Difference between revisions of "User:Woozle/Why Republicans Suck/badness"

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(extracted from intro)
 
(moved a chunk to Political Philosophy, because it seemed to belong there)
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* ruined municipal governments by reducing taxes on the wealthiest
 
* ruined municipal governments by reducing taxes on the wealthiest
 
** ...thus creating another pseudo threat to "save" us from by cutting vital services, which in turn destroys the local economy, further reducing government revenues until the budget is in absolute crisis -- providing an excuse for even more draconian "austerity" measures
 
** ...thus creating another pseudo threat to "save" us from by cutting vital services, which in turn destroys the local economy, further reducing government revenues until the budget is in absolute crisis -- providing an excuse for even more draconian "austerity" measures
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** Wisconsin, Louisiana, Michigan...
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* promoted false claims about their opponents, merely for the sake of winning (see {{hilite|Political Philosophy}})
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** (maybe a quick list of [[myths]] here?)
  
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It is by this irresponsible and underhanded ethos -- victory at any cost, we're always right, suppress any information that shows we might be wrong -- that Republicanism has not only thrived but remade much of American culture in its own image: violent, hateful, narrow-minded, dishonest, ignorant, superstitious, paranoid, blindly loyal to the undeserving and trusting of the untrustworthy.
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===Ghastly Governance===
  
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Put more simply: Republican ideology has made us gullible and stupid.
 
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Or, rather, it has made ''you'' stupid. Yes, you out there -- railing about how terrible Donald Trump is while preparing to vote for Ted Cruz. Cruz's policies are, on the whole, no better than those proposed by Trump; the only difference is that Cruz is constrained by the needs of the Party establishment, and will backtrack when he accidentally carries Party beliefs to their logical conclusions in public. Trump ''is'' that logical conclusion; he is everything the Party wants to say but is afraid to; he is everything that right-wing voters have come to believe because Republicans have led them to believe it. (Listen to Cruz's dad sometime if you want to understand better where Cruz is really coming from.)
 
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What this really comes down to, though, is that the Republican base represents people who ''don't care enough about the facts to bother checking them,'' and probably don't have a clue about how to do so. They'll blindly go along with whatever false beliefs their trusted leaders present to them -- and savagely defend those beliefs against any evidence they encounter, no matter how compelling.
 
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{{box/info|
 
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* '''Scientific method''': collect evidence, make guesses, and test those guesses against reality to see if they hold up
 
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* '''Republican method''': believe what you're told, look for evidence to prop it up
 
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}}
 
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This is not a noble thing, but they seem to think it is. The Republican idea of "how we decide which things are true and which things are false" is basically 100% inverted from the scientific method: instead of collecting evidence, making guesses, and testing those guesses against reality to see if they hold up, Republicans take the truth they are handed and look for evidence to prop it up -- and the only reason they bother looking for evidence is with the hope of convincing us heathens that there is something to their beliefs; they'd be just as happy closing their eyes and ears and just Believing.
 
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This is an absolutely terrible way to attempt to understand the universe, much less run a government. It's the opposite of what works.
 
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Given the numerous Republican attempts to keep others from voting, then, I think it's only fair to break with liberal policy on this one issue and say the following:
 
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If you can't be bothered to check the facts your leaders are giving you -- to research the issues you're voting on, to understand what the other side is arguing and why -- then ask an informed Democrat or independent to explain them to you, or to offer suggestions on how to vote. If you're the sort of person who prefers to let others make the big decisions, then try trusting your informed neighbor instead of the megacorporate news or "conservative" web sites and blogs.
 
 
==Footnotes==
 
==Footnotes==
 
<references />
 
<references />
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==Notes==
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* http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/poverty-across-wisconsin-reaches-highest-level-in-30-years-b99676529z1-370157381.html

Revision as of 14:28, 4 April 2016

A Litany of Badness

Whatever it once was, the US Republican Party has become truly awful -- that is, far more so than the average political party[1]. This is a fact that is now pretty much obvious to anyone who isn't a Republican; there has been extensive debate, and the debate is now over. Today's Republicans are, as a group and as individuals, absolutely terrible at running a government of any size.

If you take any arbitrary piece of terrible legislation that has come out in the past ten to twenty years, it was probably sponsored by a Republican and backed by Republicans. If a Republican and a Democrat disagree over something important, it's almost always the Republican who is not just wrong, but absolutely and utterly dead wrong.

[needs to be more here]

Republicans have:

  • decimated public education:
    • slashed budgets for public education at all levels
    • engaged in a nationwide campaign to insert superstition and anti-scientific dogma into school curricula
    • required stickers on textbooks stating that essential cornerstones of modern understanding are "just a theory"
    • removed any elements of critical thinking from school curricula.
  • ruined municipal governments by reducing taxes on the wealthiest
    • ...thus creating another pseudo threat to "save" us from by cutting vital services, which in turn destroys the local economy, further reducing government revenues until the budget is in absolute crisis -- providing an excuse for even more draconian "austerity" measures
    • Wisconsin, Louisiana, Michigan...
  • promoted false claims about their opponents, merely for the sake of winning (see Political Philosophy)
    • (maybe a quick list of myths here?)

Ghastly Governance

Footnotes

  1. ↑ ...by which of course I mean the Democrats, who have raised mediocrity to a fine art form

Notes

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