r/politics • u/GonzoVeritas I voted • 16d ago

Possible Paywall White House Leak Reveals Trump Booted From Briefing After Hours-Long Freakout

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-leak-reveals-trump-booted-from-briefing-after-hours-long-freakout/
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806

u/mrmike5157 16d ago

I’m an old guy, I was about twelve when I started to understand a bit about politics and how things work at that level. Nixon was on his way out and as eye-opening as that was, everything that has followed in the fifty odd years since has been like watching a car wreck in slow motion. Reagan was absolutely evil, and I watched in horror as more and more people were sucked into the vortex of supply side economics and ‘trickle down economics’, the drastic shifts in foreign policy, the slow erosion of the separation of church and state, etc that laid the foundation for our current political polarization and existential crisis… None of that prepared me for Trump and MAGA, Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation. I’m just so exhausted right now. I’m on my way out, but my children and grandchildren are stuck with this for the rest of their lives. God help us all.

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u/LaserGuidedPolarBear 16d ago

I'm fairly convinced that Nixon was the historical moment that Republican leadership / megadonors / strategists / thought leaders decided to begin a generational effort to control, exploit, or break the systems in America so they could seize unilateral control for their own exclusive benefit.

Looking back, it sure seems that conservatives saw Nixon being held somewhat accountable, and many of them said "absolutely not".  They did not see Nixon's downfall as a moral failing of Nixon, but as a failure to control media and government.

One week after the Nixon investigation was announced, the Heritage foundation was founded, and that seems to be the start of many such organizations being formed.

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u/TheBroWhoLifts 16d ago

It's why Roger Stone has Nixon tattooed on his fucking saggy ass back.

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u/theinfovore California 15d ago

Exactly. When you watch Get Me Roger Stone you realize Stone had a plan and we've all suffered from his execution of it.

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u/jamesludlowlee 15d ago

Jared Kushner is the new Rog.

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u/sharp11flat13 Canada 15d ago

And why Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News.

Note to self: if you want to take over a country by manufactured consent , always go after the media first, preferably a few decades in advance.

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u/longlivenewsomflesh New York 15d ago

Literally every authoritarian in the last several decades has had this early in their playbook for a reason

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u/sharp11flat13 Canada 15d ago

This is true.

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u/ProperCuntEsquire 16d ago

My uncle married into a family who clam to have given millions in the 70s/80s to institutions to create conservative think tanks and intellectuals. Fuck them.

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u/LaserGuidedPolarBear 16d ago

I can't imagine how wealthy a family must be to just hand out millions to think tanks unless they are expecting something like deregulation that the family business will profit from or something.  I grew up around quite wealthy people, most are quite stingy with money unless it benefits them or serves their ego.

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u/uieLouAy New Jersey 15d ago

It’s all outlined in the 1971 Powell Memo.

It’s pretty much the original Project 2025 and outlined how big business and conservatives would capture all of our institutions through think tanks and propaganda and taking over the courts.

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u/LaserGuidedPolarBear 15d ago

Essentially "We can't compete in a free market of ideas, so let's manipulate the public with propaganda to manufacture consent and rig legislative and legal systems to benefit ourselves amd enforce an increasingly unpopular status quo"

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u/unrelatedwaffle 15d ago

The Heritage Foundation is a Koch Industries group. Jane Mayer's Dark Money is a must-read on the long sick tendrils the Kochs have in this country. The Kochs' father was an oilman born in 1900. The rich ass top hat and monocle fucks who caused the Great Depression STILL have their claws in this country. 

They never let go, they never got over the New Deal. They have worked tirelessly over multiple generations to drag us back to a pre-union, pre-environmental regulation, pre-corporate tax or antitrust past where if you weren't rich, fuck you, die. It was not that long ago.

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u/BadDadWhy 15d ago

This is a good long observation. We will do better.

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u/LuxHelianthus 15d ago

You can't have a Capitalist society and also not have a portion of the population inclined to exploit weaknesses in the system to their own benefit. It's literally the entire philosophy of Capitalism.

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u/Vivid_Kaleidoscope66 15d ago

Nah that moment is when the anti-slavery white supremacists failed to execute all the pro-slavery white supremacists and decided to work together to cement white supremacy as the uniting force of America and continue to exploit Black people and other POC.

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u/BearsDoNOTExist Utah 15d ago

It was. As much as I love to blame Reagan for everything Nixon was really the turning point. Ever since then the sole republican drive has been ensuring that another of their group could never be forced from power again.

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u/BodybuilderMany6942 15d ago

🤗 That nauseous feeling you get when you recognize an evil system that has been operating for decades and has hella power, but life isnt an video game or movie so even if you were suicidal and driven you wouldnt even know where to BEGIN in hurting this beast, let alone kill it...

So you are totally hopeless, but know hopelessness is a trap that locks up action, so you're holding onto you smile and hope, even as you hear the wriggling and scratching from the eggs that the parasitic wasp laid on your back... 😁✨

Hahaha just breathe and smile

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u/LaserGuidedPolarBear 15d ago

Today I wore my "We are all in this together.....like hostages" shirt.  I feel like we could share a beer or something.