Re: Conservative Ideology
Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2021 5:41 pm
You folks need to get on board or will be left behind. We ain’t turning back progress. This is a competitive society. Open it up to free and fair competition. Let the chips fall.old salt wrote: ↑Wed Aug 11, 2021 4:58 pm Moved from the covid thread :Andrew Sullivan, with Brian Williams, 08-09-20, explains Trumpism & echoes Carville on the dangers of woke-ism.Peter Brown wrote: ↑Wed Aug 11, 2021 8:34 am This guy Andrew Sullivan, gay writer living in Provincetown MA, makes more sense in one day than the entire liberal establishment can in twelve lifetimes. His words will especially infuriate the know-it-all’s…know any?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... COVID.html
He’s absolutely correct on every angle. The government is not here to hold your hand you crybabies. And if you think the government will hold your hand when you need it most, grow the eff up.
“Government isn't there to hold your hand': Columnist Andrew Sullivan tells CNN that US is wrong to pursue 'illusory victory' over COVID and says kids are 18 times more likely to DROWN than die from virus”.
“He also argued: 'The most potent incentive for vaccination is to be brutally frank, a sharp rise in mortality rates. The more people know someone who has suffered and died, the more they are likely to take measures...In other words, call their bluff...Let it rip.'”
He’s correct.
Video: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/202 ... tv-vpx.cnnhttps://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/trans ... 1-n1276404
ANDREW SULLIVAN : I think Trump ism is here to stay because the issues that propelled it is still here. The issue of immigration, which obviously we`ve seen reaching a new crisis. The issue of trade, America`s role in the world and of the divide between us, between the red and the blue, between the coast and the heartland, those are all there and they`re ripe for exploitation. And that lasts longer than COVID.
On the other hand, COVID is not going to disappear entirely very soon, and we learn to live with them. We live with viruses on the same planet. And we have to live with them. I mean, I`ve lived with the HIV virus now for 28 years, and I have stopped wanting to get rid of it. I`ve learned how to just deal with it. The point is not to defeat it, is to get on with your life, which is the whole point of everything. So I think -- I think there`s a place for a sane conservatism to revive, maybe in revulsion to Trump but also maybe understanding that he said things that maybe more elite conservatives should have been thinking about and saying before, that can happen. And equally, we can get to a point where COVID is also swiftly put into our past because we just don`t want to think about it. And because even it`s still mutating and even if it`s still cutting a swath through the unvaccinated, it is going to die. It`s going to run out of people to infect eventually, and it will go away. So both can stay for a while, but both can end to.
WILLIAMS: I know you have seen the comments from James Carville speaking of infections on things like woke-ism, especially in the Democratic Party, and especially on the left, it makes it so hard to feel like you`re living a proper life. It makes it so hard to feel like you`re saying the right thing, especially given feelings and sensitivities and terminologies that seem to change on a weekly basis, is this a clear and present danger, in your view, to the Democratic Party if they would like to continue winning elections?
SULLIVAN: I think it is. I think it`s to the credit of the Democrats and to the credit of that party. And to the credit of the left in general, that they`re not saying that we should ignore history, we should, we should face up to the worst things that America did. We should look it right in the eyes, and we shouldn't euthanize it. At the same time, America has been a story of getting past some of the worst things we have done and the real dynamic of America is progressing from them and we have made progress. Americans will look to the future. And Americans don't want to be told that their country is somehow intrinsically evil at its root, and can never be better. If the Democrats have that attitude, like scolding people, lecturing them, telling them the words they can say and cannot say, treating people they disagree with as if they`re somehow morally wrong, they`re not going to win votes that way.
And what I fear is that by doing that, by alienating especially lots of people in the middle suburbanized people who know the country`s flawed, but still believe in it, and still believe in the future, if they do that, they`re going to throw away a golden opportunity, and they are going to feed the fuel of the far right. Immigration, for example, unless the Democrats get serious about saying we`re going to really control it, they will give them a major issue to win on and it`s something that people really feel and they don`t want their kids either to be in schools and come home and say, mom, am I oppressing my friend, because I`m white and he's black. No one wants to hear their kids say that when they come home from high school.
So we can teach accurate history. But we shouldn't teach people to hate themselves. And we shouldn't teach people to hate their country. And the politician always looks forward, looks to the future is the one that wins in America. America wants to move forward. It doesn't like dwelling on its past that's Europe. And there`s some elements in the left now and in the right in America, but a more like European right and left that American right and left. And that worries me.
WILLIAMS: Even your most ardent fans who have read much of what`s in the book contemporaneously, when it comes out, reading it again now in the light of 2021 your prescience is rather unbelievable. I'm deep in the book, page 419, I come across this. A President Clinton will be checked and balanced. A President Trump will be pushing through wide open doors, who can temper or stop him then? You wrote that at or about Election Day, in 2016? How did you know what the rest of us didn't and remember, winning the presidency, surprised Donald Trump, first and foremost?
SULLIVAN: He was tapping into feelings that were very powerful, feelings about identity, feelings about who you really are as Americans, and also tapping into major fears that people have about their lives, he was able to tell people in the middle of the country, that I'm a member of the elites that hasn't completely ignored you, and actually hears the troubles that you are experiencing and is prepared to at least take you seriously. And that's a very potent thing. And also, it's very potent, very potent, to run on hatred of the other, fear of the other, and fear of the unknown. These are things that most democratic politicians do know and small D, Republican and Democrat, they don`t pull those levers, because they know they`re dangerous levers to pull. They know they tear a country apart. Trump had no compunction, and still has no compunction, no sense of responsibility.
And so you could - but you could see the strength of it, you can see the appeal of it, you could see people who felt that country was slipping away from them, and he was someone who could bring it back. And I think I've always felt that was happening. And I also saw his political genius. It's so easy to dismiss this man who is a monster in so many ways. But not to realize he's also politically very gifted. He's a talented demagogue. They don't come along like him very often, and that I could see it coming. I could also see, the best way to foil him would be Biden. And Biden's ability to neutralize that, not to polarize people, is a huge strength. And when you look at the Democratic Party, who else can fill that role right now? He really is the essential man. And he`s an old man, and he`s doing great, but that's a very fragile position for the Democratic Party to be in. {They should be} organizing themselves so they appeal to the economic concerns, appeal to people`s ability to make a living, as opposed to lecturing them about what words they can use and whether they should constantly be assessing other people's race as the most important thing about them, when it really isn't.