Putin’s favorability among Republican voters spiked during the election, and has continued to grow. Many political observers attribute the shift to Trump, and the cult-like devotion of his followers. But these voters may be more in possession of their faculties than Trump whisperers imagine. Moscow helped Trump win, and Trump heaps praise on Putin, which surely gave Republican voters reason to rethink their views, but what if, upon reflection, they simply found a kindred spirit in the Russian president?
An
added commonality I'd not previously considered: Economic anxiety, as the fossil fuel party comes to an end, 'though probably too late to save your suicidal species.
For the white nationalists in Trump’s coalition, Putin seeks a global alliance of white nationalist parties, and is meddling in elections worldwide to help those parties gain political power. But as Butina found, even more garden-variety conservatives see their interests and Putin’s coming into alignment. Putin is deeply hostile to LGBT people, and frames his hostility in religious terms. The Russian economy is built on a broken foundation of fossil fuel extraction. American conservatives aren’t killing journalists and political opposition leaders, but they are hostile to journalism and democracy, and increasingly comfortable with both propaganda and exercising power through minority rule—by disenfranchising the majority, and appointing movement-loyalist judges who will ratify those efforts. Russia’s political identity is shaped by its aggrievement over the crumbling of its once-vast empire. The American right is similarly revanchist—not over lost territory, but lost demographic dominance and privilege.
Misery does love company. It's group therapy for loser assholes. (Which is entirely too dismissive of the potential results of this hideous collaboration of the corrupt, the craven & the cretinous.)
Aw, why even bother? Uh ... more on the subject
from Hullabaloo. And
just one more.
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