This is what Orwellian DoubleThink Looks like

Today, we're going to look at a meme that crossed my path, courtesy of the Regressives.

On its face, this looks nice and reasonable.  And, to anybody NOT paying attention to everything MAGA Republicans have stood for, promoted, and done since before their inception as the Tea Party, these might be ideas we all could rally around.

The problem is that we have 20 years of actions, rhetoric, and context to examine these talking points by.  Let’s take them one by one.

LOWER TAXES 

(citation source:  Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/taxes/trumps-tax-reform-plan-explained/; CBS News https://www.cbsnews.com/news/student-loan-relief-triggers-state-taxes-mississippi/; PolitiFact https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/30/instagram-posts/businesses-associated-these-gop-politicians-had-pa/)   

MAGA Republicans had an absolute grip on the levers of power over taxes for 4 years.  Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did indeed cut the corporate tax rate, but that mostly only benefited shareholder, who tend to be higher earners. It only cut individuals' taxes for a limited period of time.  It scaled back the alternative minimum tax and estate tax, as well as reduced the taxes levied on pass-through income (70% of which goes to the highest-earning 1%).  The cuts were not distributed evenly or progressively. The analysis revealed that the tax break would hit 93.7% of taxpayers in the highest-earning quintile, and only 53.9% of those in the lowest quintile.  It increased real burdens on the majority of Americans, benefitting Trump’s personal circle of rich cronies more than anybody else on the ground.

So, this statement only holds true if you count the investor and CEO class as the only class of Americans.

Speaking of taxes, by the way, it’s interesting how 13 Republican MAGA states are now preparing to institute new taxes on any student who participates in the Federal loan forgiveness program.  Funny how that happens, when they certainly didn’t do the same for any of Trump’s cronies who had their own loans forgiven.

FEWER REGULATIONS 

(citation source:  Brookings Institute https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/what-is-the-trump-administrations-track-record-on-the-environment/)

The vast majority of regulations cut were environmental ones, which subjected whole swaths of the population to dirtier air, poisoned water and more toxic living conditions in the name of corporate profit. 

So, we can conclude that this talking point means that MAGA Republicans want the American population to be poisoned, making them sicker and less able to work productively, thus increasing overall social and financial costs to consumers.

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE 

(citation sources:  CNN https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/15/politics/energy-independence-fact-check/index.html, InvestigateWest https://www.invw.org/2020/10/26/trump-administration-buries-dozens-of-clean-energy-studies/)

From the beginning of Trump’s term to the end, the US very much relied on oil and gas from abroad.

In 2020, Trump’s last full year in office, the US imported about 7.9 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products. That was down from prior years – the US imported more than 10 million barrels per day in 2016.  While a 21% decrease in imports is a good thing, it is not an accurate term, especially when factoring in Trump’s deliberate stifling of Green Energy projects that would have allowed America to generate its own energy without poisoning the environment.

SMALL NON-INTRUSIVE GOVERNMENT 

(citation sources:  Wisconsin Examiner https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2022/07/05/criminalized-abortion-will-lead-to-cops-investigating-miscarriages-advocates-say/, Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/iowa-bill-cameras-classrooms-gop-teachers-2022-2, ACLU https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/homeland-security-violates-civil-rights-muslim-american-citizens, Brennan Center https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/department-homeland-security-must-stop-targeting-communities-color, Salon https://www.salon.com/2020/07/17/theyre-kidnapping-people-trumps-secret-police-snatch-portland-protesters-into-unmarked-vans/, NPR https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/04/04/472964974/it-was-torture-an-abu-ghraib-interrogator-acknowledges-horrible-mistakes, Electronic Frontier Foundation https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/how-it-works)    

This from the party that wants the government to determine what medical procedures a woman may have, spy on teachers in classrooms, target American citizens for their ethnicity or religion, and cheered for the government literally black-bagging American citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights.  This, from the party that cheered for the USA violating the Geneva Conventions at Abu Ghraib and other black sites.  This, from the party who wire-tapped the entire American population after 9/11, turning the entire USA into a massive surveillance state.

How, exactly, are those the actions of a small, non-intrusive government?

 TEACHERS TEACHING, NOT INDOCTRINATING 

(citation sources:  The Hill https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/588983-indiana-republican-backtracks-after-saying-teachers-should-be-impartial/, USA Today https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2022/06/29/banned-books-explained/7772046001/)

Again, it’s hard to believe that MAGA Republicans are for education when they’re banning thousands of books and demanding that Nazis be taught as if they were “the good guys” of history.  Coupled with the call for keeping cameras monitoring teacher behavior in classrooms and the demand that all teachers be armed, according to the NRA’s ludicrous reimagining of the 2^nd Amendment, this is a perfect example of the Orwellian tactic of subverting the direct meaning of a term to mean its exact opposite.

So we can discount this as yet another lie from that side.

LEGAL IMMIGRATION 

(citation source:  Cato Institute https://www.cato.org/blog/president-trump-reduced-legal-immigration-he-did-not-reduce-illegal-immigration)

By November 2020, the Trump administration reduced the number of green cards issued to people abroad by at least 418,453.  Trump succeeded in cutting legal immigration more than he initially planned, he oversaw the collapse of interior immigration enforcement. In 2020, the removal of illegal immigrants from the interior of the United States was the lowest as an absolute number and as a share of the illegal immigration population since ICE was created in 2003. Trump failed to increase removals because local jurisdictions refused to cooperate with his administration, instead relying on xenophobic comments about “shithole countries” to rile up his white supremacist base.

BRINGING MANUFACTURING BACK 

(citation sources:  Economic Policy Institute https://www.epi.org/press/trumps-trade-policies-have-cost-thousands-of-u-s-manufacturing-jobs-action-is-urgently-needed-to-rebuild-the-manufacturing-sector-after-the-coronavirus-pandemic/; Yahoo Finance https://www.yahoo.com/now/trumps-spotty-record-on-manufacturing-jobs-163449515.html; Brookings Institute https://www.brookings.edu/research/ten-facts-about-covid-19-and-the-u-s-economy/)  

As analysis has shown, Trump’s trade policies not only failed to curb offshoring, but also never addressed the root causes of America’s growing trade deficits and the decline of American manufacturing.

In addition to the Trump administration’s overall weak trade agenda, COVID-19—and the administration’s mismanagement of the crisis—has wiped out much of the last decade’s job gains in U.S. manufacturing.  Nearly 1,800 US factories disappeared under Trump between 2016 and 2018.  Additionally, the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods rose significantly between 2016 and 2019. In fact, the real U.S. trade deficit has increased in every year since 2016, reducing GDP growth by roughly 0.25% annually

Trump’s trade wars were probably the more likely cause of the 2019 slowdown. Trump began imposing tariffs on many Chinese imports, along with steel and aluminum from other countries, in 2018, and most of these nations imposed their own retaliatory measures on U.S. exports. By 2019, the trade war some analysts expected to peter out was escalating, instead. Trump ultimately slapped tariffs on about $361 billion worth of imported goods, imposing a cost of about $57 billion on the U.S. economy, according to the American Action Forum think tank.

Coupled with his public mismanagement of the public health crisis, which created a demand shock, a supply shock, and a financial shock all at once, those actions precipitated a severe economic downturn.

So, MAGA Republicans, in cheering for their beloved Fuhrer, once again push for the exact opposite of what their talking points claim.

FAMILY VALUES 

(citation sources: The Hill https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/392802-poll-majority-of-republicans-back-family-separation-policy/; The Desert Sun https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/392802-poll-majority-of-republicans-back-family-separation-policy/ ; Texas Tribune https://www.texastribune.org/2022/07/19/congress-same-sex-marriage-texas/; Political Wire https://politicalwire.com/2022/06/25/gop-senator-said-13-year-old-could-consent-to-sex/; Chicago Tribune https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2006-03-08-0603080162-story.html; NPR https://www.npr.org/2022/06/02/1102621352/how-the-southern-baptist-convention-covered-up-its-widespread-sexual-abuse-scand)  

 

Uh-huh.  The party that made policies of forcibly separating non-white families, relying on discrimination to prevent loving couples from adopting abandoned children, preventing loving couples from marrying at all and starting families, and openly endorsing the concept of child rape, even going so far as to force a 10-year-old rape victim to carry her rapist’s baby to term and openly stating that they believe 13 should be the age of consent, is now pretending to care about families.

Given the party’s open embrace of Christian Theocracy and Dominionist Nationalism, and the MAGA love of a thrice-divorced man who, on-camera, openly expressed his desire to copulate with his own daughter, I can only imagine how much their favored Southern Baptist church’s near-Catholic levels of child sexual abuse reinforces the “Father Knows Best” fantasy that this buzzword phrase has represented since its inception!

 

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL 

(cited sources:  AZ Mirror https://www.azmirror.com/2022/02/26/wendy-rogers-racist-white-nationalists-patriots-and-called-for-hanging-political-enemies/; Getty Images https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ku-klux-klan-stages-an-america-first-parade-in-binghamton-news-photo/514702614; Yahoo News https://www.yahoo.com/video/tucker-carlson-endorses-racist-great-042659751.html; Haaretz https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2021-02-04/ty-article/a-look-at-marjorie-taylor-greenes-antisemitic-anti-muslim-conspiracy-theories/0000017f-db0d-d856-a37f-ffcda2410000;

 This one is truly twisted.  Nobody believes the party that has openly embraced White Nationalism, down to the KKK slogan “America First,” and the racially inflammatory “Great Replacement” theory in its justification of using government troops to round up legal immigrants from “shithole countries”, after revoking the right of women to make their own medical decisions cares about anybody other than rich white Christian men.  They certainly don’t care about American Muslims, or non-whites, or Jews, or LGBT, or women, or people from other political parties, and have made a point of expressing that as often as possible for the past 20 years.

Only brainwashed MAGA extremists, who now make up the core base of the Republican Party, could possibly embrace the Orwellian DoubleThink of loving America while hating the vast majority of the people in it.

 ***

So, here we have MAGA Republicans, claiming to now love the very values that they’ve openly spent 20 years tearing apart, obstructing and condemning.  The same values they took up arms against the government itself to install an authoritarian regime to ensure were never embraced.

Sounds to me like the only statement they’re making that holds up to scrutiny is that MAGA Republicans, themselves, are the problem in America.

Who are Republicans planning to shoot?

Every time there’s a mass shooting, which is a twice-a-day occurrence in the USA, there’s always the same talking points from the Right Wing for why we shouldn’t do anything about it.  Here’s what I have to say to each of them in response.

 

So, Republicans, I’m speaking directly to you, now.  Let’s look at what your tired old talking points really mean and play them out to their logical conclusion.

 “Guns are tools”

Are they, now?  OK, so what do you build with them, using them as they’re designed for and intended to be used?  Other than a cemetery? 

"It's a Mental Health problem!"

Ok, then, why does your party always cut funding for mental health?  Why do you want mentally ill people to be able to shoot others?  And, if "guns aren't the problem, people are," why on earth would you want the problem to have a gun to shoot innocents?

 

“It’s a slippery slope!”

Leading to what, exactly?  Federal troops tear-gassing citizens for exercising their Constitutional rights?  Police literally crushing citizens’ windpipes without a trial until the citizen is dead?  Unmarked government vans black-bagging citizens and whisking them off to Guantanamo?  That’s already going on.  Just look at Portland.  Funny, though, how every time it’s reported, you cheer for and defend the actions of the police and government agents.  So, what slippery slope are you afraid of, again?

 “I need my guns to defend my freedom from the government”

So, who in the government are you planning to shoot to “defend your freedom”?  The police who come to your door when you break the laws you don’t want to follow?  How many policemen do you plan to kill, then? 

Or are you planning on shooting National Guardsmen, who’d be the next most likely means used by the government against you?  Or, perhaps the regular troops that sticker on your bumper tells us to support?  How many American soldiers do you plan to gun down?  Are you going to shoot them as they ride down the street in a Humvee or are you going to take the fight to their bases, since “the best defense is a good offense”?  How many bases do you think you and your civilian-level guns will take down?  

If that’s not on your agenda, are you planning to use your guns against your elected representatives, then?  If so, which Congressmen are you planning on using your guns on to “defend your freedom”?  Are their interns included on your hit list or will you let them live because of how low they are on the government food chain?

 “Militias!”

OK, a Militia is defined by Oxford English dictionary as “a military force that is raised from the civil population – constituted by all able-bodied civilians eligible by law for military service -- to supplement a regular army in an emergency.”  When did you officially sign up for that patriotic service and which state or federal military commander do you report to when you’re on duty? 

Oh, you and your armed beer buddies are not part of any federal or state command?  That would make you either a street gang – meaning any group of individuals who share a common identity and who generally engage in criminal behavior – or a terror cell – meaning any group of individuals planning or implementing violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals. 

Given that your previous talking point was about fighting a war against the government instead of serving as its auxiliary, which of the two above categories are you? 

 “I need them to defend my home and family”

Who exactly are you expecting is going to break into your rented trailer and what are you expecting them to steal?  Your TV?  Your phone?  Your gun racks?  That set of silverware you got from grandma that you haven’t cleaned in 15 years?  And what are you expecting the intruder to look like?  Are you going to do the same as Ahmed Aubrey’s killers and run down anybody who jogs through your neighborhood in a hoodie who doesn’t share your skin tone?  Or, are you simply going to pull your gun out at anybody who knocks on your door, unannounced, no matter what they look like?  And what was that you were saying about “not living in fear” again?  I forgot what it was…

  “You cannot legislate away evil.”

So, why is your party trying to ban abortion, then?  If bans don’t work, there’s no reason to push for bans, now, is there?  Speaking of abortion, how, exactly, do you expect people to believe you’re looking to protect the lives of children when you won’t lift a finger to protect the lives of children when they’re gunned down in their elementary schools?

It is nice to hear you admit, though, with this talking point, that what you’re supporting so adamantly is evil.  I appreciate that rare bit of honesty from you.

 “Only criminals will have them.”

Which will make it a lot easier to identify who deserves to get locked up.  Why is that a bad thing?

 “It’s those damned liberals”

So, you need your guns to shoot liberals, then?  Are you planning on going door-to-door, gunning your liberal neighbors down in their beds, in the dead of night, Beonna Taylor style, or will you burn a cross on their front lawns first?

 “The gays are groomers!”

So, you’re planning to shoot gay people, then?  Which gay bar are you planning on shooting up first?  Are you going to do the same to your gay neighbors that you want to do to your liberal neighbors?  How many of their doors are you planning to bust down?  

Or, are you going to shoot actual groomers, like Josh Duggar (wasn’t he a hero of yours?  So many of your beloved leaders have pictures with him, all smiles and glad-hands!)?  Or are you going to hunt down all those Southern Baptist preachers and Catholic priests that have been exposed as groomers and pedophiles themselves?  If so, which rectories are you going to shoot up first?

 “Gun-free zones don’t work”

So, why then, is the NRA instituting a gun-free zone at their next convention?  Wouldn’t your beloved Fuhrer be safest surrounded by an armed crowd when he issues his keynote speech?

 “We need more guns in schools!  Arm the teachers!  Post cops at the entrance!”

Arming teachers, huh?  Guess you’ll be really happy when Ms. Smith  snaps and shoots your precious little angel for disobedience, right?  Or should the teachers wait to use their guns until your kid tries to steal another kid’s lunch money?  No?  Will you still be cheering when your kid steals the teacher’s gun and shoots their classmates? 

And what about those cops?  What good are they when they’re cowering outside a school for over an hour in fear of an 18-year-old kid?  All they did was prevent people like you from running in to save their children’s lives.  Besides, didn't you also want to shoot cops, as per your previous talking points?  Why would you consider badged government agents hanging around your kids to be a good thing?

 “Critical Race Theory!  Great Replacement!”

Yes, yes, yes, we all know how scared you are of any academic track that paints racists in a bad light or delves too deeply into how government policies of the past impact our lives today.  Way to go in promoting well-informed citizenship!

Knowing how scared you are of being a demographic minority in a non-white majority nation – which undercuts your insistence that minorities have no problems in the USA, by the way, because you wouldn’t be so scared of being treated like a minority if you didn’t already know in your heart how badly they’re treated -- are you planning on using your guns the way the Buffalo shooter did and unload into a black neighborhood grocery store a few streets or towns over? 

Or will you just use your guns to "defend yourself" against the quinceanera that immigrant family is throwing for their daughter next weekend?  Who, specifically, are you looking to use your guns on in this glorious defense of your skin tone?

 “I just want to have my guns and you can’t stop me!”

So, if you’re not actually planning to use your guns (good for you for rejecting violent action, if that’s the case!) and just want to cosplay with them, you don’t need limitless magazines for bullets, do you?  If you’re not planning on shooting people with your precious guns, that’s great, but did you mean to admit that you’re just a poser who’s looking to compensate for some personal inadequacy?  If you’re not going to put your cosplay into real-life action, why are you pretending that acting like a spoiled toddler about it and treating deadly weapons as if they were harmless toys is commendable?  If you’re just a poser trying to look like a “real man,” why should any of us take anything you say in any other light?

"It's my right!"

Uh-huh.  Are you asserting that you personally have the right to commit murder?  That brings us right back to the critical question -- who, exactly, are you planning to shoot?

I'm just asking questions, Republicans.  Assuming you're capable of rational thought,  mull these questions over.  If you truly want us to believe you’re the "pro-life" good guys in these scenarios, actually be Pro-Life and  stop throwing a tantrum every time someone suggests a common-sense measure that prevents loss of life from gun violence.  All those tantrums do is show the rest of us that, in your heart of hearts, you're just looking to shoot someone.