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The MAGA Freak Show is jam-packed with anti-semites like this. That’s because their orange god is an anti-semite. Don’t let their use of support for Netanyahu as a human shield fool you. The Standard Operating Procedure for the Cult is to use support for Israel as a smokescreen for their contempt for Jews just as they use the unborn as human shields for their contempt for human life.
Uncle Screwtape (speaking of the English during WWII) describes the mental gymnastics this way:
“Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don’t, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from our Father’s house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there.”
The Cult loves to tell itself that by “caring” about Israel and “the unborn” they are proving their virtue, while inflicting–and enjoying inflicting–real cruelties on the ever-growing host of victims Trump gives them permission to hate and gloat over. The Israelis and unborn they pretend to love are creatures almost entirely dwelling in their imagination. The victims they hurt and enjoy hurting are all too real. And they never stop to reflect on the parallel of St. John’s observation: “If you do not love the Jewish neighbor and deported child you can see, you cannot love the Israeli or unborn child you cannot see.”
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8 Responses
As an old guy (almost 74), who used to be Republican, I have observed the GOP for over 50 years. I voted for Nixon in 1972, and he, while dishonest, was at least somewhat moderate in political beliefs. Under a Reagan, it became more conservative, but still rational. Ditto Bush the elder. And then came W Bush and his Evangelical. The party vectored hard right. Moderates were denigrated as “RINO’s” and driven out of the party. The thing about so many Evangelicals is that you cannot reason with them. Anyone who disagrees with them is Satan. They are logic resistant. Now, with Trump and MAGA, we have a party where Fascists are welcome but moderates are not. The party has become a personality cult, like North Korea.
I left the Republican Party because they vectored so far Right. Even Ronald Reagan would not be welcome in today’s GOP. Some people think that the party can be reformed into a more rational organization, like they used to be. I doubt it. We need to dismantle it and start over. I did not leave the GOP. It left me.
I’ve been wondering about Reagan. He’s widely touted as a hero in Eastern Europe and it’s undeniable that he contributed significantly to ending the Cold War and so his foreign policy is never questioned here and interior policy is outside of any scope of interest.
It’s a stark contrast to see the discourse on Reagan era in the US. Looking at it from an outside perspective, I wondered whether Reagan is redeemable for his use of Southern strategy and promotion of trickle-down economics.
Southern strategy is obviously evil and should have never been employed. It led to a resurgence of white supremacist attitudes and is a perfect example of using evil so good may come out of it.
But I wonder about trickle-down economics. I mean, although many leading economists warned against it, it was never really tested on a large scale (Vienna school of economy managed to drag Austria out of poverty in the 1950s and trickle-down is a further evolution of liberal economy that arose from that). Economists have been wrong, some of them were praising communist regimes and claimed USSR would eventually surpass USA and the West in standard of living.
So is Reagan’s belief in trickle-down economy redeemable in the sense that if it worked, it would keep all classes in the society happy?
Trickle Down economics has been great for billionaires, but not so much for the rest of us. Wealth disparity gets worse and worse. If you mention this, you are attacked as a “communist.” Yes, expecting billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes is Communism.
I know what you’re saying and I agree.
Economists contrasted trickle down economics with wick up economics that actually do work in which helping to increase the income of the lowest earning cohorts results in the entire population getting richer.
But that’s not what I asked about.
I asked if the belief that trickle down economics would actually work and improve the well-being of the entire population was ever sincere and earnest or was it always a ploy.
This is the crucial question to ask. If Reagan’s administration actually believed that this would work, if it was supported by analyses by renowned economists who agreed that it’s a good thing to try, if there was hope that it would get the millionaires and billionaires on board with actually helping out the rest of the population… And if there was a moment of reflection that no, it’s not actually working out and withdrawing the recommendations — then these actions are definitely redeemable. I would argue that it’s even redeemable if there was unfounded belief based on and backed by hope that it would work out, though people would disagree.
I would go as far as to argue that this belief is redeemable even if you knew that it would fail, but hoped that it would not affect the poor too much and would help bring a quicker end to the Cold War and the resulting lowered military budgets would balance out the budget.
It’s only irredeemable if everyone knew that it would fail and it was only enacted to further enrich the rich and to entrench this idea and get poor suckers to believe that the Reagan era prosperity was due to trickle down economics, not in spite of them.
I’ve been involved in the conservative movement for decades and never met an anti semite. In fact because of dispensationalism they tend to be philo semetic
Your experience is belied by Matt Lieb’s video. You are either naive or a liar. And given that you lack the courage to leave your real email address, I vote “liar”.
Philosemitism is just disingenuous antisemitism. Nothing more, nothing less.
In a way it’s amazing how easy it is to pick apart Trump and Vance’s rhetoric.
“You’re Jewish*, we** support Israel, therefore you should support us.”
Fair enough, but then Vance says this (and I’m sure Trump would as well):
“Your country is USA and so is mine” when speaking to a Ukrainian American who complained about lack of commitment to continuing support to Ukraine.
*) Automatically equating religion or ethnicity with nationality
**) As if Republicans were the only ones who support Israel (just because Democrats look beyond supplying weapons, but I guess that’s just par for the course)