Democracy is in trouble....

[jimbob]

Johnson is a populist pompous idiot, but he is no Trump.

Or maybe it's left wing lunacy that is driving everyone else to the breaking point? Can only speak for myself but that is a big part of it for me.

It's just you.

Trump is highly abnormal and right wing. He is a compulsive liar, and unlike other politicians who might lie sometimes, he will lie about inconsequential things that can easily be proven wrong.

Anthropogenic climate change is real and accepted by the overwhelming majority of climate scientists.

Putin did interfere in US and European elections and the Brexit referendum. He wasn't supporting Clinton.

Women's reproductive rights are under attack in many US states, and not by the Left.

But maybe you have some specific examples of the left wing causing similar levels of damage.


ETA: If you look at dudalb's posting record, he *really* isn't left wing, nor does he identify as such. One can be right of centre and against racism and bigotry.

 

[angrysoba]

Looks as though the UK is going to have a Trump clone as the next PM..since Johnson embraces authoritarian politics and will probably be backed by enough in his party to survive for the future.
ANybody who frequents this website knows that I think in general about Conspiracy theories,but I am really wondering if Putin is not trying to engineer a world wide take down of democracy to ensure a Russian Hegemony .He has found democracy's weak spot....right wing populism .

Johnson has plenty of problems but he isn’t a Trump clone or a Putin stooge. He’s been around for a while and was mayor of London for two terms.

 

[theprestige]

Gerrymandering is close enough, don't you think?

I don't know. That's why I asked.

Are you trying to advance some claim about imminent gerrymandering in the UK?

 

[theprestige]

It's just you.

Trump is ... right wing.

Not particularly right wing. More like opportunistically centrist.

 

[luchog]

Not particularly right wing. More like opportunistically centrist.

Which is why he supports so many right-wing causes and pushes so many right-wing agendas, and has appointed so many far-right and alt.right people to cabinet and advisory positions, and why he likes cozying up to fascists like Duterte and Bolsonaro, and why the bulk of his support comes from the far-right and religious right, and has parroted right-wing conspiracy theories, and...

One has to be pretty far to to the right already to see Trump as anything like a centrist.

 

[cullennz]

Didn't Trump start off as a Democrat?

 

[Venom]

Didn't Trump start off as a Democrat?

I don't know what he started off as but he supported Democrats a lot from the 90s to late 2000s.

You could say he was for much of his life a Clint Eastwood type "social liberal, fiscal conservative". Maybe the former no longer applies.

Trump is certainly an opportunist as theprestige says.

 

[theprestige]

Which is why he supports so many right-wing causes and pushes so many right-wing agendas, and has appointed so many far-right and alt.right people to cabinet and advisory positions, and why he likes cozying up to fascists like Duterte and Bolsonaro, and why the bulk of his support comes from the far-right and religious right, and has parroted right-wing conspiracy theories, and...



One has to be pretty far to to the right already to see Trump as anything like a centrist.

Unfortunately I slipped in some sarcasm on my way to your argument, and sprained my give a **** muscle. Let me know when you've remedied your safety hazard, and I'll try again.

 

[luchog]

Unfortunately I slipped in some sarcasm on my way to your argument, and sprained my give a **** muscle. Let me know when you've remedied your safety hazard, and I'll try again.

That's the strangest way to admit being a troll that I can recall seeing here.

 

[luchog]

I don't know what he started off as but he supported Democrats a lot from the 90s to late 2000s.

You could say he was for much of his life a Clint Eastwood type "social liberal, fiscal conservative". Maybe the former no longer applies.
.

He didn't support the Democrats, as such. Go look at his actual contribution patterns. He supported Democrats and Republicans almost equally, with slightly more money going to Democrats than Republicans.

You also have to look at who Trump contributed to. All big-business centrist Democrats like Rangel and Cuomo. At the same time he was also supporting GOP candidates like McCain and Abbott. He wasn't contributing based on any larger political agenda, he was clearly focused on protecting and expanding his wealth, and would give money to anyone he thought would help in that effort.

And that only lasted up until 2010; not coincidentally a year after Barak Obama took office as President. After that point, he curtailed nearly all his contributions to the Democrats, and started pumping huge amounts of money into Republican party candidates. All while he was promoting racist "birther" conspiracy theories. Given his rabid anti-Obama rhetoric both before and after his presidential campaign, and the general bigotry he has exhibited as long as he's been in the public eye (he has never been a "social liberal"), I have no doubt that racism had as much to do with his buddying up to the GOP and far-right as any other reason.

 

[Sideroxylon]

And it being funded and exploited from Moscow, IMHO.
First time I am more or less embracing a conspiracy theory.
But the sad thing is that you are seeing the mob mentality also beginning to take hold on the militant left;look , inthis forum, on the number of people on the left who are OK to basically deny freedom of speech to anybody they consider to be "fascist".
I would not be surprised to find out that the far left is getting a little cash from Putin. The more powerful the two extremes grow, the better for him.

Where do I sign up for Rubbles?

 

[cullennz]

Hate to break it to you

From the horses mouth

Trump

"In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat," Trump told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in a 2004 interview. "It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans. Now, it shouldn't be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats. ...But certainly we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we've had some pretty bad disaster under the Republicans."

 

[luchog]

Hate to break it to you

From the horses mouth

Trump

So yeah, like I said, it was all about money for him, not ideology. Again, up until 2010.

 

[Giz]

I think that Putin would love to destabilize and discredit western democracy but I don’t think we can credit him with the lions share of Trump and Brexit. These are reactions to long standing debates (national sovereignty, mass immigration etc) which have been considered outside the bounds of acceptable discourse by mainstream politicians.

Also, a growing tendency to see the other side as evil, rather than with good intentions but a different view of human nature (and therefore a different choice of methods) exacerbates the problem.

The tailored news/friend/culture outrage bubbles fostered by the internet also contribute (ironic that the internet, seen as a boon to knowledge and democracy in the 1990s is now a weakness)

 

[Darat]

It's not a crazy idea that other populist are looking at the Trump phenomenon in the US and thinking it's worth a try to replicate it.

"Trump is gonna have political imitators" shouldn't shock anybody.

And you need to keep your time lines straight, Johnson predates Trump and his type of populism is quite different to Trump's.

 

[Beerina]

Democracy is always in trouble.

More so when people don't see the need to defend it.

Or who don't care and functionally look the other way when politicians arrogate massive new powers to themselves without a supermajority vote by the people to specifically grant the government a new power.

 

[mgidm86]

hahaha.

As the right go further to the right of course you think the left are getting more extreme.

No the right is nothing to be proud of either. I'm not happy with what I see from either side. The left worries me a lot more because I disagree with so much more of what they want to do.

I really have no team to cheer for. None of us do so we just pick on each other.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

No the right is nothing to be proud of either. I'm not happy with what I see from either side. The left worries me a lot more because I disagree with so much more of what they want to do.
I really have no team to cheer for. None of us do so we just pick on each other.

given that they are out of power, they aren't actually doing anything.
I think it is irrational to be less worried about the actual drift to right-wing extremism in day-to-day politics than the potential drift to the left in a possible future administration.

 

[applecorped]

Hyperbole, thankfully is not in trouble whatsoever

 

[Horatius]

given that they are out of power, they aren't actually doing anything.
I think it is irrational to be less worried about the actual drift to right-wing extremism in day-to-day politics than the potential drift to the left in a possible future administration.

Particularly when you consider how far the right the US has moved over the last few decades. Even if the worst fears about what the Dems "want to do" were factual, it would take them decades to roll back what has already been done, and they'd need control of the entire government for all that time to do it.

Seriously, voting in a Democratic President in order to get rid of Trump simply will not produce some socialist/communist hellhole in the US.