GP This tweet tugged out something that's been gnawing at me about politics for the last decade or so that I could never fully or adequately explain. Hang in there with me. We're going threading.
GP Oh, and up front, h/t to @PalimpsestMan who got me thinking about it with one of his responses to a different tweet.
GP Both parties, but moreso Democrats, treat every issue as if it were a survival-critical issue, no matter how mundane. Every issue is cast as "war" or "civil rights," actual existential struggles.
GP Politicians do so because mentioning "war" triggers two things: (1) hardcore team loyalty and (2) fear.
GP War makes Democrats think on any issue no matter how small that they're on a crusade for what is right and just. It casts people with legitimate, fact-based, reasonable disagreements as enemies to be ignored or worse, destroyed.
GP This is why you see little compunction or remorse on the left for doxxing people who have legitimate disagreements with their policies. See, e.g., climate change, animal rights, transgender people, abortion, etc.
GP Democrats dehumanize their political opponents just as surely as US anti-Japanese propaganda during WW2 did, portraying Japanese soldiers as vicious monkeys, etc. This dehumanization allows Democrats to reject outright any position contrary to theirs.
GP Framing an issue in terms of war also creates fear, fear of possible destruction of Democrats' preferred way of life or of themselves individually. How many times did we hear if Trump gets elected, Pence is going to round up and reeducate (or kill) gays?
GP Democrats in fear mode think that ceding power over themselves and their rights to a Great Protector (federal government) is surely right and just. All right thinking human beings must agree! Ceding personal sovereignty to govt to solve this minor problem is the only way!
GP Pack behavior coupled with existential dread is a powerful motivating force. This is why Democrats cast every issue great and small as "war," ginning up their jihadi troops to bully and destroy individuals in the name of the greater good.
GP The second part of the equation is "civil rights." Civil rights *was* an existential struggle, one that arguably required the disregarding of the Constitution that occurred to solve America's grievous original sin of slavery.
GP Democrats cast relatively unimportant issues as "civil rights struggles." Were I a black American, I'd be pissed off as hell, but I'm not so my vote doesn't count.
GP There has been literally no struggle in America during my lifetime that has risen to the level of civil rights for blacks other than the civil rights for blacks movement. None. Not gay rights, not immigrant rights, nothing.
GP Again, Democrats cast every issue as a civil rights issue because doing so implicitly assumes two things: (1) a morally irrefutable good behind the proponent of a proposed solution and (2) government force enforcing such proposed solution.
GP Immigration rights are now civil rights. Bathroom rights for transgender people are civil rights. Heck, *animal* rights are now civil rights to hear PETA and its insane fellow travelers tell it. They're not. Only blacks' struggle for civil rights is civil rights. .
GP But casting a program to force private businesses to let men in drag use women's locker rooms as "civil rights" allows Dems to morally shame those who think so doing might not be wise. It also allows Dems to use gov force (metaphorically) to beat opponents into submission.
GP Metaphorically, of course.
GP So any time you hear Democrats or the media (I repeat myself) frame any issue as "this generation's war on x/civil rights movement/New Deal," take a deep breath and look more closely at what Democrats propose.
GP Invariably, Democrats' proposed solution will involve a costly (fiscally or from a rights perspective), controversial, unproven program controlled solely by liberal bureaucracy funded by taxpayer dollars and enforced at the business end of a government weapon.
GP Ocasio-Cortez's garbage Green New Deal program is exactly what I describe above, a program more about forced compliance with currently fashionable yet unproven/unprovable liberal dogma than about actually solving the problem.
GP The end. I guess.
