Search Results: who worries more

When voters put Obama into the White House in 2008, Republicans set out to make sure they couldn’t govern. Mitch McConnell (R–KY) became Senate minority leader in 2007 and, using the filibuster, stopped most Democratic measures by requiring 60 votes to move anything to a vote.

In 2010 the Supreme Court handed down the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, declaring that corporations and other outside groups could spend as much money as they wanted on elections. Citizens United increased Republican seats in legislative bodies, and in the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans packed state legislatures with their own candidates in time to be in charge of redistricting their states after the 2010 census. Republicans controlled the key states of Florida, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan, as well as other, smaller states, and after the election, they used precise computer models to win previously Democratic House seats.

In the 2012 election, Democrats won the White House decisively, the Senate easily, and a majority of 1.4 million votes for House candidates. Yet Republicans came away with a thirty-three-seat majority in the House of Representatives. And then, with the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, making it harder to protect Democratic voters.

As the Republicans skewed the mechanics of government to favor themselves, their candidates no longer had to worry they would lose general elections but did have to worry about losing primaries to more extreme challengers. So they swung farther and farther to the right, demonizing the Democrats until finally those who remain Republicans have given up on democracy altogether.

The state of politics in the US where everyone is mad and crazy is optional. All we have to do to be rid of it is not vote for it. And I think a lot of former republicans would like to return to a more civilized time.

On Friday, speaking at Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, Trump begged the audience to “vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what: it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine…. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

The comment drew a lot of attention, and on Monday, Fox personality Laura Ingraham gave him a chance to walk it back. Instead, he said: “I said, vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true.” “Don’t worry about the future. You have to vote on November 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care, because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore, because frankly we will have such love, if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s OK.”

The idea that democracy must be overturned in order to enable a small group of leaders to restore virtue to a nation is at the center of the “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy” championed by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán’s imposition of an authoritarian Christian nationalism on a former democracy, in turn, has inspired the far-right figures that are currently in charge of the Republican Party. As Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts put it: “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”

The New Republic published the foreword Vance wrote for Kevin Roberts’s forthcoming book. Vance makes it clear he sees Kevin Roberts and himself as working together to create “a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics.”

Vance is backed by Silicon Valley libertarian Peter Thiel, who put more than $10 million behind Vance’s election to the Senate. In 2009, Thiel wrote “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."

One thing about a more secular society is people are more likely to face shame as societal punishment vs. actual guilt.

Shame is an external force. Sometimes it is well justified for people who really do wrong. Other times the “shame” is socially constructed and evil on its own. The Maoist struggle sessions are a great example of this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session

Guilt is internal. It’s actually a much more powerful psychological motivator to make right or wrong decisions. Upbringing, communities and religious influences can directly impact guilt.

But some people are sociopaths/psychopaths and don’t feel any guilt. Hence they only worry about their reputation being harmed vs. whether or not they actually harmed someone.

Anyway I’m noticing this bizarre trend in modern society where we have become more “tolerant” of certain deviations but far less forgiving others. Less forgiveness too. Ironically I think this is driving some people to actually get worse on actions that harm others and themselves.