Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

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hepcat
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by hepcat »

malchior wrote: Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:57 am
hepcat wrote: Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:43 am
malchior wrote: Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:30 am We're seeing regional independence talk in greater intensity.
This has always been floated in extreme circles at various times (and the groups floating it are still what I would call extremists). I don't think we're in any danger of this.
It's way louder than it has been in decades. A lot of it is obviously just talk
In some cases, I may actually be okay with this though.

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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Smoove_B »

The NJ governor's race is escalating and the leading GOP candidate is trying to run as a Trump-loving moderate. There was a big article in my local news about how he needs to beg the base to let him say moderate things on the campaign trail to entice the independents, but that he needs to be elected governor and the GOP needs to take back the House in order for him to enact the policies the Trump-loving NJ base wants him to.

I am wondering if there are people from around the nation watching to see what happens in NJ as a way to try and gauge what 2022 might look like for other elections. i know the general belief is that our (D) governor will be re-elected without difficulty, but I'm no longer underestimating the GOP and what they're capable of - particularly with the so-called "independents" in tow.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by malchior »

I'll be more than shocked if Murphy loses - last I saw he had a 20-point lead. He is doing everything he can to not upset the Pro-Trump forces. In fact, he is approaching near invisibility trying to avoid any controversy and just ride his big lead through November. At least unless it tightens I expect this will be a non-event politically nationally.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Octavious »

Ya I just don't see him losing. Not that I'm a huge fanboy of his, but dear god anyone associated to that party and to Trump can just f off. :P
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Kraken »

El Guapo wrote: Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:28 am Even with the mid-term backlash, it would be difficult for the Trumpist coalition to win a fair election. The problem is that they don't really have to.
Nothing can drive Dem turnout better than trump. 'Course, the Republicans are working overtime to keep Dems from voting and to invalidate seats that they win. But I'm still of the mind that a raft of in-your-face extremists is the Dems' best hope of holding Congress (or at least minimizing their losses) in the midterms.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

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Meanwhile, back here in present day, the GOP looks to be making the same noise they do just before they snatch the bipartisan football away from Charlie. Just as anyone with a clue sensed. It doesn't hurt that Trump is demanding they don't "pass the infrastructure" as well now.

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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by El Guapo »

The whole reason that McConnell was willing to allow a bipartisan infrastructure bill to pass was because he thought that doing so would cut the wind out of the sails of the bigger reconciliation bill covering tons of stuff that he hates. Now that Biden and the Democrats have made clear that they'll move forward with the reconciliation bill anyway, McConnell's going back to his usual scorched earth opposition.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by malchior »

Yup. It was a matter of time that they'd reach this point. It is *totally shocking* it'll happen right before August recess.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Alefroth »

malchior wrote: Mon Jul 26, 2021 10:17 am More danger in the House ahead when you listen to the Republican frothing with anger about Pelosi vetoing Gym Jordan and Banks. This fits into the macro pattern of the last 20 years. The GOP acts outrageously (e.g., blocking everything, hostage taking, trying to overthrow a democratic election) and then use the Democratic response to justify more outrageous acts. This democracy is really looking like a chicken with its head cut off.

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Childish GOP stuff
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Smoove_B »

I feel like...things are escalating.

Lindsey Graham on street crime in San Francisco: "If you do this crap in South Carolina, you'll be lucky if you go to jail. You'll be lucky if someone doesn't shoot you ... we've lost deterrence."
Punchline:
Spoiler:
Violent crime rates:

South Carolina: 488.3 per 100,000 people
California: 447.4 per 100,000 people
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Pyperkub »

Republicans willing to tank economy over 1/6 Investigation?
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has pulled out all six Republicans designated to serve on a key select committee on the economy, three sources tell CNN, a sign of the fallout among House Republicans over being vetoed from the panel investigating the January 6 insurrection.
Though TBH, CNN may be a bit misleading with that line. Later:
None of McCarthy's initial appointments to the select committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth will be joining that committee's first meeting
So, tank it just for the poor. Ok, yeah, that sounds like the 21st Century GOP ;)
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Holman »

Smoove_B wrote: Mon Jul 26, 2021 10:51 pm
Punchline:
Spoiler:
Violent crime rates:

South Carolina: 488.3 per 100,000 people
California: 447.4 per 100,000 people
Yup. And the top ten are mostly Red states.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Kraken »

Just wondering if any of our resident Texans have an opinion about this.

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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Little Raven »

I haven't paid a lot of attention to this, but anything that takes Trump down a peg is good in my book.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by malchior »

I've read a lot of pundits spinning a lot of hay around this special election and I think it is just too hard to make this into anything. The turnout was pretty low, the district had turned purple to begin with (Trump only won by 3% there last year), etc. Between this and the infrastructure vote we have some macro story emerging about how we're finally turning a corner away from Trumpism. Maybe it's true but we've seen that story fail before. It also doesn't change that the GOP is still a rabid dog.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Kraken »

malchior wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:05 am Between this and the infrastructure vote we have some macro story emerging about how we're finally turning a corner away from Trumpism. Maybe it's true but we've seen that story fail before. It also doesn't change that the GOP is still a rabid dog.
I want to believe it, but I'm not a very good judge because I live in a state where fewer than 10% are registered Republicans, and their party is disintegrating because its trumpy leader opposes our popular RINO governor, who is their only notable success. Hence this finger to the wind.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by El Guapo »

My understanding is that there isn't much indication of a significant link between special election results and the next general election results. So...maybe, but this probably doesn't tell us much.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Smoove_B »

How is this not satire?


U.S. Congresswoman. House GOP Conference Chair wrote:Today’s Anniversary of Medicare & Medicaid reminds us to reflect on the critical role these programs have played to protect the healthcare of millions of families. To safeguard our future, we must reject Socialist healthcare schemes.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

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Totally agree.

In fact, to further protect Medicare from socialism, let’s strengthen it to include dental, vision, hearing, & mental healthcare and then allow all Americans to enjoy its benefits.

Trust me, Medicare for All is the #1 thing you can do to own the socialists.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Paingod »

At what point do the Dems start saying "We need to kill ACA" in order to get the GOP to fight to keep and expand it?
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by malchior »

"Bizarre" is one word for it. I mean are we supposed to believe that Mark Meadows doesn't know what people are saying and that referring to Trump as the President who is meeting with his "Cabinet" is not at least some level of signaling to QAnon?

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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Jeff V »

They still don't believe Trump is not president.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

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That's some weapons grade denial.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by hepcat »

The GOP is 95 percent dog whistle. I’m surprised humans can even hear them anymore.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Holman »



Tucker Carlson is technically not a Republican politician, but he's the Goebbels of the Trump government-in-exile.

Openly elevating Hungary's fascist model is a very creepy development. Fox viewers are being invited to think that right-wing authoritarianism is preferable to pluralist democracy.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Carpet_pissr »

I wonder if he’s a true believer or just a money/attention/ratings whore.

Actually not sure which is scarier.

But yeah, seriously disturbing. Most dangerous American?
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by malchior »

In our next installment of: Steven Miller is racist human garbage.

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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Isgrimnur »

So, for our German friends, that would be Blut und Boden, right? I don’t speak it fluently, so my translation may be off.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Smoove_B »

Kinda meandering through different topics, but I think ultimately it belongs here as part of the "grand strategy".


It’s sadopopulism.

@TimothyDSnyder explains: enact policies that hurt your supporters. Identify an enemy. Blame the pain on the enemies.

You can’t be a grievance party if people are not grieving.

They’re already blaming immigrants and “others” for the virus.
Also mass deaths will wreck the economy, which can then be blamed on Biden because he’s president.

I wonder if people like @GregAbbott_TX and @GovRonDeSantis think of the deaths as noble soldiers dying in the war against encroaching liberal democracy. Gotta lose a few soldiers.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by malchior »

It is sadopopulism but it is also a key formative strategy of fascist political movements. You need an enemy to blame for your problems. Then offer yourself as the only way to fix it at any cost.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Holman »

Learned today that Tucker Carlson's father is the director of a lobbying firm that has represented Orban's Hungarian regime in D.C.

This is much less significant than the basic fact of fascist cheerleading, but if Fox were anything but a propaganda outlet it would have nixed Tucker's Budapest adventure as a conflict of interest.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by malchior »

Also I don't think Americans should be allowed to lobby for foreign governments FARA or not. That is what diplomats are for. This system is corrupt as shit as it is without foreign dirty money.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by LordMortis »

Smoove_B wrote: Sat Aug 07, 2021 1:52 pm Kinda meandering through different topics, but I think ultimately it belongs here as part of the "grand strategy".


It’s sadopopulism.

@TimothyDSnyder explains: enact policies that hurt your supporters. Identify an enemy. Blame the pain on the enemies.

You can’t be a grievance party if people are not grieving.

They’re already blaming immigrants and “others” for the virus.
Also mass deaths will wreck the economy, which can then be blamed on Biden because he’s president.

I wonder if people like @GregAbbott_TX and @GovRonDeSantis think of the deaths as noble soldiers dying in the war against encroaching liberal democracy. Gotta lose a few soldiers.

Attack on Titan has a throw away line in the first season, first episode that stated something along the lines of "governments are a reflections of our fears" and that has stuck with me.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by malchior »

Ross Douthat argues in the NY Times that the right looks at Hungary as a model because of a reaction to cancel culture. I wish I was making this up. I agree with Ross that this has been a legitimate issue but that it drove the fascist, authoritarianism on the right because it *ALREADY EXISTS* on the left...is just pure slop. It also is Andrew Sullivan approved and Bari Weiss retweeted. Almost all you need to know right there.


Ross Dumbass wrote:For the last few years, Hungary, a country of fewer than 10 million people, has occupied an outsize place in the imagination of American liberals and conservatives. If you think the American right is sliding toward authoritarianism, you cite Viktor Orban’s nationalist government as a dark model for the G.O.P. If you think an intolerant progressivism shadows American life, you invoke Orban as a figure who’s fighting back.

In this running debate, sharpened by the recent Tucker Carlson visit to Budapest, I was struck by an observation from The Atlantic’s David Frum, a fierce critic of the right’s Orban infatuation. As part of a Twitter thread documenting corruption in Orban’s inner circle, Frum wrote: “I visited Hungary in 2016. Again & again, I witnessed a gesture I thought had vanished from Europe forever: people turning their heads to check who was listening before they lent forward to whisper what they had to say. They feared for their jobs, not their lives — but still …”

This is a useful tweet for thinking about the fears motivating Hungary-watching Americans, left and right. On the one hand, there’s the fear that Trumpian populism will someday gain enough power to make its critics fear for their livelihoods. On the other, there’s the fear that progressivism already exerts this power in the United States, and that what Frum describes in dire terms, the cautious sotto voce conversation, is an important part of American life right now.

You can document this fear of sharing strong opinions, especially ones that conflict with progressive orthodoxy, by looking at opinion polls. For example, a 2020 survey conducted by the Cato Institute found that 62 percent of Americans felt uncomfortable sharing their views because of the political climate, and “strong liberals” were the only ideological group where the majority felt free to speak their minds. To the question, “Are you worried about losing your job or missing out on job opportunities if your political opinions became known?” highly educated Americans were the most anxious, with 44 percent of respondents with a postgraduate degree and 60 percent of Republicans with a post-grad degree saying yes.

...

This fear is different from the fear that Frum discerned in Hungary, in the sense that nobody in the United States is afraid of criticizing the government. The censorious trend in America is more organic, encouraged by complex developments in the upper reaches of meritocratic life, and imposed by private corporations and the ideological minders they increasingly employ. If this is left-McCarthyism it lacks a Joe McCarthy: If you pushed your way into the inner sanctum of the Inner Party of progressivism, you would find not a cackling Kamala Harris, but an empty room.

For anyone on the wrong side of the new rules of thought and speech, though, the absence of a McCarthy figure is cold comfort. Whatever his corruptions, Viktor Orban might lose the next election, if the fractious opposition stays united. But where can you go to vote for a different ruling ideology in the interlocking American establishment, all its schools and professional guilds, its consolidated media and tech powers?

One answer, common to old-fashioned libertarians, is that you can’t vote against cultural forces: You just have to fight the battle of ideas, at whatever disadvantage, with a Substack if your media colleagues force you out, or from suburban Texas if you feel uncomfortable in the groves of academe.

For others, though, this seems like a naïve form of cultural surrender — like telling a purged screenwriter during the Hollywood Blacklist, “Hey, just go start your own movie studio.” Which is part of how a figure like Orban becomes appealing to American conservatives. It’s not just his anti-immigration stance or his moral traditionalism. It’s that his interventions in Hungarian cultural life, the attacks on liberal academic centers and the spending on conservative ideological projects, are seen as examples of how political power might curb progressivism’s influence.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by malchior »

Rick Wilson twitter rant does a good job encapsulating the recent crazy
Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea.

Let's review the bidding: the governors of two of the largest states are letting COVID burn because muh freedumb plays to an audience of a network owned by a crank Aussie billionaire.

2/ Yesterday, one member of the US Senate said it was just fine for a President of the United States to plot an overthrow of the election with his claque of skells, mooks, jabrones, degenerate fops, soulless harpies, wannabe Leninists, and natpop snake-human hybrids.

3/ Another U.S. Senator is the leading antivaxxer in American public life, again lying that muh freedumb is at stake if we all just try to work together to defeat COVID.

There's a reason he's a consistent finalist on America's Most Punchable.

4/ The largest and most important GOP fundraising tool has been shown to be a giant interlocking set of quasi-lawless griftmachines bleeding granny of her social security checks due to dark pattern UI designs on their email floods -- and that story isn't even NEARLY told yet.

5/ Donald Trump is running for President again, and all the major donors flooding Tim Scott (the new hotness) after abandoning Ron DeSantis (old and busted) can't do a damn thing about it.

6/ Danny Bongdildo is launching a new payment service (FashBux? NazPay? Qelle? DickCoin?) at the same moment he's in a nuclear slap fight with Team Trump for censoring the latest Big Lie muh-stolen-election effluvium to trickle out of Trump's blubbery lie hole.

7/ Ted Cruz is grunting about muh mandates because, once again, it's all about 2024. He's the perfect slurry of oleaginous, delusional, and cynical.

Words heralding the Apocaplyse: "President Ted Cruz."

8/ The old GOP model of "the best government is local" and "muh 10th Admt" is gone and now telling local school districts and local health departments what to do.

Nothing but trolling, all the way down.

Because muh freedumb.

9/ People who absolutely know better assert the response to COVID is some nefarious Marxist plot to control Murica and impose gay sharia marriage or whatever nightmare closet hoo-ha fills their agitprop spank bank.

10/ 2028 GOP presidential nominee Tucker Carlson spent a week politically fellating the dictator of Hungary yet is somehow still on the air and considered an intellectual light of the party.

11/ This is how the world ends, not with bang but with a Fox News hit followed by a fundraising email.

12/ Done for now.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by hepcat »

all the major donors flooding Tim Scott (the new hotness) after abandoning Ron DeSantis (old and busted) can't do a damn thing about it.
Whoa, i must have missed DeSantis' fall. When did that happen? I thought he was STILL the hotness for the Trumpisphere (well...until Trump himself deigns to officially run)?
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by malchior »

That is in response to this story about big megadonors throwing behind Tim Scott. Some of them want to throw their weight behind someone less crazy. They are pretty much throwing money away on that pipe dream.
Republican Sen. Tim Scott boarded a plane to Hawaii earlier this year to meet with one of the richest people in the world: Tech titan Larry Ellison.

Ellison’s remote Lanai Island home was well out of the South Carolina senator’s way. But for Scott, who like the 76-year-old Ellison is an outspoken advocate for school choice, cultivating the mogul has paid dividends — and could even help propel a 2024 presidential bid. Since last October, Ellison has contributed $10 million to an outside group aligned with the senator — a huge sum even in the super PAC era and the business owner’s biggest known contribution in three decades as a political donor.

Scott’s behind-the-scenes courtship of Ellison illustrates how the senator has quietly become a powerhouse fundraiser and a major force within the Republican Party. Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, has seen his profile rise since delivering the party’s response to President Joe Biden’s joint address to Congress in April and is developing a vast network of small- and large-dollar donors that spans his party’s ideological spectrum, helping him far outraise Senate colleagues this year.


The pro-Scott super PAC, Opportunity Matters Fund, has drawn support from conservative donors like Richard Gaby, who has bankrolled the likes of former President Donald Trump and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. But Scott has also received backing from the party’s mainstream givers, like New York hedge fund manager Dan Loeb, a financier of gay rights initiatives who is slated to host a fundraiser bolstering Scott later this year.
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Re: Defining the 21st Century Republican Party?

Post by Kurth »

malchior wrote: Mon Aug 09, 2021 7:40 am Ross Douthat argues in the NY Times that the right looks at Hungary as a model because of a reaction to cancel culture. I wish I was making this up. I agree with Ross that this has been a legitimate issue but that it drove the fascist, authoritarianism on the right because it *ALREADY EXISTS* on the left...is just pure slop. It also is Andrew Sullivan approved and Bari Weiss retweeted. Almost all you need to know right there.


Ross Dumbass wrote:For the last few years, Hungary, a country of fewer than 10 million people, has occupied an outsize place in the imagination of American liberals and conservatives. If you think the American right is sliding toward authoritarianism, you cite Viktor Orban’s nationalist government as a dark model for the G.O.P. If you think an intolerant progressivism shadows American life, you invoke Orban as a figure who’s fighting back.

In this running debate, sharpened by the recent Tucker Carlson visit to Budapest, I was struck by an observation from The Atlantic’s David Frum, a fierce critic of the right’s Orban infatuation. As part of a Twitter thread documenting corruption in Orban’s inner circle, Frum wrote: “I visited Hungary in 2016. Again & again, I witnessed a gesture I thought had vanished from Europe forever: people turning their heads to check who was listening before they lent forward to whisper what they had to say. They feared for their jobs, not their lives — but still …”

This is a useful tweet for thinking about the fears motivating Hungary-watching Americans, left and right. On the one hand, there’s the fear that Trumpian populism will someday gain enough power to make its critics fear for their livelihoods. On the other, there’s the fear that progressivism already exerts this power in the United States, and that what Frum describes in dire terms, the cautious sotto voce conversation, is an important part of American life right now.

You can document this fear of sharing strong opinions, especially ones that conflict with progressive orthodoxy, by looking at opinion polls. For example, a 2020 survey conducted by the Cato Institute found that 62 percent of Americans felt uncomfortable sharing their views because of the political climate, and “strong liberals” were the only ideological group where the majority felt free to speak their minds. To the question, “Are you worried about losing your job or missing out on job opportunities if your political opinions became known?” highly educated Americans were the most anxious, with 44 percent of respondents with a postgraduate degree and 60 percent of Republicans with a post-grad degree saying yes.

...

This fear is different from the fear that Frum discerned in Hungary, in the sense that nobody in the United States is afraid of criticizing the government. The censorious trend in America is more organic, encouraged by complex developments in the upper reaches of meritocratic life, and imposed by private corporations and the ideological minders they increasingly employ. If this is left-McCarthyism it lacks a Joe McCarthy: If you pushed your way into the inner sanctum of the Inner Party of progressivism, you would find not a cackling Kamala Harris, but an empty room.

For anyone on the wrong side of the new rules of thought and speech, though, the absence of a McCarthy figure is cold comfort. Whatever his corruptions, Viktor Orban might lose the next election, if the fractious opposition stays united. But where can you go to vote for a different ruling ideology in the interlocking American establishment, all its schools and professional guilds, its consolidated media and tech powers?

One answer, common to old-fashioned libertarians, is that you can’t vote against cultural forces: You just have to fight the battle of ideas, at whatever disadvantage, with a Substack if your media colleagues force you out, or from suburban Texas if you feel uncomfortable in the groves of academe.

For others, though, this seems like a naïve form of cultural surrender — like telling a purged screenwriter during the Hollywood Blacklist, “Hey, just go start your own movie studio.” Which is part of how a figure like Orban becomes appealing to American conservatives. It’s not just his anti-immigration stance or his moral traditionalism. It’s that his interventions in Hungarian cultural life, the attacks on liberal academic centers and the spending on conservative ideological projects, are seen as examples of how political power might curb progressivism’s influence.
I'm not sure why you dismiss the idea that "the right looks at Hungary as a model because of a reaction to cancel culture." It feels to me like you're looking at this in too binary a way. I do think cancel culture is driving people toward fascists like Orban and Trump. Is it the thing that kicked off this fascination with fascism? Definitely not. But is it a contributing factor? I think it is.

I read that piece as arguing that opposition to cancel culture is one of the contributing factors in conservatism's drift toward fascism. And, from your post above, I think you actually agree with that argument.
Just 'cause you feel it, doesn't mean it's there -- Radiohead
Do you believe me? Do you trust me? Do you like me? 😳
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