1) I agree with this one tweet in the thread 2) I don't see why it's either-or. Trump initially, and unwittingly, touched the chord of a mythmaking when he told Americans he would "Make America Great Again," rebuild America, and gut the consensus. It was powerful, successful 1/
Trump's failure was in his governance--which was undisciplined, inconsistent, and transactional. Whenever this got brought up, Trump supporters would point to myths to justify bad governance, i.e., "Trust the Plan" 2/
But myths alone are not sufficient. You cannot point to paltry policy accomplishments and tell people over and over the best is yet to come and they have to keep trusting the plan and if they don't they're a Democrat or a shill or worse 3/
MAGA was the myth of America First policies. When those policies did not manifest, all that was left was this distorted MAGA myth that incorporated elements of zombie conservatism (tax cuts, prison reform, etc) that seems to have alienated some WWC and moderate voters 4/
Myths and politics go together. The existence of the left and the right's utter inability to defeat their myths with "facts and logic" is testament to this. And when the left is in power, they use the state to confer power unto themselves and their constituents 5/
Successful governance is imperative--using the power of the state to give yourself power dividends by rewarding supporters, which is something to be learned from Trump's governance mistakes 6/
I wrote a little bit about the power of myths in politics recently and point people to Georges Sorel on this. But again, myths have to come with rewards for those who believe in them 7/ chroniclesmagazine.org/what-i-learned…
If you respond to this with "fake news" or some variant of that, you're proving my point about the reliance on myths and not actual policy 8/

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More from @emeriticus

12 Dec
One immediate problem with secession is that the enemy is imperialistic and will never stop coming. For example, what neoconservatives did to Iraqis, they will want done to secessionists
What the left and neocons have in common is that they are imperialistic. You will also be on stolen land/a national security threat to these people
I raise this point because it seems like secessionists think separation would mean peace but I highly doubt that. In fact it would justify treating secessionists as foreign combatants. Something to consider
Read 6 tweets
12 Dec
Everything bad happening is necessary: Trump turned around on his platform in 2017 and instead embraced the GOP's way: tax cuts, judges, conciliation with enemies 1/
Now corporations (beneficiaries of tax cuts), judges (they keep striking down Trump’s election-fraud efforts), and bad friends (think all the people Trump endorsed or brought into the fold who subsequently turned on him and now welcome Biden) are all working against him 2/
The best possible outcome, though it isn't certain at all, is that the right is completely disillusioned with trying to conserve anything and instead starts thinking and operating more like the left, desiring revolutionary change and not conservation of the rot 3/
Read 5 tweets
10 Dec
As I've been saying, the military is not a conservative institution. It is a reflection of the regime and the American regime and ruling class are as rotten as they come.
See pozzed McRaven
Conservatives need to see this and hear people like Petraeus tell them they are a bigger threat than Islamists because that's the only way to disillusion them
Read 4 tweets
10 Dec
There is nothing so pathetic and deserving of contempt as white men who for whatever reason denigrate themselves, their ancestors, their religion, and their race. You won't see Latinos or blacks doing this, and there's no reason whites should participate in or entertain this 1/
It's a truly repulsive combination of narcissism, masochism, and, depending on the person, cynicism. You could not engineer a worse kind of social disease than this 2/
In my caliphate, Joe would suffer the logical consequences of what he's saying. His paycheck, his property, and his job would go to a nonwhite. How quickly would people stop talking like this? 3/
Read 4 tweets
9 Dec
Perhaps a problem with the right is that it dwells on this question so much. The left adopts a position, by contrast, makes moralistic arguments to give themselves the moral high ground... 1/
...and regardless of whether "the people" support that position the left will, if given power, make their position law. Public opinion can be molded by law through habitual compliance with law 2/
The left enjoys the foundations of a cultural base on which to build their political superstructure, which the right does not. So the right's path forward, because it does not have time and the same navigable terrain the left enjoyed generations ago, is this top down approach 3/
Read 6 tweets
7 Dec
At the heart of this is the acknowledgement that conservatism functions as a pressure relief valve. There are periodic revolts against the establishment, and that's all well and good, so long as they conclude and with hobgoblins like Bill Kristol on top 1/
Trumpism frightened people because it looked like it had the ability to go beyond a kind of Tea Party thing, to reach beyond the occasional revolt and instead mark the beginning of something new and lasting 2/
But it's yet unclear what will become of Trumpism, if it will merely become another iteration of the Tea Party, or be refined into something else to be wielded by the next "Trump" against the establishment. People like Kristol understand the latter is a threat to themselves 3/
Read 7 tweets

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