MAGA is turning the world upside down: and it has nothing to do with being conservative.

From a 17th-century English protest ballad:

Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:
Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the like before.
Holy days are despised, new fashions are devis’d.
Old Christmas is kickt out of Town.
Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down.

         (https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/10/the-world-turned-upside-down.html)

I listened to the pious members of the GOP the other day, those who claim to be conservatives and give lip service to that ideology as they pledged allegiance to Donald Trump.  There is nothing conservative about Trump. He is a radical reactionary. He stands against nearly everything conservatives post World War II had ever supported.  Instead, he is the epitome of upside-down and return to the 1950's and  late 1930's. Both losers in the past.

Strange. Maybe with my liberal, civil liberty social values, a belief in the democracy that we have had for 250 years as the best way for America to be governed, and belief in a strong national security defense, I am more of a conservative than I thought. If it ain't very broke, why break it to pieces?

Trump is promoting a return to the failures of years ago before World War II and the 1950s when that was when America was so great in his mind and in the minds of his hard corp true believers. Conservatives, both Democrats and Republicans, have evolved since then, for the basic reason; those old policies failed.: the isolationists of the 1930s simply invited the US to be attacked by those who saw us weak; appeasement only whetted the appetites of expansionist enemies, and Jim Crow was a destabilizing oppressive attempt at unfair White domnation that fueled civic unrest in the guise of state's rights. It was not fair. 

Trump is turning that world upside down in a return to past failures.   Accuse him of being a wannabe dictator? His response: Dictators are a good thing and I want to be more like the ones I admire. They are more effective than democracies because they can ignore public will or opposition and get their own agenda done. Accuse the military as being a joke when everyone else in the world has the opposite opinion?. His response: It is a good thing that draft dodging like his and his ancestors practiced is valuable because only losers and suckers serve in the military. What about his lustful, hyper-macho, libertine past? Trump can just point to his evangelical supporters who consider him Christ's second coming.    What about this racist White thing, and wokism in the military and civil life?  1950's Trumpism is unspoken but implied in his anti-woke appeal..  Only white men are qualified to be in charge because everyone of another sex or race is inferior is a view not just of Trump's but he dog whistles at every chance.  That Trump is inviting World War III with his appeasing, capitulating foreign policy?  He advocates that the best way to peace is to Let Russia have Ukraine and eastern Europe and let China invade Taiwan. It is a good thing that enemies control their territory after which they lust. and who otherwise would be allies because we don't have to worry about the rest of the world who speaks different languages,  we don't understand them, or who controls our seas and trade routes. Who cares about that?  Not Trump.    His reason? We should care about our own people. Really? By controlling their lives, taking away their individual rights,  reducing taxes on the rich,  and not improving their health care, or not feeding the poor, not protecting us consumers from unfair, dangerous, monopolistic business practices, or adding to an environmental disaster ?.   A protector of fraud and corporate corruption?How so?  His answer? These lawsuits about fraud are all politically motivated; nothing to it; all BS. It is a good thing that the government favors businesses whose value is how much they support the dear leader and not by their ability to compete in the marketplace.  So all of this would make America great again?  

Question: if America is such a failure, why are so many trying to get here legally and illegally?  Maybe we have been doing something right?  The problem with Russia, the Chinese, and dictators south of the border is that the best, the brightest flee them if they want to better their lives or avoid persecution. It is why the Berlin Wall went up because those under Communist rule found a better life in the west and it is true today, as well.  Maybe copying them and overturning our democratic system is not such a great idea. Is it turning upside down what has worked for most people to be an upside? 

It is not only Trump that is upside down.  Once upon a time, not so long ago, the GOP stood for individual rights  and a small government.  It found that they were vulnerable to threatening adversaries so instead they formed strong alliances and recognized who their enemies were.  Trump has turned that world upside down, with the only vestige of that era: demagogic appeal to racists who seek to disadvantage those unlike them.  The GOP used to be proud Americans who honored those who died for our country to keep us "free" from foreign domination.  Now, those who fought for value are suckers and losers.  America, with the strongest economy in the world post-COVID-19 and the volunteer military the best trained and equipped in the world, is a failure. Trump and MAGA lie through their teeth to give the uninformed a reason to turn the world upside down and to give him full immunity to become a dictator, with the license to kill, cheat, and steal like those he so admires: Putin, Orban, and leaders of China and North Korea. 

Whatever happened to a small government, conservatives?  MAGA wants everything to be federal so that states cannot go off and do their own thing, nor can individuals who want the freedom to control their lives and health care. .. Take away federal programs that give the ability for so many to even have and afford health care or that keeps poor kids fed with healthy foods..  Make federal bans on abortion medical or medicinal, birth control, IVF births,  and who they can marry, so blue states and those in red states have to obey the interpretation of what a  favored religion edicts..  Have the Department of Justice and the Justice systems control the ballot box and voting that benefit MAGA power, including targeting the ability of what they see as certain undesirables to vote,.Use the active military to put down protests against MAGA's unpopular imposition of their preferred laws and iron-fisted action against the majority who disagree.  Make the federal bureaucracy employees swear allegiance to Trump instead of to the rule of law and the Constitution or lose their jobs.  Make federal action favor only those loyal to Trump by his appointees in all regulatory measures.  Turn the Supreme Court into another power center to support MAGA forever.  And appease and appease expansionist foreign adversaries so our country can dance to the tunes that benefit them, not us.  How great is that?  That did not work so well in 1941, did it?.   

The next question is why? Perhaps there is no one reason, but I suspect much of it is fear of changing demographics and the usual craven lust for power with no complications from effective opposition. Win with the winner and you will be rewarded. Profiles in courage are losers by definition.

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