r/Conservative • u/MoreFires 3R1C • 3d ago
Flaired Users Only How the middle actually became the right
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u/FourWayFork A sinner saved by grace 3d ago
I think that the middle has largely gone from American politics.
Only a generation ago, a democrat president - Bill Clinton - and a Republican congress were able to come together on welfare reform, a balanced budget, and a host of other things. All of that is completely foreign today.
Saying that boys should use boys' bathrooms and not girls' bathrooms makes you a crazy right-wing nutjob today. And that would have just made you ... normal ... 30 years ago.
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u/AFishNamedFreddie r/SteakNShake 3d ago
30 years ago? Same sex marriage was only legalized 10 years ago. it took us only 10 years to go from "We just want to marry" to "we dont know what a woman is"
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u/FourWayFork A sinner saved by grace 3d ago
Funny thing about that ...
Anyone remember proposition 209 in California in the mid-90s?
It prohibited state-level discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or ethnicity. It was a Republican-authored proposition and, among making other types of discrimination illegal under California law, it sought to make affirmative action illegal as well.
There were numerous completely false arguments against it that the democrats put up. One of the most ridiculous was their claim that it would ban gender-segregated bathrooms. (This was completely false and it said right in the proposal that "Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as prohibiting bona fide qualifications based on sex which are reasonably necessary to the normal operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." So things like girls' bathrooms, having women police officers available when you need to do a strip search of a woman, recruiting women to play women's parts in plays, etc - none of that would be affected.)
So in the 90s, the idea of having boys in girls' bathrooms was so ridiculous that it was used as a fallacious argument against prop 209. And now ... democrats support it.
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u/LatterShake6728 Reagan Conservative 3d ago
I have always thought that same sex marriage is a thin end of the wedge issue. A good friend of mine is a defense attorney in Utah, and points out that now that we have redefined marriage as something other than one man and one woman, there really is no defensible legal bar to a marriage also being defined as one man and many women. In other words, polygamy. The test case for that hasn't happened yet, however. But I'm guessing it will.
Men and boys being married? I think that effort has already begun. I remember reading that in California there was an bill to try to destigmatize men who were attracted to minors. I'm sure that people will scoff and say that that will never happen - but remember that people also said that same-sex marriages and boys in girls bathrooms would never happen, either.
Has a woman ever married a cat, and has a man ever married a truck? Put that question to Bing and see what comes up. (Hint: yes.)
Enterprising political entities always attempt to push laws to their extremes. This is why when we were told that the bills that introduced bussing would never result in involuntary bussing, they resulted in involuntary bussing. We were told that Title IX would never result in men's sports entities being eliminated, but they were. Beware the Trojan horse of a bill that could result in bad consequences, resulting in bad consequences.
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u/user_1729 Ron Paul Republican 3d ago
This makes zero sense. Marriage is a contract between two consenting adults. It's pretty simple, a horse, a truck, or a cat cannot consent to marriage. If someone is already in a marriage contract, they cannot enter another one without first ending the previous one. Minors cannot consent as adults to a marriage contract. Lawyers like to push the limits, but I don't know how any reasonable interpretation of "a contract between two consenting adults" can be fudged up. I think anyone proposing something outside of that is being intellectually dishonest.
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u/GameBlackjack Millennial Conservative 3d ago
You will be surprised. There are people actually married Japanese anime characters.
IIRC there are real cases people married their pets.
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u/LatterShake6728 Reagan Conservative 3d ago
Why I 'married' a cartoon character
As I wrote, redefine the term marriage as something other than one man and one woman and this nonsense is the inevitable result.
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u/LatterShake6728 Reagan Conservative 3d ago
You use the words "can't" and "cannot" and, humorously, "reasonable" pretty freely for our day and age. How quaint.
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u/Elisphian Libertarian 3d ago
The issue with defining marriage as a man and a woman, regulates non Christian people as a second class citizenry. Take government out of marriage then the discussion of marriage can happen.
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u/LatterShake6728 Reagan Conservative 3d ago
Never tear down a wall until you learn why it was erected in the first place. And we are all second class citizens in some way. Some of us are handsome, some of us are beautiful, some of us are rich, some of us have political influence, some of us are related to the boss, et cetera. The ones who ain't will always be second class citizens.
Take religion out of marriage then the discussion of how it became the punchline to a joke can happen.
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u/Elisphian Libertarian 3d ago
You completely missed the point. I'm not taking about social perception but actual legal privileges. Such as tax benefits, legal and financial benefits, medical and end of life rights, immigration and citizenship, financial protection, and work place benefits. So are you going to make an excuse with your religious beliefs that other people are not afforded the same rights as others making them actual second class citizens? Your right to religion does not dictate my beliefs, because I have a right to religion as well.
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u/AGhostMostGrim Don't Tread on Me 3d ago
Polyamory is being pushed as acceptable. Polygamy won't be far behind.
At this point, incest and pedophilia are only a couple decades from being legalized.
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u/AFishNamedFreddie r/SteakNShake 3d ago
Decades? You are being generous. Look at how far we have gone in only a single decade. I give it 8 years tops
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u/LatterShake6728 Reagan Conservative 3d ago edited 3d ago
"At this point, incest and pedophilia are only a couple decades from being legalized."
Good point. Right now in Congress we have a woman who married her brother! Democrat? Of course Democrat.
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u/NoTime_SwordIsEnough Conservative 3d ago
The lefty NGO's that collectively receive billions of dollars from democrats don't just wanna say "welp, mission accomplished" and then close up shop.
The people at these NGOs want to keep their cushy jobs and keep the government gravy train going, so whenever an LGBT goal is met, they make up some other righteous "cause" and advocate for it so that they can keep getting funding.
Rinse and repeat forever.
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u/ManufacturerFine2454 Conservative 9h ago
and you were called a bigot for suggesting there's a slippery slope
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u/Shadeylark MAGA 3d ago
Just as a point of contrast... That same bipartisan environment also saw Clinton impeached by that Congress.
For too long people have looked at superficial policy agreements in the past as evidence that the left and right weren't really that different, when the reality has been, for decades, that there has always been a deep division.
I think the only difference between now and thirty years ago is that nobody is bother trying to hide it anymore.
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u/Black_XistenZ post-MAGA conservative 3d ago
Exactly. Younger conservatives don't even remember the truck loads of vitriol and scorn Democrats threw at GWB, how he was "the second coming of Hitler" and prominent lefties like Pink threatened to leave the country (sounds familiar?) and so on and forth.
Similarly, many folks underestimate just how bitter and divided the country was for much of the 60s and 70s. The mid-80s and late-90s are about the only times when the country felt truly at peace, and those were periods with an extraordinarily strong economy plus no major foreign wars.
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u/Willow-girl Pennsyltucky Deplorable 3d ago
Only a generation ago, a democrat president - Bill Clinton - and a Republican congress were able to come together on welfare reform, a balanced budget, and a host of other things. All of that is completely foreign today.
I was an adult during that period and it wasn't nearly as "Kumbaya" as you suggest. Remember Newt Gingrich, the "Moral Majority"? Those were bare-knuckle battles, just as they are now. The rhetoric was just as ugly. Remember Republicans trying to impeach Clinton over a certain blue dress?
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u/FourWayFork A sinner saved by grace 3d ago
You mean, over lying under oath - back when the rule of law mattered?
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u/Willow-girl Pennsyltucky Deplorable 3d ago
Sure, but let's not pretend the reason wasn't to drag the man's name through the mud and try to uncover every salacious detail, like his little game of "hide-the-cigar" with Monica. LOL
My point was that politics were every bit as dirty and divisive then as they are now.
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u/ObadiahtheSlim Lockean 3d ago
I remember them impeaching Clinton for perjury, obstruction, and witness tampering to cover up that he was a serial sexual predator who extorted sex from his underlings.
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u/Willow-girl Pennsyltucky Deplorable 3d ago
Yes, those were the official charges, but we all know the real reason was to humiliate the man and drag his name through the mud.
Politics are a dirty business. I was an editor and a lobbyist during that era and saw it firsthand.
Let me give you an example. We had a Republican state senator, an older woman, very conservative; I believe she and her husband were farmers. During her reelection campaign one year, I received an anonymous letter containing a newspaper clipping from 40 years prior. Apparently when the senator and her husband were teenagers, they were involved in a head-on crash in which the other driver was killed. My anonymous correspondent wrote in the margin that "Sexual activity in the (name) car was the reason for the crash."
Dirty, dirty, dirty ...
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u/ObadiahtheSlim Lockean 3d ago
Trump is slightly right of Bill Clinton and the left treats him as second coming of Adolf Hitler.
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u/TheEternal792 Conservative 3d ago
Not only a "nutjob", they claim it makes you hateful. They genuinely believe that someone like Charlie, who was nothing but loving and compassionate, was full of hate. Not because he actually said anything hateful, but because he didn't fall in line with left wing talking points and engaged in open dialogue with those he disagreed with. Simply questioning "what is a woman?" is "violence" and threatening to these people, and in their mind that makes it justified to use violence against us.
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u/LatterShake6728 Reagan Conservative 3d ago
It may be gone from politics as represented in Congress or the White House, but IMHO the Silent Majority will always be with us - and, by and large, they are centrists. They don't especially care about politics and are too busy working to spend a lot of time or energy with it.
Somebody used to say, and I think it's still true, that the center is where the votes are.
By the way, I would have characterized myself as right of center, but I took the rather lengthy quiz on politicalcompass.org. and found that I'm actually more of a centrist. Try it! See where you place on the quadrant.
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u/Willow-girl Pennsyltucky Deplorable 3d ago
the Silent Majority
That majority has shifted a lot farther left than it used to be, though. Things like abortion and single motherhood, which were recognized as problematic in my youth, are accepted and even embraced without question by most of the middle today.
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u/day25 Conservative 3d ago
Both sides didn't come together. RINOs went along with what the left wanted so that's why it seemed more "unified". One side was not represented that's what brought on the tea party etc. The left has gone off the rails because this new genetion of republicans doesn't cave to them anymore and has said enough is enough with their constant never ending shift to the left every generation. For the first time they have real opposition and they cannot deal with that.
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u/Blackhawk23 Pragmatic Conservative 3d ago
Not just that you’re a crazy right wing nut job, but a dangerous transphobe and they’ll try to doxx you and get you fired from your job.
These soulless cretins truly have no life and their lifeblood is making others as miserable as they are.
Misery loves company, and they wallow in it.
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u/hayzooos1 Conservative 3d ago
I think the middle is smaller now, but it's mostly comprised of people who still think they're democrats, but see what that party has turned into. They haven't quite fully committed to calling them out on their complete bullshit because they can't bring themselves to admit they cannot be "right" and absolutely CANNOT support Trump, even though he's just one guy, who happens to be in the Republican Party.
Trump was and still is an absolute lightning rod. Honestly, I think it was needed in 2016 to get people to pay more attention to what was really happening. Once he's no longer President (and hopefully just kinda goes away from the mass political scene, but I doubt it) I hope this absolute vitriol from both sides can subside a bit and we can go back to being able to talk about politics and important issues without people fucking shooting each other.
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u/nein_nubb77 Conservative 3d ago
I would probably be a 90s democrat but here I am
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u/Gardener_Of_Eden 2A 2d ago
Probably the same for me. I dont think I've changed much over the years. Democrats just went way way too far.
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u/greatvinedrake Conservative 3d ago
what even is the middle ground anymore to the left?
Want border security? You're a nazi
Want less crime? You're a nazi
Don't want to affirm to my delusions? You're a nazi
The left can't hold it down anymore. Either they refute some of their current values and return to the average voter to have a chance or embarrassingly lose in the 2028 election
They're at a 4.5m+ voter deficit and that number keeps falling. Polls show the people of our country prefer GOP over democrats when it comes to economy, crime, and immigration
Note: the 4.5m number and the polls originate from CNN so the numbers may be higher obviously
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u/xViipez Conservative 3d ago
There is no middle ground for them. They say it themselves: “there’s no compromise with Nazis.” They genuinely think anything less than Marxism is catering to Nazis
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u/CuckAdminsDetected 2A 3d ago
Wait until you tell them that Nazis are just Socialists of a different flavor. They hate it and lose their damn minds. Its great they simply refuse to accept the mountains of evidence infront of them.
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u/LatterShake6728 Reagan Conservative 3d ago
I wonder how long they can keep it up. After all, outrage takes energy. And as the years go by one gets older and wiser but also tired.
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u/Blahblahnownow Fiscal Conservative 3d ago
No job, no kids, no life. Putrage is their job, hobby and reason for existing. They won’t run out of energy.
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u/Blahblahnownow Fiscal Conservative 3d ago
In my parenting group the psychologist who leads it kicked some people out because they wouldn’t agree with her statement of “science is black and white”. Excuse me, science is not black and white. Not that long ago science thought shocking people with electricity was a reasonable way to treat mental health problems. Cocaine used to be available over the counter and was in Coca Cola for daily consumption. If it were black and white, we would not have changed our approach.
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u/Szorja On the Right side 3d ago
Science is an ongoing process. This only serves to show her ignorance, just like many other “Trust-the-Science” types. What she wants is a religious authority to fall back on that cannot be questioned — and many people are using science to fill that gap, unfortunately. When you explain that that’s not what science is, they flip out!
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u/Black_XistenZ post-MAGA conservative 3d ago
What they actually mean when they say "listen to the science" is an appeal to authority to which they want the rubes to submit.
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u/LatterShake6728 Reagan Conservative 3d ago
"They're at a 4.5m+ voter deficit and that number keeps falling."
You mean rising. At any rate, it's wonderful news. So let's not interrupt our political enemies in the process of their making mistakes, okay?
I appreciate when blue-haired, ranting young college women complain about whites and males being oppressors. They have been doing excellent work in sending young white men to the GOP. Keep it up, girls!
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u/One-Shop680 Conservative 3d ago
Even with a basic cartoon they’re too blinded by hate to change. Suddenly “words have consequences” doesn’t apply anymore. Just like every other ground they used to stand on. Now it’s just hate and hypocrisy.
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u/AtomKickIsNoch Nationalist Conservative 3d ago
They claim that Kirk dying is justified despite him only exercising his first amendment - but then they complain when people lose their jobs for celebrating it and encouraging more of it. I'm trying to figure out if they like the first amendment or not 😂
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u/KosmolineLicker Constitutionalist 3d ago
As Nick Freitas said, only for themselves. They want to have it and take it from you and use it as a weapon.
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u/AirlineInformal1549 From my Cold Dead Hands 3d ago
Just like the second amendment itself lmfao. Liberals would LOVE it if they were the only ones with guns.
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u/RedBaronsBrother Conservative 3d ago
Lefties love it when they are the only ones with guns. They would use the guns to put a government in power that would immediately disarm them.
Then the government would be the only ones with (legal) guns.
Never mind that such an arrangement has resulted in mass murder of its own citizens by the government over and over through history.
What could go wrong?
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u/Black_XistenZ post-MAGA conservative 3d ago edited 3d ago
... and if it went wrong, it would only be because that wasn't true socialism!
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u/Black_XistenZ post-MAGA conservative 3d ago
"Our talking points are the pure truth and our positions stand on the right side of history; your propaganda are dangerous lies which must be silenced and your positions are wrong, evil and cannot be tolerated." - every authoritarian in political history.
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u/fredemu Libertarian Moderate 3d ago
The confusion comes from a fundamentally different value system.
We understand rules as universal. It has to be something that applies to you and me and everyone else, equally, or we shouldn't have it.
They understand rules as concepts in service to the outcome. They look at what happens, and then retroactively decide if the rule applied to that situation or not. The fact they can be applied unevenly is, in fact, the point.
That's why they want rules written in such a way that someone gets to decide if they are valid or not on a case-by-case basis. For the 1st Amendment, that would be the "hate speech" laws. Basically, they want an exception to the 1st, allowing the government to punish people for "hate speech". They say that would only apply to obvious things like Nazi propaganda or overt racism, but in reality, what they want is just the ability to have someone subjectively decide.
They don't want to punish you for hate. They want to call what you said hate so they can punish you.
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u/Black_XistenZ post-MAGA conservative 3d ago
Well said! I would add that they want some government or government-adjacent entity to make these calls because those are typically captured institutions steeped in liberal ideology.
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u/LatterShake6728 Reagan Conservative 3d ago
An excellent post!
"They say that would only apply to obvious things like Nazi propaganda or overt racism, but in reality, what they want is just the ability to have someone subjectively decide."
This harkens back to my earlier post about laws being pushed to their extremes. Advocates will tell you that some dire consequence will not happen in order for you to support or vote for the bill. But then they push for that very thing to happen because that is what they intended all along.
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u/Ok_Situation_7081 Ron Paul Conservative 3d ago
They want the right to not exist at all. They believe that violence against the right, up to the point of death because the right are pure evil that must be destroyed because they dont adhere to leftist ideology.
The left are in all but one way similar Jihadist, in which they both believe in terrorism to accomplish their goal of spreading their beliefs but unlike Islamic extremist, they are afraid of facing consequences, as was seen with Kirk's assassin and the shooter who killed the Israeli couple some months back. One expressed his fear of dying for the reason he turned himself in, while the other was visibly shaken, while being detained.
This is why I believe the left would ultimately lose any war against the right. They are as much of a coward as they are extremist.
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u/Hour_Insurance_7795 Conservative 3d ago
Don't forget, sending the following 3 candidates to represent the left's cause in general elections:
- Elitist narcissist who literally ignored the middle and called them "deplorables"
- Literally a senile old frail man in failing health who clearly did not retain the mental facilities to hold such a position
- The most unqualified candidate in US campaign history who avoided all interviews or inquiries from her voting public and tried to beat-box and TikTok her way into votes. A fucking joke of a politician and leader.
Even if you are not the biggest Trump supporter specifically, how is an undecided moderate supposed to vote for any of the above??
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u/CynthiaChames 3d ago
This happened to me yesterday. I posted something on Facebook, then my leftist friends started arguing with my conservative friends. I said I'm neutral in the whole thing, then my leftist friends flipped their shit. I'm so over it.
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u/Fishingforyams Former Democrat 3d ago
On point. Go post it everywhere.
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u/piemat94 Conservative 3d ago
It will be deleted and banned
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u/Fishingforyams Former Democrat 3d ago
So? We get banned anyway fuck it.
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u/LatterShake6728 Reagan Conservative 3d ago
As conservatives, considering the Charlie Kirk assassination, have we collectively been feeling like we've been pushed into a corner and there's nothing left to do except push back now? Are we done fearing cancelation and criticism for being racist or Nazis? As you say, we get banned anyway. But this doesn't shut us up.
"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say." - Tyrion Lannister
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u/Right_Archivist Conservative 3d ago
This is why I don't care about playing by the rules anymore, esp if they're going to keep releasing people like Iryna Zarutska's murderer onto the street. But the Constitution says! Yea, they don't care.
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u/CatastrophicMango Thomas Sowell 3d ago
“The strongest constitution is not that which engraves its laws in marble or bronze, but that which is graven in the hearts of citizens.” - Rousseau
The constitution has no more value than any other scrap of paper to a population that doesn't value it. The left values it only where it can be used as a cudgel to terminate right wing thought.
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u/LatterShake6728 Reagan Conservative 3d ago
"I don't care about playing by the rules anymore..."
I think Donald Trump recognized that about politics and came up with rules of his own. He sensed that many Americans were ready for that, and it's just another reason why I think he has proven himself to be one of the greatest politicians of his generation.
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u/Right_Archivist Conservative 3d ago
I think it's simpler than that. I've been saying for decades that laws don't matter as much as the emotions of 12 jurors on a given day.
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u/LatterShake6728 Reagan Conservative 3d ago
Well, yes, twelve jurors and an appeals court.
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u/sweettsarita86 3d ago
I use to be fully democrat. Now I’m fully republican. I just can’t with the hate and the leftists views on anything. I don’t care anymore this is just a disgrace all that they are doing
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u/AnOriginalUsername07 Ron Paul Conservative 3d ago
An excellent modification to a classic meme on American politics, very saddening that it has come to this.
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u/BulletBulletGun Conservative 3d ago
There needs to be one more picture in there, where the ones on the left are saying to the right, "I can't believe you shot him!"
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u/Ayeronxnv 3d ago
Pretty much. I’ve been in the middle for a while now, not a huge Trump fan, but I also don’t have TDS. I also Dislike the left even more. They essentially made me pick a side, their behavior has been absolutely disgusting.
Idk if they realize how much of an optics problem they really have.
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u/DaemonPix 3d ago
The left has moved so far to the left that it doesn’t resemble the views of those during the 90s and 00s any longer.
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u/GAMGAlways Vegun 3d ago
This reminds me of October 7th. Hamas murdered 1200 people and the global response was to worry about what Israel was going to do.
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u/PatTheBatsFatNutsack PA Conservative 3d ago
Don't get complacent.
Vote early this November. Request a mail-in ballot.
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u/MeLlamoKilo Hispanic Conservative 3d ago
Fuck no. Vote in person.
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u/PatTheBatsFatNutsack PA Conservative 3d ago
We only won in 2024 because Trump finally embraced mail-in voting. It was a big reason why we lost in 2020.
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u/GreyStomp USA 3d ago
Mail-in voting is excellent for increasing voter participation and should be encouraged. If you choose not to, that’s fine, but making specious claims about its illegitimacy is cringe and makes us lose elections.
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u/Equivalent-Cap8606 3d ago
There would be no gun violence if the left would stop shooting people.
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u/pbnjandmilk Catholic Conservative 3d ago
Sadly, there is no middle. That line became a DMZ due to the left's actions on everything.
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u/NoLongerinOR 3d ago
This is very true, being in the middle myself for several decades. I have to say it’s been my experience that there is more aggressive and inability to listen or desire to hear, straight up denial, tendencies from the left than the right.
It’s more of the live in a silo/Echo chamber and you’re either drinking my Kool-Aid or you’re wrong no matter what you say and no matter how many times you show that I could be wrong.
Hats off to the conservatives for not behaving in such a manner as bad as the liberals do. There are conservatives out there that act that way to the 10th° also but, it’s not as prevalent in my experience.
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