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Thread: Conservative Policy and the Trump Presidency

On the last full day of the Trump administration, I think it's useful to examine why he accomplished so little legislatively. TLDR version: American conservatism has almost no policy program.

 The most important thing to know about conservative politicking is that people do not vote FOR Republicans, they vote AGAINST Democrats.

The GOP is dominated by a minority of far-right activists and wealthy donors who have views that their own voters don't support.
American conservatism is premised on the twin ideas that the New Deal & Great Society were immoral and that God himself created America and that we should honor this creation by establishing full Christian supremacism in which LGBT people, atheists, and Muslims have fewer rights.
Because God created America, this means that conservatives believe in essentially no domestic policy of any kind. If it wasn't literally in the Constitution, then the feds shouldn't be doing it is their opinion.

This is not, however, how things used to be in the GOP.
For much of its history, American conservatism was a sort of intellectual parasite on the Republican party which was run by a mix of moderates and liberals. They actually had domestic policies. Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon had many policies that actually helped America.
Over time, however, conservative activists, whose domestic policy was to have no policies began to displace and "cancel" the moderates in Congress and elsewhere. This process is detailed by @RuleandRuin https://t.co/kOxRHics63
Once the Cold War ended, the conservative parasite began consuming the brain of its Republican Party host. The process accelerated with the emergence of the Tea Party and the vice presidential nomination of Sarah Palin.
Donald Trump's victory marked the definitive death of Republican intellectualism. Conservative intellectual parasitism had fully consumed it.

Next, with Trump's encouragement, it began trying to consume the brains of marginally attached Republicans and other low-info citizens.
I talked about right-wing epistemology and intellectual history in detail with @willwilkinson on his latest podcast episode which you can listen to here: https://t.co/SrUYkG65eY
When Trump came into office, because the American right had become so completely intellectually vacant, he actually could not fill many top-level executive positions. There simply were not enough people who had domestic policy experience or even ideas about policy.
Let me modulate that a bit to say that there actually are conservative policy thinkers but because they focus on achieving conservative values rather than adhering to the right's minimalistic view of government, they had no influence or cachet in the Trump WH.
Despite having total control of the lawmaking branches of government, Trump and his conservative allies were not able to pass any major domestic policy laws except for the one thing on which they all agreed: giving tax breaks to wealthy people.
So while Trump/the right have no affirmative agenda, their negative agenda has been an astounding success: coarsening politics, dismantling regulations on corporations, reducing oversight of law enforcement, and appointing judges who will rule against regulations and programs.
And of course, the biggest "achievement" of Trump has been to poison the minds of millions of Americans into believing pathetic lies about fraudulent elections, imaginary pedophiles, and a nefarious "Deep State" that somehow hates Republicans but never can actually stop them.
The Big Lie campaign against Biden's legitimate victory will not die easily. And it will continue to radicalize conservatives long after Trump is evicted.

This is why it's so extremely critical that media, businesses, and educators publicly reject these toxic lies.
There is still hope for many people who have only recently been bitten by right-wing intellectual parasitism. Here's my working list of some steps that can be taken to make our country healthier: https://t.co/5RAUT1mywE
Thanks for reading down to the end. If you liked it, please share the first post. I hope you'll follow me as well if you are not already. Cheers!
PS: There is a very small subset of ultra-ideologues on the right who actually loved Trump's incompetence such as Grover Norquist

To them, a dolt who ruins things is their fantasy because he makes it easier for the public to hate government like they do. https://t.co/hhVg8KjExc
PPS: The policy & politicking nihilism of the U.S. right has effectively made it so that the GOP became motivated solely by will to power. But now that it has no power, all that's left is a violent thanatos instinct.

Thread for those interested: https://t.co/wztIp5PZUz

More from Matthew Sheffield

Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
Thread: Meaning and loss in American conservatism

I've written a lot about how Christian supremacism (expressed and implicit) is the underlying objective of most Trump supporters but the psychology of American conservatism is very important in its descent into madness.

We're seeing it manifested heavily in the present moment as Trump and his followers are forced to contemplate the loss of the presidency but it's important to realize that losing is the psychic core of the U.S. right.

Trump's repugnant demeanor and prior history of political moderation is what made him so reviled by conservative activists and donors in 2015 but his angry victim complex so deeply resonated with the GOP base that this is why he won the primary.

American conservatism has been obsessed with death and loss since it emerged in the 1940s. The utter humiliation of Herbert Hoover and the rapid growth of federal spending and regulation under FDR was an existential moment for the corporate barons who started the U.S. right.

The rise of explicitly atheist Marxist-Leninism was also immensely triggering of long-time fundamentalist fantasies of persecution and death before the return of Christ. Most Christians don't see John's Apocalypse as a literal text but fundamentalists do.
GOVERNMENT
Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
As a former conservative activist and journalist, it has been so frustrating to see my former compatriots spreading wild and unchecked claims about "voter fraud." @jacknicas of the NYT took a deep look at claims of "dead" people in Michigan voting. Link in next tweet.

While examining claims made by right-wing activists who are not credible individuals is a thankless task which elite media editors despise, this is vital and important work in this age of fake news. Here's the link:

As the co-creator of NewsBusters, the most prominent anti-media website, I was part of a decades-long tradition of complaining about media elites being "unfair" to conservative views. There is still much to that argument, but eventually I saw that I was missing context.

What I did not realize until I began expanding my work into creating actual media and reporting institutions such as the Washington Examiner (I was the founding online editor) was that U.S. conservatives do not understand the purpose of journalism.

This became evident to me as I saw that conservative-dominated media outlets were MUCH more biased than outlets run by liberals. The latter had flaws that arose from a lack of diversities (note plural) but they operated mostly in good faith. That's not how the former operated.
ALL
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Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
Thread: Rush Limbaugh and the conservative Id

On the day of his passing, it's worth doing a brief retrospective on how Rush Limbaugh's personal life almost perfectly paralleled American conservatism...

One thing that's not commonly known about Rush Limbaugh is that he began his career in sports, doing sales for the Kansas City Royals baseball team. That's significant because much of the tribalism and dumbed-down rhetoric in American TV news directly came from sports media.

Television journalism in its earliest days was a fantastic product with real investigative reporting, no filibustering live interviews, and no soundbites. This began changing in the 1970s when ABC Sports president Roone Arledge was put in charge of ABC News.

Limbaugh tried to be a conventional FM deejay but kept getting fired because his personality was too abrasive. After working with the Royals, he began a small political talk show for a Sacremento station. The Reagan repeal of the Fairness Doctrine made his show possible.

Rush Limbaugh's Sacramento show started in 1984 (he replaced Morton Downey Jr) and after 5 years, he was picked up by ABC Radio which was trying to copy some of the sensationalism that ABC News television had started. It was a perfect fit.
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Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
This Parler user explains it quite well here. Because of yet more security flaws at Parler, it's now possible for all that "free speech" to be shared and archived with the world, even if the posters tried to erase their not-at-all innocent videos and GPS data.


In slightly more technical terms, it seems as though Parler never closed some of their developer-friendly security holes (sort of the programming equivalent of game cheat codes made by devs) and as a result, their anyone with the right knowledge could have admin access.

Parler never actually deleted anything its users posted. And, stupidly, they also kept it accessible to admin users.

This meant that anyone with admin access could still download it.

Once Parler's two factor authentication feature was disabled, because it was designed for developer convenience rather than security, anyone with the knowledge could become an administrator. And that's how Parler just got owned.

People have been downloading the raw videos, photos, and text posts by the gigabyte and archiving it for later public distribution.

All that perfect, totally harmless free speech will still be searchable, even now that Amazon locked out Parler from its servers.
SOCIETY
Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
For the past 6 years, I & a few other journalists have been trying to get the mainstream press and political elites realize the major danger posed by the radical right. Unfortunately, moderate and liberal elites deluded themselves into thinking that conservatism wasn't a cult.

There is no secretly powerful "Republican establishment" that will fix things. There are thugs, deluded people, and there are quislings. There is no one else in the GOP. Instead of focusing on the radical right's danger, editors wanted stories about Trump tweets.

Instead of calling out the dangerous radicalism of the GOP, television debate shows and opinion pages invited the enablers of fascism to speak and write about how we all needed to give powerful insane people the benefit of the doubt.

Unlike Trump, who walled off the White House months ago into a fortress, Nancy Pelosi did not take the terrorist threat seriously enough to demand better security. She has the budget and the authority and did nothing similar. Now, fascists are on the floor of Congress.

Of course, it is Trump who bears the responsibility for this but the Capitol Police have totally disgraced themselves by not fortifying the building the way that the Secret Service did to the WH.

This is the view of numerous congressional staffers of both parties.
JOURNALISM

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David Bier
David Bier
@David_J_Bier
Long thread: Because I couldn’t find anything comprehensive, I’m just going to post everything I’ve seen in the news/Twitter about Trump’s activities related to the Jan 6th insurrection. I think the timing & context of his actions/inactions will matter a lot for a senate trial.

12/12: The earlier DC protest over the electoral college vote during clearly inspired Jan 6th. On Dec 12th, he tweeted: “Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal. Didn’t know about this, but I’ll be seeing them! #MAGA.”


12/19: Trump announces the Jan. 6th event by tweeting, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Immediately, insurrectionists begin to discuss the “Wild Protest.” Just 2 days later, this UK political analyst predicts the violence


12/26-27: Trump announces his participation on Twitter. On Dec. 29, the FBI sends out a nationwide bulletin warning legislatures about attacks https://t.co/Lgl4yk5aO1


1/1: Trump tweets the time of his protest. Then he retweets “The calvary is coming” on Jan. 6!” Sounds like a war? About this time, the FBI begins visiting right wing extremists to tell them not to go--does the FBI tell the president? https://t.co/3OxnB2AHdr
TRUMP , GOVERNMENT
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𝚏𝚎𝚗...
@fenrir_71
How long until this the average Mar-a-Lago guest I wonder?

Once toxic trump starts waking up to empty halls and a lonely 40ft buffet every morning he'll have to pay the mortgage somehow.

Let's take a journey into the future shall we?

I present to you, MAGA-Lago:
1/


Of course the neighborhood will have a bit more traffic, the faithful will have a yearly hajj to bask in the warm glow of their #OrangeGodEmperor.

"Did you see all my fans in the boats? Nobody's ever seen anything like it before," he'd say to his frustrated neighbors.
2/


Holidays are a bit different, far more interactive, but the Bud Light flows freely from gold plated statues and there's no shortage of objects to burn.

Cries of "Watch this!!" abound, often the last words of the speaker.
3/


The golf course has been repurposed to allow for more specialized "carts." The annual Mud Pit Jamboree features free towing, plenty of rapidly descending pistol rounds, eighteen haired bare chests and more wet tee shirts then you can shake a stick at.

Yee-haw.
4/


Earl has taken over the buffet, what are those thin pancakes anyway? It's like eating paper.

Nothing but shot from a tree Florida boar here, grilled, boiled, smoked and roasted. Hell, on a stick if you want it.

Well and grits. Earl's boar grits are the finest in Florida.
5/
TRUMP
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Dan Alexander
Dan Alexander
@DanAlexander21
1/ In a Trump Tower press conference, held nine days before he took office, Donald Trump described his plan to separate his business from his presidency. Over the last few years, the key pillars of that plan have crumbled. Let’s go through them one-by-one.

2/ Promise 1 of Trump’s ethics plan: “No new foreign deals will be made whatsoever during the duration of President Trump’s presidency,” his attorney said. Trump did at least one new foreign deal anyway.

(See the promise at 31:57 of the video

3/ We know that the president did new a new foreign deal in office because he himself admitted it—on a financial disclosure report filed with federal ethics officials. You can see here that he sold $3.2M of land in the Dominican Republic on Jan. 29, 2018. https://t.co/U7r3VCiJPM


4/ Promise 2 of Trump’s ethics plan: He said he wasn’t going to talk about the business with his sons, Eric and Don Jr., who he put in charge of day-to-day operations. Doesn’t look like he kept that promise either.

(See promise 25:00 into the

5/ Contradicting his father, Eric Trump later told me that he did in fact plan to update his dad on the business. “Yeah, on the bottom line, profitability reports and stuff like that. But you know, that’s about it.”
TRUMP
Jennifer Cohn \u270d\U0001f3fb \U0001f4e2
Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢...
@jennycohn1
Agree. Also Bannon suggesting that Fauci shld be beheaded & Lyn Wood calling for Pence’s execution. These are Trump’s close advisors. Did Trump ever publicly disavow?
TRUMP
Phil
Phil
@philllosoraptor
Mega Thread:

I am so fed up with right wing hardliners on impeachment. I need to go on a rant. The more I interact with these people on here the more I'm pushed away from their position. On 1/6 I was adamant about Trump being at fault. He did not handle that day well IMO 1/

by that weekend, however, I'd started to reflect upon what he'd said and the events and begun to move away from the absolute position that it was all his fault. There were many reasons for this. One was that his rally happened while the break-ins were occurring, 2/

another was that so few people relative to his total followers showed up. Another was the fact that most of his followers I know were similarly outraged and disapproving. Another was that he explicitly said peaceful in all his remarks. And another was that 3/

upon reflection, I realized nothing he said was an escalation in his normal rhetoric, which had never caused any violence beforehand. But now, weeks later, I'm being radicalized in my aforementioned position by the right-wing hardliners who cannot discuss 1/6 4/

without resorting to the most melodramatic hyperbole imaginable. You simply will not gaslight me into viewing a small riot at the Capital as somehow orders of magnitude more grave and dangerous than months of left-wing rioting, or a left-wing insurrection 5/
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The RV and the Redemption Funds.

ALL Exchanged Currencies as well as all Zim Redemption funds will be placed in the accounts they set up in the Quantum Financial System./1

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