This is less a confusion about values. The president isn’t confused. He knows the difference between Ukraine and Russia. He just doesn’t care, because the distinction doesn’t serve his interests.
This is incentive-driven equivalence, not philosophical. When he says “they do it, we do it,” he’s not making a moral claim, he’s clearing the board of obligations. A negotiating posture dressed as a worldview.
The old moral equivalence at least represented a sincere, if wrong, belief. What gets performed now is something colder: the deliberate erasure of accountability so that no action requires justification and no alliance requires maintenance.
The Republican Party didn’t drift into this. It was pulled…and went willingly, because the base wanted permission to stop caring.
Reminds me a lot of the foolishness young people spouted in the late 60s and 70s, esp on university campuses... very leftist at the time. Sad to see so-called conservative adults buying into the same nonsense today.
maga hypocrisy is indescribable for me. How a supposedly conservative party morphed into this deranged cult has been perhaps the most disgusting development in my 60+ years of examining American politics and society. Having always had a low opinion of our national intelligence and political behavior, it's still disturbing how low we will go.
No matter how low and greedy and self-aggrandizing Trump's actions are *today*, he'll find something lower and greedier and more self-aggrandizing *tomorrow*.
America’s Greed Problem: The Reason Why Democracy Is Crashing
When the wealthy get wealthy they want more This has become the billionaires creed “I can never have enough I must get more You can never have enough (fill in the blank eg boats planes etc)”
The Bezos’, Zuckerberg’s, Theil’s, Musk’s of the billionaire world use the excuse that “they are building their corporations for the good of their shareholders or if they want to play the patriotic card, the country” But let’s be honest The bottom line is that the only reason they exist is to line their pockets at the expense of the peons who are foolish enough to support their companies so that they can make $$$ on their investment
So there is a large growing class of the wealthy American investment community which the average American doesn’t participate And you can see where this is going These top of the $$$ peak in the country is supported by a vast network of investors throwing large sums of cash around to gain even greater wealth And this leads to groups of people who want to support a fraudulent criminal organization like the CNPP(Christian Nationalist Pedo Party) to keep the greed game going
What this looks like is a 21st century version of the roaring 20’s featured in the Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby which didn’t end well And how this got started goes back to the government’s need to keep the state afloat economically through QE This put massive amounts of $$$ into the system which got multiplied in the equity markets but for the average American devalued the dollar to the point in terms of gold is now worth 5cents of what it was in 1971
This is less a confusion about values. The president isn’t confused. He knows the difference between Ukraine and Russia. He just doesn’t care, because the distinction doesn’t serve his interests.
This is incentive-driven equivalence, not philosophical. When he says “they do it, we do it,” he’s not making a moral claim, he’s clearing the board of obligations. A negotiating posture dressed as a worldview.
The old moral equivalence at least represented a sincere, if wrong, belief. What gets performed now is something colder: the deliberate erasure of accountability so that no action requires justification and no alliance requires maintenance.
The Republican Party didn’t drift into this. It was pulled…and went willingly, because the base wanted permission to stop caring.
Excellent comment. Transactional mores.
Reminds me a lot of the foolishness young people spouted in the late 60s and 70s, esp on university campuses... very leftist at the time. Sad to see so-called conservative adults buying into the same nonsense today.
maga hypocrisy is indescribable for me. How a supposedly conservative party morphed into this deranged cult has been perhaps the most disgusting development in my 60+ years of examining American politics and society. Having always had a low opinion of our national intelligence and political behavior, it's still disturbing how low we will go.
No matter how low and greedy and self-aggrandizing Trump's actions are *today*, he'll find something lower and greedier and more self-aggrandizing *tomorrow*.
And the next day, and the day after that, and ...
America’s Greed Problem: The Reason Why Democracy Is Crashing
When the wealthy get wealthy they want more This has become the billionaires creed “I can never have enough I must get more You can never have enough (fill in the blank eg boats planes etc)”
The Bezos’, Zuckerberg’s, Theil’s, Musk’s of the billionaire world use the excuse that “they are building their corporations for the good of their shareholders or if they want to play the patriotic card, the country” But let’s be honest The bottom line is that the only reason they exist is to line their pockets at the expense of the peons who are foolish enough to support their companies so that they can make $$$ on their investment
So there is a large growing class of the wealthy American investment community which the average American doesn’t participate And you can see where this is going These top of the $$$ peak in the country is supported by a vast network of investors throwing large sums of cash around to gain even greater wealth And this leads to groups of people who want to support a fraudulent criminal organization like the CNPP(Christian Nationalist Pedo Party) to keep the greed game going
What this looks like is a 21st century version of the roaring 20’s featured in the Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby which didn’t end well And how this got started goes back to the government’s need to keep the state afloat economically through QE This put massive amounts of $$$ into the system which got multiplied in the equity markets but for the average American devalued the dollar to the point in terms of gold is now worth 5cents of what it was in 1971
Sadly, Trump's contagious nihilism and that of his enablers threatens to usher the United States into the community of nihilistic nations.