Ben Shapiro recently said something very accurate on a recent Joe Rogan podcast:
You say the level of hatred leveled against Trump is warping Trump, but it’s also warping people on my side, who are so interested in THE FIGHT that they’re less interested in advancing the polices I’d like to see achieved. Let say Trump resigned tomorrow. He said, “That’s it, I’ve had it, I’m out.” Mike Pence becomes president and proceeds to do all the things that conservatives want. Tax reform, limit immigration, all of those things. But, he doesn’t Tweet, especially about things like Mika Brzezinski’s face. There would actually be a whole group of people on the right who would be pissed. What they want is someone who pisses off the left more than someone who actually beats the left. There’s a lot of people who’ve fallen into the trap of thinking these are both the same thing. That pissing off the left means you’re winning. NO!
I’m going to present two of many examples I could give of one of the core reasons why America is destined to collapse. To be fair, I will use both a left-wing and right-wing example, since both sides are guilty of this.
Item One
During the Obama years, several organizations (including Howard Stern) went out and interviewed Obama supporters, but lied to them and told them Obama held views opposite to what he actually had. These reporters would tell the Obama supporters things like, “Obama wants all the troops to stay in Iraq. Do you agree with this?” or “Obama is pro-life and is against abortion. Do you agree with this?” And so on. Tons of them actually agreed with Obama’s fake right-wing views. There are still videos about this on YouTube if you don’t mind searching around.
Obama worshipers supported Obama no matter what they thought his views were. Indeed, Obama was, amazingly, re-elected in 2012 when the economy sucked and when black unemployment was near an all-time historic high.
They loved Obama, not his views.
Item Two
Trump supporters really dislike me and/or thoroughly dislike my views, even though I disagree with the left on just about everything and support at least 80% of the alt-right’s political platform.
On the other hand, Trump supporters absolutely worship Scott Adams, an extreme, big-government, left-wing liberal, an atheist, a guy who never votes, and a guy who actually shut down all commenting functions on his blog for several months because he didn’t like the alt-right posters there talking about race.
Doesn’t make any sense, does it? Well, the reason why is simple. Insane, but simple.
I like a lot of what Trump has done, but I also call Trump out when he does the opposite of what he promised and when he does shitty things. Scott Adams, on the other hand, defends Trump almost 100% of the time, no matter what he does or what happens in his administration. (“Bombing Syria is good persuasion!” “It doesn’t matter why Comey got fired!” “He hired Scaramucci! What a great move!” Ten days later: “He fired Scaramucci! What a great move!”)
So there you go. The Trump supporters and alt-right love Adams and is at least mildly irritated with me, even though I agree with far more of their policies and political opinions than Adams does or ever will.
What does this all mean?
It means that we have entered into an era where people care more about the groups or individuals involved than the actual policies they support. This is literal insanity. This has been called identity politics, which is politics based on race, religion, or social background rather than ideology or party-based politics. However, it’s worse than that. I think that identity politics was “phase one” and we have now moved to “phase two” where it would be more accurate to call it “personality politics.”
In other words, this guy is my guy. I don’t care what he does, nor do I care what laws he passes or what actions he takes. I just support this guy because he’s my guy and I like him. He could literally do the opposite of what my political views are (and does!) and I will still support him because he’s my guy.
Does that sound like sane behavior, or insane behavior? Seriously.
Of course, if this guy is the same race, religion, and/or social background as you, your insane personality politics are also backed up by identity politics as well. “Obama is black so I support him!” or “Trump is a white man who doesn’t like Muslims so I support him!”
Do you understand why, if both major political ideologies in the US (and in the Western world) are voting for and supporting people just because of who they are and not because of what they do, that the West is guaranteed to collapse?
Do you understand if a president is attacked, and the first defense his supporters give is that the other candidate would have been worse, why this is a bad thing for the future?
If corporatist elites like Bush, Obama, Trump, and the next president know that they can do literally whatever they want and their base will keep supporting them and they’ll likely get re-elected, do you understand why the entire system will never be fixed and why it’s more or less doomed?
Are you getting this yet?
Or do you want to get angry at me and defend Bush/Obama/Trump because he’s your guy and you’ll defend him no matter what he does?
I know there are more of you in the second category than in the first.
That’s exactly why your civilization is slowly collapsing all around you.
Note/Update: Just one week after I posted this article, a poll done by Monmouth University researchers reported that 61% of Trump supporters will literally never stop supporting Trump no matter what he does.
America is done, folks.
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Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 08:10 am, 9th August 2017Wow! You’re channeling Bill Maher:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swcJzacZkWU
Tony
Posted at 08:40 am, 9th August 2017This is a much bigger issue on the right than on the left. For one example, 22% of Republicans supported air strikes of Syria under Obama, but 86% support them under Trump. On the other hand, 38% of Democrats supported them under Obama, versus 37% under Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/07/military-strikes-in-syria-were-very-unpopular-four-years-ago-but-trumps-could-be-different/?utm_term=.2da1839cb880
http://www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/1187a1StrikeonSyria.pdf
CrabRangoon
Posted at 08:55 am, 9th August 2017The videos where they gave people the opposite views of the candidate were hilarious and sad. It just shows what a cult of personality some of these guys like Obama and Trump can build. Very few voters educate themselves on the issues and policy views of any candidate. They just get the feels now and base it all on emotion. Each election seems to get worse and worse. I know you’ve discussed this before but we do need to revisit who can vote in this country. Not everyone should be allowed.
I’d say only allow those who are currently employed, US citizens, up the age to 21 to eliminate most dumb students (or just don’t allow any full time students to vote), and you can’t be on any welfare benefits. I would even include those on SS who aren’t working at all. Maybe put an upper age limit on this too like if you’re over 80 in conjunction with the SS requirement.
I also feel the electoral college shouldn’t be a winner take all in each state. It should be proportional since not EVERYONE in the state is liberal or conservative.
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 09:30 am, 9th August 2017Actually, Frank Underwood said it even better than Bill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIXFsy924BI
joelsuf
Posted at 09:43 am, 9th August 2017No one should be allowed. No “voting” should take place. Elections in and of themselves are a government psyop which gave birth to this insanity in the first place. Don’t believe me? Then why is there such a strong civic duty involved with voting?
I’d rather have appointed leaders and monarchies than what we have now, at least I would know what was coming to me.
Maher wore out his welcome. He too aligns with identity politics. I used to like him up until Ohbombya got elected, but then, like most, he jumped right on that commie bandwagon. Then again, he’s always had collectivist notions.
And I’m more concerned with our newly developed love affair with collectivism more than identity politics. Identity politics have been around for centuries, its just that the process of elections haven’t been around too long, at least in a modern sense.
You can’t stop the elites, but you CAN stop people from being collectivists. Which is what I try to do.
CrabRangoon
Posted at 10:46 am, 9th August 2017@joelsuf
I agree that the “democratic” process is very flawed. There is no great solution in a country of over 320 million with so much diversity across the nation. The country really needs to be split up into regions. California could be it’s own region, same with Texas, the east coast would be one, etc…
Caleb Jones
Posted at 10:51 am, 9th August 2017He’s a hypocrite and a direct part of the problem. He gave $1 million to Obama’s re-election while still directly opposing most of his views.
You’re drawing that very biased conclusion from one cherry-picked issue, which is unfair considering right-wingers tend to love war more than left-wingers.
If you want to know who does it more (not that it matters, because they both do it way too much), you’d have to examine and compare a whole host of issues, not just one incident of bombing one country.
Correct. My least-bad (though still bad) solution is item number two here.
Removing the vote from large segments of the population will never happen though. That’s one of those “after the collapse, when we build a new country from scratch” things.
CrabRangoon
Posted at 01:24 pm, 9th August 2017@Caleb
I think we’re on the same page with voting based on your other post. But you and I both know implementing any of those ideas would trigger the cries of “RACISM!!!! MISOGYNY!!!” The bleeding hearts would see it as you trying to block minorities and stay at home moms from voting. You can’t talk reason with the masses anymore about this stuff.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 01:44 pm, 9th August 2017Yup. That’s exactly why Western civ is fucked.
Steve
Posted at 02:27 pm, 9th August 2017You’re right. However didn’t you just tell us on your other blog not to waste time with politics?
Is this some kind of a test? lol
Caleb Jones
Posted at 02:36 pm, 9th August 2017Exactly. Stop voting for and supporting these monsters and focus on your own life and own problems instead!
Walter
Posted at 03:30 pm, 9th August 2017You where the one who said “Hire slow, fired fast” in one of your sublime your time posts. Trump’s move is basically “Hire fast, fire fast” which is actually better IMO. It is what Scott Adams calls fast A/B testing.
No it won’t. The west won’t collapse and the US will never go bankrupt because the debt is in dollars and they can print money.
Not really. Because of the Republican/Democratic system, it comes down to 2 choices. And when it comes to choosing between A and B then “B is worse” is actually a perfectly good reason to pick A.
No 🙁
Way_of_Man
Posted at 01:47 am, 10th August 2017When I read the title of this blog post, I immediately thought of the same Ben Shapiro JRE podcast.
He had another line in there which hit me like a dagger in the chest when he said (and I’m paraphrasing) “The left and the right are more and more in their own bubbles. And bubbles are bad for the Republic. ”
I’ve thought for a few years that we were in serious trouble. But that statement just further twisted the knife into whatever hope I had left for the U.S.A.
joelsuf
Posted at 06:29 am, 10th August 2017Its not democratic. If it was, it would be a direct democracy and guess what nearly all direct democracies throughout history have elected dictators. I don’t want that. I prefer to rule myself.
Why would you want to waste energy doing that anyways even if you could? In high school I preached about anarchy all the time (back then, I was foolishly an anarcho-communist, probably because I was young and stupid lol) and wasted TONS of time and energy telling people not to give in to statism by voting when I could have been doing much more productive things.
Walter
Posted at 10:15 pm, 10th August 20171. You learned how to preach. This is a valuable skill in itself.
2. I bet this made you semi-famous in highschool. Fame is nearly always a good thing.
Anon
Posted at 01:31 pm, 11th August 2017Can anyone name a decent country to which the issue raised does not apply?
Caleb Jones
Posted at 01:42 pm, 11th August 2017Everyone has a different definition for what a “decent” country is. (Some people think Thailand is “decent,” while other people think it’s a shithole. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.)
Anon
Posted at 06:14 pm, 11th August 2017OK, can anyone name any country at all to which the issue raised does not apply?
joelsuf
Posted at 12:18 am, 12th August 2017Nope. Unless you have good public speaking skills, complaining about stuff and acting like a raging collectivist is a tragic waste of energy. That’s what I was doing in high school, instead of actually putting effort in my classes and at least attempting to get with chicks. But no, my raging MGTOW self in high school thought I was “fighting the system” by not doing this kind of stuff. And now nearly 20 years later, the repercussions are beginning to emerge, and now at 35 I have to start from square one.
Wrong kind of semi-famous. Being known as “that weird conspiracy theory hater misery kid” doesn’t necessarily put you in the good graces of many. When you have the lyrics of “cool to hate” by The Offspring written all over your school materials, its not the best look lol.
Cracker Daddy
Posted at 02:49 pm, 2nd September 2017What you described is clan politics like in Africa. Membership in the clan is what drives the behavior and thoughts. In a few years, it will really devolve into some real Lord of the Flies shit.
MoChnk
Posted at 11:20 am, 9th November 2018Here is a new example of this insanity: The Jim Acosta Microphone Scene
Jim Acosta from CNN asked Trump a few questions at a press conference. Then he refused to give the mic to the next reporter.
Then a young female White House aide steps in and tries to grab the mic and he restrains her, barely touching her.
Now the right-wingers want to turn this into a “he assaulted a woman” thing but the left-wingers suddenly defend the man, not the woman. The roles are reversed in this scenario simply because of the identity of the people involved.
If this were let’s say a Fox News reporter doing the exact same thing at a Hillary Clinton press conference the left-wingers would scream “he assaulted a woman” and the right-wingers would defend him.
But in this scenario, the right-wingers use the exact same guileful feminine tactic of crying assault to cut out a political opponent. And the left-wingers stick to reality in this case and defend him. But we all know, the left-wingers are also full of shit and would start an outcry if the roles were reversed.
And no, I’m not supporting Jim Acosta or CNN. I’m not talking about the content of any of Acosta’s questions. And I’m also not talking about the fact that he selfishly extended his talking time, which was indeed rude. I’m only referring to the “assault” which was completely made up.
Both the left and the right are absolutely insane.