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Cognitive Dissonance 

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President Donald Trump appeared to equate US actions with the authoritarian regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview released Saturday, saying, “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”

This is exactly what progressives have been saying forever  (not only about Putin but about everybody). This is also the line that’s made conservatives fume with rage for equally as long. 

It’s truly funny that “America is a source of all evil in the world” will now be part of Republican ideology. And it will because Putin is in love with this idea. 

10 responses to “Cognitive Dissonance ”

  1. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    Oh please, he’s not making a lefty critique of the country’s foreign policy. What makes you think ‘innocence’ is a quality he strives for? He criticized the chinese goverment for not being brutal enough in suppressing the Tienanmen square protests. He loves torture, and is officially bringing it back. He’s not defending Putin from charges of being a ruthless dictator who brutalizes his own people. He’s admiring him because of it.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      The words are exactly the same, though.

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      1. Stringer Bell Avatar
        Stringer Bell

        Yes, and I have yet to see a critique of the words. I hope I never become a nationalist who is blind to the atrocities committed by my government. Our Prime Minister Modi carried out a pogrom in 2002 that killed 2000 muslims in gujarat when he was chief minister of that state (I’m sure you know this). Bringing this up in India these days gets you called ‘anti-national’, ‘muslim-lover’, ‘traitor’, and so on.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          The point is that we won’t cleave a way any current Trump supporters and convince them not to vote for him in 2020 by telling them Trump hates Muslims. Because they hate Muslims. But telling them he hates America and says it’s no better than any evildoer – that might work. These are the statements to play up.

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          1. Shakti Avatar
            Shakti

            That, of course, assumes that Trump supporters do not hate America.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              Have you ever heard a Republican offer any vision of the US’s place in the world that is not glowingly positive?

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              1. Shakti Avatar
                Shakti

                GSLiC’s vision of the US’s place in the world during the campaign was NOT glowingly positive. And we know who voted for that.

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              2. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                His vision of the Obama administration was negative, as was to be expected. But “America is a nation of killers” is a very different thing. O’Reilly was almost apoplectic yesterday.

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  2. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    His vision of the Obama administration was negative, as was to be expected. But “America is a nation of killers” is a very different thing. O’Reilly was almost apoplectic yesterday.
    There’s a difference between “we’re going in the wrong direction” and the downright apocalyptic vision of America and its place in the world he painted. Romney wasn’t going on like we are 1930s Weimar Gemany; GSLiC was. “We are losing all the time, everyone’s laughing at us, we’re being invaded by scary terrorist rapist hordes, people are killing each other in the streets left and right, unspecified jobs! DOOOOOM!” Inauguration speech: “carnage!”

    And now O’Reilly is indignant over “America is a nation of killers” when he’s been happy to jettison all these portions of the Bill of Rights (8th amendment, for one) because of “national security.” I didn’t realize such lovers of American exceptionalism hated every single Amendment in the Bill of Rights except the 2nd.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      We are victims and we are victimizers are two very different narratives. Conservatives are not used to accepting the idea of being victimizers. And liberals are incapable of accepting anything but. 😆😆😆 Both ideas come from the same exceptionalist obsession, of course, but nobody wants to recognize it. We are not talking about the ultra lucid minorities here. We are talking about the folks who hate Obama because he holds his wife’s hand.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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