MAGA Values? What are they???

Politics and Social Issues
1

I know we have a couple trump lovers around here, but I’ve yet to hear a serious attempt by any of them to set out a list of MAGA values.

 

I mean to say you’re for democracy, but demand that tens of thousands of totally lawful ballots get thrown out because they don’t support your führer, that’s not much of a value.

To say you’re pro-life means nothing when the only life you’re interested in legally protecting is an unborn fetus. (But, then turn around and refuse to help born children with lunch at school. Hell, even to refuse to adequately fund their schools and the medical system.

and so on and so forth.

 

Oh so back on point. What are MAGA Values? (beyond whites desperately pretending its not 2021 on a very crowded, warming planet and trying to hold on to a fading supremacy that’s belongs to yesterday.)

2

IMHO, Magats only values are having and enforcing an authoritarian government. They say they want less government, yet they support a dictator, who kills hundred of thousands of people. They say they are pro-life, but in reality, they are pro-death, yet they cannot see that, because they are too focused on controlling women and dictating that they be baby factories. Oh and not just any women. No one cares what happens to Black women giving birth. Black women have the highest death rates in childbirth, but yet, Magats don’t care if she’s sterilized. The same goes for Native American women, with the hope few have heard of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. White women are the ones they want to be baby factories because those controlling their bodies are too afraid of becoming the minority (though they are via world population) and losing their White privilege, which, in their opinion, was ordained by their god. Thus why they are, as Randi Rhodes calls them, Vanilla Isis and they are all the dotard’s Al Qaeda AKA The Base. Whatever the case, their views all come from their cult, including following the dotard to their deaths.

3

I did not knew the acronym and I had to look for it on the net.

If I understand, they are religious and conservative people, who regret a mythical past, the one of the family sit com of the sixties, before Vietnam war, and when John Wayne or Gary Cooper represented law and order.

In fact, they don’t accept that the world has changed, and are lost in it. They feel that they don’t master their lives anymore

In fact, I can understand their feelings, even if I don’t share their values and if I know that the past is done and will not come back.

But I regret a time when welfare state was a not arguable right of the people, when one could find work in 2 days, when there were powerful trade unions, and so on … I don’t regret the progresses done in medicine, in surgery, dentistry, in comfort, i don’t regret to be able to use a PC, to be able to travel easily and visit other countries.

I don’t regret the consciousness I have of the fragility of our world and civilization, I don’t regret time when Europe had colonized the world, and so on.

And, mainly, I am not looking for a scapegoat to hate.

I know, may be wrongly, that this ancient world, I don’t mythify, has been ended by the globalisation, among other causes. And this globalisation results from the development of capitalism, not from some plot. It has not been ended by a plot from some hidden powers in a dark corner, with amoral aims.

 

 

4
But I regret a time when welfare state was a not arguable right of the people,
I regret the time when there was no Corporate welfare, being bought by very large companies.
Corporate Welfare

“Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor”

Main article: Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor
Believed to have been first popularised by Michael Harrington’s 1962 book The Other America[3][4] in which Harrington cited Charles Abrams,[5] a noted authority on housing.

Variations on this adage have been used in criticisms of the United States’ economic policy by Joe Biden,[6] Martin Luther King Jr.,[7][8] Gore Vidal,[9][10][11] Joseph P. Kennedy II,[12] Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,[13] Dean Baker,[14] Noam Chomsky,[15] Robert Reich,[16] John Pilger,[17] and Bernie Sanders.[18]

“Privatizing profits and socializing losses”

“Privatizing profits and socializing losses” refers to the idea that corporations want to reserve financial gains for themselves and pass along losses to the rest of society, potentially through lobbying the government for assistance. This practice was criticized in the Wall Street bailout of 2008.[19]


5

In fact, the matter is that America is still great !

In the sixties, there were 2 super powers, USA and URSS, and now there are 3, USA, Russia and China.

That China joined the club is no a surprise. in 1800 AC, China and India produced 50 % of the world gross domestic product.

At the beginning of the seventies, a frenchman Alain Peyrefitte published a book " When China will wake up "

Now it is true that in developed countries public services are a shame, roads and bridges are in shambles and so. It is not linked to some moral decadence but, for instance, to the reduction of taxation, which deprives the state of the needed money.

6

I’ll try to get some time to come back this one. One of the more interesting statistics I’ve heard from Jonathan Haidt is that Liberals are much worse at naming the values of Conservatives than the other way around. Our values don’t differ as much as we think they do, it’s more about how they are expressed. Like, we all want safe schools, but we differ on how you do that.

7

Here’s a nice little summary, a response from a reasonable and intelligent conservative to a a statement of liberal values. It highlights the problem of stating values in the first place, the liberal quickly shifts to policy and he calls her on that. He waves his hands a bit and says “economists”. that leaves a lot of questions, but I’ll focus on this last bit, a quote from Haidt, “On the left, fairness often implies equality, but on the right it means proportionality—people should be rewarded in proportion to what they contribute, even if that guarantees unequal outcomes.”

I think the important thing for anyone who knows what the 3rd or 4th amendment is, is to get a handle what people are saying their values are but more importantly how they express them. It’s been too easy to dismiss the entire South as a bunch of hicks with no values, or evil intent. To me, that’s the same as assuming everyone who lived in Iraq in 1989 was a terrorist. We know they weren’t. They were members of Saddam’s party because they wanted to live and send their kids to school. They didn’t suddenly become different people when Saddam was found in his hole.

If you read the above quote, you should be able to find the place to start a conversation, one I almost never see, anywhere. It would start something like; if people should be rewarded in proportion to their contributions, how much are the current billionaires contributing? If we look at, for example, the contribution of Amazon to our economy, how many people are contributing to that? Are they all being fairly rewarded? You’ll get a knee-jerk “yes” of course, so you might want to be prepared with some numbers, like how long it would take an employee in shipping to earn what Bezos earned last year. How much taxes he paid. If they are listening, and not yelling yet, who do they think created the tax laws that favor the rich?

Anyway, I’m as tired of rhetorical questions from the left as I am from pat answers from the right. It doesn’t really matter which created which anymore, it’s just an endless cycle.

8

What confuses me is why there is so little discussion about honesty; truth; sense of fair play; constructive debates (as opposed to lawyer’s winner only debates) has, gathering objective evidence and drawing rational decision.

Okay conservative values: THE RIGHT TO LIFE

But only for the unborn.

 

So how about those values, does the Haidt list them?

9
Okay conservative values: THE RIGHT TO LIFE

But only for the unborn.


The more conservative you are, the more right to life is a negotiable commodity.

It’s your right only if it agrees with my right to life. If it doesn’t I have the right to kill you, i.e. “right to life” is a meaningless “privilege”.

As usual Carlin hit the nail straight:

warning crude language; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZijLQGH1v0

and for an encore; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Djohakx_FE

 

10

Bill Hicks is another favorite, yeah, language warning https://youtu.be/yQfNzjGjZ0M

He also has the classic, “if you’re pro life why don’t you lock arms and stop people from getting into cemeteries”

Okay conservative values: THE RIGHT TO LIFE -- CC
You jumped from a value to a political position and went right for the contentious argument. Personally, I'm little uncomfortable supporting the idea of ripping fetuses out of people. But if I say that, it sounds conservative, like I'm trying to find some compromise or something. I'm not. Haidt has something on abortion rights I think, it would be about the value of life or maybe rights about your own body, then how they are expressed differently. The point of his work is not to decide what the law should be, but to hear the expression of how an individual arrived at their conclusion.

Disgust is a big factor in our doing that. For example, I find anal sex between two men pretty disgusting to think about. But my values of love, choice and freedoms that don’t harm others, override that and I can find no justification to legislate others doing that or not. An “abortion” is literally a metaphor for something that went horribly wrong in a gross way. So if you begin the conversation there, agreeing it’s not pretty, then you can build some relationship, then you can say something about supporting a woman after she chooses to keep her child that was conceived in a rape.

Speaking of, here’s the latest Braver Angels podcast. Loretta Ross had that actual experience and it led her to a life of building understanding on that and other issues. She recently appeared in the NYT and said many of these same things. It should be easy to find that article if you have NYT access.

 

 

11
Police seize firearms from Black men at Virginia rally for gun rights

Jan. 19, 2021, 1:22 PM MST
By Reuters
RICHMOND, Va. - Police stopped a car of Black men and confiscated two of their guns at Virginia’s annual “Lobby Day” on Monday while white gun rights activists defied local laws unimpeded in the state capital of Richmond.


But I though we had the right to bear arms

12

Well, it’s your thread CC. Go with whatever. I’m not going to reform the police by taking to you about it.

13

No that wasn’t a discussion starter. At the heart of it not even knocking the cops for what they did.

Just a reminder of the glaring double standards many pretend don’t exist.

I hear enough gun practice going around within ear shot of our cabin. I keep wondering who’s so in love with that bump stock that it’s worth hundreds of dollars worth of rounds for the fun of it. I find it very weird and personally don’t mind cops taking gun for shady characters, just wish it were applied more evenly.

14
Personally, I’m little uncomfortable supporting the idea of ripping fetuses out of people.
It's not about that. It's about who has the right to make that decision for a woman.

Self-defense, sovereignty over her own body and family. Or old white men who created a political problem for political purposes.

Abortion, Right and Wrong By Rachel Richardson Smith
 

www _ vox _ com/2019/4/10/18295513/abortion-2020-roe-joe-biden-democrats-republicans

 

Womens Health Issues

. Fall 1993;3(3):127-31.
doi: 10.1016/s1049-3867(05)80245-2.
The politics of abortion: a historical perspective
M McKeegan
PMID: 8274866. DOI: 10.1016/s1049-3867(05)80245-2
Abstract
An analysis of the capture of the Republican party and the national agenda from the late 1970s into the 1990s by a coalition of political and religious conservatives. … https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8274866/


 

15
Abortion, Right and Wrong By Rachel Richardson Smith

(first half)

I cannot bring myself to say I am in favor of abortion. I don’t want anyone to have one. I want people to use contraceptives and for those contraceptives to be foolproof. I want people to be responsible for their actions, mature in their decisions. I want children to be loved, wanted, well cared for.

I cannot bring myself to say I am against choice. I want women who are young, poor, single or all three to be able to direct the course of their lives. I want women who have had all the children they want or can afford or their in bad marriages or destructive relationships to avoid being trapped by pregnancy.

So these days when thousands rally in opposition to legalized abortion, when facilities providing abortions are bombed, when the president speaks glowingly of the growing momentum behind the anti-abortion movement, I find myself increasingly alienated from those pro-life groups.

At the same time, I am overwhelmed with mail from pro-choice groups. They, too, are mobilizing their forces, growing articulate in support of their cause, and they want my support. I am not sure I can give it.

I find myself in the awkward position of being both anti-abortion and pro-choice. Neither group seems to be completely right—or wrong. It is not that I think abortion is wrong for me but acceptable for someone else. The question is far more complex than that.

Part of my problem is that what I think and how I feel about this issue are two entirely different matters. I know that unwanted children are often neglected, even abandoned. I know that making abortion illegal will not stop all women from having them.
I also know from experience the crisis an unplanned pregnancy can cause. Yet I have felt the joy of giving birth, the delight that comes from feeling a baby’s skin against my own. I know how hard it is to parent a child and how deeply dissatisfying it can be. My children sometimes provoke me and cause me endless frustration, but I can still look at them with tenderness and wonder at the miracle of it all. The lessons of my own experience produce conflicting emotions. Theory collides with reality.

It concerns me that both groups present themselves in absolutes. They are committed and they want me to commit. They do not recognize that gray area where I seem to be languishing. Each group has the right answer—the only answer.

Yet I am uncomfortable in either camp. I have nothing in common with the pro-lifers. I am horrified by their scare tactics, their pictures of well-formed fetuses tossed in a metal pan, their cruel slogans. I cannot condone their flagrant misuse of Scripture and unforgiving spirit. There is meanness about their position that causes them to pass judgment on the lives of women in a way I could never do.

The pro-life groups, with their fundamentalist religious attitudes, have a fear and an abhorrence of sex, especially premarital sex. In their view abortion only compounds the sexual sin. What I find incomprehensible is that even as they are opposed to abortion they are also opposed to alternative solutions. They are squeamish about sex education in the schools. They don’t want teens to have contraceptives without parental consent. They offer little aid or sympathy to unwed mothers. They are the vigilant guardians of a narrow morality.

I wonder how abortion got to be the greatest of all sins? What about poverty, ignorance, hunger, weaponry? …

 

16

To add to the list begun by @mriana, I would add the following values: voter suppression, anti-immigration, hate federal government, hate state governments presided over by Governors who don’t roll over, be fearful of everyone, carry a gun, anti-internationalism, white supremacy…

I’m certain there have been a couple left out. Perhaps a MAGA supporter might encounter this and finish the list.

17
Perhaps a MAGA supporter might encounter this and finish the list.
Would be interesting, but I doubt it, so I'll just follow up a previous tangent that continues a long standing dialogue between Lausten and I.

I do respect his views a great deal, but that doesn’t mean I completely agree.

@lausten. - #339872 Well, it’s your thread CC. Go with whatever.
We do come at this from different perspectives and voices. All sides need representation.

Including a bit of righteous indignation at the normalization of tactical deliberate lies as a rational way of making decision - deserves to shouted and heard.

Thing is over time I’ve realized how complicit the audience as been* in the self-deception because from a Physical Reality perspective the only choice society had, since we caught up with the science in the '60s, was to SLOW DOWN. Less babies, smaller populations, a global economic situation that needed to change course from its historic gluttonous ever increasing consumption oriented economy. *(it’s definitely created conflicting emotions. I have seen the enemy and he is us… and all that ;-). )

To one that values this planet that provides all our life support systems and a cornucopia of resources. By appreciating Earth’s biosphere and physical reality, we not only appreciate the need to nurture, but nurturing natural resources becomes a moral imperative for all. But we missed that boat thanks to Reaganomic and the acceptance of utter deception regarding natural facts and figures.

Well,… we didn’t have anything substantive since '69. Look around at what that game of doubting science got us. The high schooler in me wonders, WTF y s i I told you so. But, there’s no satisfaction in it, only bitterness at our collective failure.

 

There’s another thing, my intended audience. I’ve moved way beyond struggling to reason with the faith blinded and their belligerent ignorance. Been there, done that. Sure, apparently not that well, but hey, I tried. If nothing else I’ve gotten to understand the tactics of deception along with learning about the science much better, than I ever would have without making the effort. Also I have the satisfaction of having developed a solid understanding of all those mysteries that once fired up my imagination back in the early 60s (and before actually).

At this point only ones I’m interested in connecting with belong to younger generations, people who see through the self-deception we have lived this past half century and what it’s done to our life sustaining Earth and her ability to support the human species. People with whom the fundamental truths that I write about resonate.

People who appreciate Physical Reality and the importance of truth and honesty about facts, over self-interested disregard for Earth’s ways and means, which happens to provide our global life support system. I want to share the fruits of dozens and hundreds of hours spent learning about and dissecting contrarian “doubt-building brainwashing tactics” up close and personal. Something very, very few are interested in.

At my blogs I’m writing for the self-aware who are mature enough to handle an insult, or smack down, now 'n then - because that’s what they’ll have to learn to deal with if entering that arena. I’m writing for those interested in learning how to take those tactical, but phony contrarian smack downs, and flip them into educational moments.

We have a cataclysm smack down heading society’s way. After the dust settles, and the proverbial ‘we’ will awake to a much leaner population and a more challenging global climate regime, and changing environment, and local living. Those who had the right stuff will have only made it because of a stone cold understanding of science and the facts as Earth dictates them, the delusionals won’t survive, nor would they want to. Nor would I, for that matter. In the end, sometimes death is a blessing.

Humans have the ability to do great things, but so far it’s all been dedicated mainly to consumption and destruction and playing endless games of power lust and conspicuous gluttony - while willfully ignore the planet that we depend upon. Or playing wannabe. Those days are coming to a close. I don’t know precisely when, but I know we keep getting closer and increasing our speed. Trust me, you don’t want to hear about the state of our global climate, and that system carries an awful lot of momentum, it’s outrageously depressing. Well, thanks for the ramble Lausten.

 

 

18

At least that was balanced. A good start. Got a little ugly near the end there. I knew why abortion had become the “greatest of all sins” before the internet. I thought that was pretty well known. Knowing it takes away from there being something wrong with the person who holds the belief, to understand that, like most irrational beliefs, it was in some powerful person’s interest to create the divisiveness.

IDK, maybe it was after the internet, but I know it was related to Christianity. Before the 60’s, the majority of parents did not want their children marrying outside of their denomination, THEIR DENOMINATION, not nationality, not Muslim vs Christian, not skin color, Protestants didn’t want their daughters marrying Catholics, Baptists didn’t like Methodists. People didn’t say “I’m a Christian”, they said, “I’m an Episcopalian”. This made it hard to get them to vote as a block. I don’t know who figured it out, but some rich politicians looked for issues and tested them out, and found abortion was a perfect emotional trigger, one that had the Biblical backing (which you can find for anything) and they started making sure everyone running for office stated their stance on abortion.

19

Not sure how facebook links will work for you. If you can’t view this, let me know. It’s a year old, so it’s probably out there somewhere else.

It talks about Piketty’s book and most people don’t understand that the “middle” is the middle of those who vote, which is hardly anyone from the extremes. Trump got just enough of those in the right places to win. Biden is a one-off in my opinion, only winning because more moderate voters turned out against Trump. We still need people who are “far Left” on that middle area. I believe it represents the majority better. The video shows the picture better than I can describe it, and gives good context and data to back it up.