascism era.

ross douthat is so fucking annoying

As if cognitive dissonance is not a thing lmao

You’re going to see all these people suddenly turn into ‚fiscally conservative, small government, constitutionalist‘ voices in a few years.

Libertarians are just as guilty.

Conservatives have no ideas and are anti-everything; these concepts are alive and well while those in power grift, divide, and enrich themselves.

The second term is a continuation of the first, which was a continuation of the emotionally-fueled unprincipled tea party movement, which, let’s face it, was a group whose one uniting purpose was *hating* that a Black man was running for, then residing in, the White House.

The only difference has been the gradual casting aside of thinking, competent, and/or principled republicans and replacing them with yes-people. Rampant corruption + our billionaire class fuel this downwardly spiraling ship.

*Edit: wording*

„Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee of the Republican party. If he is, that’s the end of the Republican Party.“
Mar 30, 2016

„If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.“
May 3, 2016

– Lindsey Graham

He’s added 28% to the national debt and our interest payments alone are $1 trillion.

This is the natural end result of conservatism.

No, Trump is starting the conservative era. Right now, we are seeing what conservatism is all about. The training-wheels are off. They are getting everything they want. They don’t have to pretend anymore. They are just doing it.

Trump’s second term is the *culmination* of the Conservative Era. 50 years of hucksterism, corporatism, militarism, attacks on workers, attacks on the middle class, and demonization of minority groups.

Ross, how did you think this would end?

Really? Because for a lot of us this is what we’ve always thought Conservatism was, once you get past the surface.

MAGA in it’s unhinged madness is _exactly_ what I thought Conservatives would do once they had enough power to dispense with all the erudite bullshitting and pretense of old-timey civility. The NYT can go fuck themselves for providing cover to Conservatives by continuing to play along with the lie.

**MAGA is mask-off Conservatism.**

This is entirely wrong, which is par for the course for the pompous simpleton Douthat.

Basically, he is one of the elites whose brands and egos depend upon this falsehood that there’s some true Conservatism out there that Trump has perverted into grifting, zealotry, nihilism and fascism. It’s not only the handful of Establishment Conservatives that believe this, it’s Democratic leadership also–it is the source of the „fever will break / McConnell will have an epiphany / Ultra MAGA vs. regular reasonable Republicans“ talking point.

But Conservatism has fascism at its heart and soul, and has since Buckley. The predominant through-line is always that there’s some deserving group of Real Americans (typically White, straight Christian men) who are under siege from the undeserving rabble (everyone else), and this creep of darkness upon the land must be purged in order to conform to „common sense“ / „Jesus’s hand of protection over the land“ / American exceptionalism.“ And the reason this isn’t happening is because the Liberal media (read: Jews) won’t correctly point out this necessity, and because government overreach (read: Democrats) is too concerned with the Pinko / Cultural Marxist notion of „equality“ to favor the deserving people, so instead they give those peoples‘ money to the lazy moochers and freaks.

That’s ALL Conservatism in the last several decades. Trump is just a blunt and stupid version of throwing the rabble out of the country and stealing the money and tearing down the government. Paul Ryan, the True Conservative avatar, wanted to do this through regular tax cuts and deregulation and slashing Entitlements, but it was basically the same agenda. Venezuela is the new Iraq, Voter ID is the new Birtherism, „Enemy of the people“ is the new „Nattering nabobs.“ Trump is an extension of Conservatism as it reaches it fascist final form, it is not a break from it.

But Douthat wants to be able to tell himself at night that he only supported the Conservative elements of Trump and not the N*zi elements, which are basically the same thing. You don’t have Trump with this amount of power and impunity unless you had the Patriot Act and zero consequences for Bush’s war crimes and the financial crimes that happened under him. For that matter, you don’t have Trump with this level of power unless you have Clinton and Obama normalizing everything Republicans do–aiding in it, often–and never making Republicans pay any price for anything. Once Obama signed the 2012 NDAA allowing for indefinite spying and detention of anyone, including Americans on American soil, at the sole discretion of the president, what did we think we were going to get?

No it hasn’t lol. Every major democrat politician is just moving right. So are voters. The centrist position should be „Abolish ICE and no more funding to Israel“. The liberal opinion should be „imprison all ICE officers, and put Trump, his goons on trial, and have Nuremberg trials for everyone in the Biden admin and Trump admin who helped wage genocide in Gaza“.

Instead the democrats line (atleast among party leaders) is „don’t fund ICE as much maybe?? Or do…maybe more funding for training..and Israel is awesome!!“

Trump has permanently moved the country right.

Edit: it also can not be overstated how much blame NYTimes specifically has in this. They’ve been a state mouth piece for every war and every police debasement of citizens for years.

The conservatives haven’t been conservative since… at least the patriot act, but more likely since Carter.

The Trump administration is now a full fledged Nazi organization . Every single citizen in America should be worried