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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   18448 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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The problem for the American right is that the center-right is dead and the Republican party is (or is at least perceived to be) dominated by reactionary populists and religious conservatives.

The "or is at least perceived to be" is the critical part. That "center-right is dead" is the narrative that both the woke left and dissident right want to push because what power and credibility they have absolutely depends on convincing enough people that this is the case.

Who of actual political relevance would you describe as center right?

I'm not sure if you intended this question as a joke or some sort of "gotcha" but the obvious answer is Donald Trump.

Dude was/is a vaguely right-leaning Democrat. His political positions and persona hasn't actually changed all that much since the 90s and early 00s. That what used to be the centrist/moderate position of both parties less than 20 years ago is now considered "far right" by the media and academia shows just how far they've shifted to the left.

The Wokies hate Trump because he's an unironic "'Murica Fuck Ya" sort of guy. Meanwhile the DR hate him because his popularity is effectively a big old middle-finger to everything they believe.

I agree that the vast majority of Trump's policy positions are comfortably inside the Republican Overton window, and if a Democrat had run for President in the nineties under this exact package of policy positions, no one would have batted an eyelid. What keeps me from calling him centre-right is his pronounced tendency towards conspiratorialism and his increasingly obvious authoritarian streak. "The election is rigged, this goes all the way to the top - as soon as I seize power I'm going to keep it forever, drain the swamp and get revenge on my enemies" is not the kind of thing a normie Republican says. One might say he doesn't really believe this and it's just smack talk to rally his base, but again, I don't think a normie Republican would present this kind of narrative of the US even as insincere smack talk.

I don't consider Trump far-right by any stretch, but the "centre-right" label doesn't sit well with me. Maybe some kind of synthesis of bog-standard centrist Republican policy proposals with the "paranoid style"? I think this is probably what people are getting at when they describe him as a "populist".

I'm not sure if you intended this question as a joke or some sort of "gotcha" but the obvious answer is Donald Trump.

I guess it was a "gotcha" insofar as it was extremely predictable that you'd say Trump despite the absurdity of that claim. "Tear the rotten edifice down" is not and cannot in any meaningful sense be a center-right ethos because the core principle of the center-right is that the status quo are basically fine. Trumpists are shouting that things are emphatically not fine - that the Federal government is hopelessly corrupt, the Democrats are stealing elections, the Mexicans are invading, the trans are corrupting the youth, globalists are stealing our jobs, etc... and that radical action is needed to fix it.

despite the absurdity of that claim.

I it really "absurd" though? That's what I am questioning

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. […] They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people”

That's not center right.

I can't believe I'm asking this years after the fact - but did Trump actually say "They are rapists"? Because in that sequence of words, it's obvious to me it's possessive 'their'. As in 'their drugs, their crime, their rapists'. But everybody up to a VP candidate in the debates just so conveniently interprets it as him calling Mexicans rapists or whatever. And now it's one of those things that "Everbody knows he said" like the fine people smear job, the koi fish smear, and 'Tim Apple'.

I hope you understand that this is one of the many reasons people who aren't already persuaded by this hackery place low value in your assessment of what constitutes moderate or far-right.

video: https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/2015/06/25/29292957/

And even if it was "they're" rather than "their", I would interpret it as "the subset of Mexicans illegally migrating to the US are rapists" not "all Mexicans are rapists". Radically different in meaning to how it was presented.

That's not center right.

It's not "center right" according to whom?

Like I said, that what was the moderate/centrist position in the 90s is now considered "far right" should be an indication of just how far off the reservation the media has drifted in the last 20 years.

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