December 13, 2019
The other side is crazy, and wants to steal your freedoms
I click on a lot of Republican Facebook ads, browse the occasional conservative political forum, and read what Republicans say in the news. A huge amount of the Republican messaging I see boils down to one or both of:
- Democrats are allegedly crazy or otherwise deluded. Particular versions of this include but hardly are limited to:
- “Out of touch”.
- “Radical”.
- “Socialist” (and socialism never works well).
- Want to spend a lot of money on free stuff (and the money isn’t there).
- “Libtards”.
- “Triggered”.
- Having a “meltdown”.
- “Trump Derangement Syndrome”.
- “Russia hoax”.
- “Ukraine hoax”.
- Don’t know the difference between men and women.
- Democrats allegedly want to take away your freedoms, in areas such as:
- Guns.
- Choosing your doctor.
- Socialism (and socialism always leads to dictatorship).
- Saying “Merry Christmas”.
- Shunning gays.
- Eating meat.
- Using plastic straws.
- Driving gas-guzzling cars.
But you know what? Democrats use those same themes, and should use them even more. For example:
- Trump tweets many bonkers things each day. Republicans purport to believe most of them.
- In particular, Republicans are currently pushing wild conspiracy theories in connection with the various investigations of Trump wrongdoing.
- Republicans are now wild science deniers in many areas, most famously climate change and macroeconomics.
- Republicans favor all sorts of crazily extreme policies.
- Republicans want to limit all sorts of basic democratic rights.
Abortion is a particularly rich area for examples.
- Republicans keep introducing an anti-abortion bill so extreme that it mandates medically impossible procedures.
- “Fetal heartbeat” bills are based on scientific falsehoods.
- Forced-ultrasound laws, among their many other vices, can amount to state-mandated rape.
And if Wikipedia is to be believed, Republicans paid a significant political price in 2012 for medically nonsensical comments about the pregnancy implications of rape.
They’re crazy, and want to take away our freedoms. That’s what this election is all about.
Categories: Public policy and privacy
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3 Responses to “The other side is crazy, and wants to steal your freedoms”
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[…] And the Trump era has taken this to a new level of screeching. The “fake news” press are “enemies of the people”. Patriotic bureaucrats are a “deep state” “swamp”. Impeachment is a freedom-destroying “coup”. Anybody who opposes Trump should be locked up for treason. Above all, Democrats are nuts and want to take your freedoms away. […]
[…] that danger, yet another post suggests hammering the theme of Republican extremism. The words “crazy” and “cruel” resonate too, and are often easier than “extreme” to work into conversation. […]
[…] Some motivating examples for this analysis are in my December, 2019 post The other side is crazy, and wants to take away your freedoms. […]