The Democrats are far from ideal. Nonetheless, they despise America far less than the Republicans do. The MAGA folk despise what America has become. They dislike equal rights for minorities; they (like you) despise Muslims and religious diversity, they long to Make America Great by returning it to the days of Jim Crow, legal segregation, discrimination against homosexuals, and high-paying working class jobs (which are never going to return in a global economy). IN addition, Trump -- the clear leader of the Republican party -- tried to overturn the election and set up an autocracy, he threatens to weaponize the military against his political opponents if he should (heaven forfend) become president again, and he despises everything American history and mythic ideology represents.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2023 1:05 amI don't. But actually, to "tar" somebody is to give them a smear they haven't merited. The Dems have merited theirs, including recently.
In recent years the Democrats have been more inclusive of racial minorities than the Republicans, and more active in promoting the rights of black Americans.
Well, I think the BLM riots are instructive. In them, Democrats supported the sacking, looting and burning of the inner cities, so they could increase their own power. Maybe you can explain how American blacks having their own neighbourhoods destroyed, then being de-policed and losing their retail outlets, all while receiving no part of the millions allegedly donated their 'cause' turned out to be a great thing for them. But I think you'll find that those neighbourhoods are not only not better but substantially worse for the backing they got from the Dems.
Why is it that so many cities are run by Democrat mayors...Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, New York...and on and on and on...and in all these cities in which Democrats have ruled pretty much unimpeded for fifty or a hundred years now, the plight of the inner city is as bad or worse than it ever was? How well is LA doing right now? San Fran? Portland? Seattle? If the Democrats are so pro-black, why are things so bad for blacks under Democrat regimes?
Maybe the Democrats have not shed their history quite as well as they would like you to believe.
Fair enough.As to whether rights exist a priori to any cultural or human recognition of them, I suppose that if you believe they derive from the will of God, you have a point.
Nonetheless, from a political, cultural and sociological standpoint, rights are nothing more than duties on the part of other people.
You mean from a godless standpoint? From a godless standpoint, they're a fiction.
They do quite a lot, actually. They can be used to structure a system of justice, for example, or to assert one's human entitlements against a corrupt system, or to inform one's own moral decision-making in relations with others. They're a kind of information -- not a kind of compulsion: that is, they tell one what one's duty is...they don't force one to obey that duty. But they're also backed by divine authority, so they have their role, as well, in final judgment for those that treat them too lightly.Even if they do derive from God they impose duties on humans, and that is all that they do and all that they can do.
He does appeal to his supporters in part because of his racism and his antipathy for liberal intellectuals, but also because the American ideals of hard work and bootstrap pulling have never appealed to the working class. Trump is a grifter and a con man, and that (as Mark Twain pointed out in Huckleberry Finn and Wallace Stegner identified in Big Rock Candy Mountain) is that actual American ideal. Is it your ideal too, Immanuel?
You've been frequenting too many whacko internet conspiracy sites if you think Democrats promote BLM riots, and you ignore history if you think American inner cities are worse off now than they were 50 or 100 years ago. True: things could be better. But weren't there massive inner city riots in the 1960s? Learn some history. America may have been slightly better for unionized (i.e. Democrats) working class laborers in the 1960s, but they were worse for black people, worse for Latinos, and worse for poor people. MAGA idealizes a past that we have done well to abandon.
Quite the opposite. I admire America very much, and wish her well. I've travelled quite extensively there, and have many friends there. Far from being xenophobic toward Americans, I'm married to one. So I think you're going to need a different explanation.