Just What Do They Want?

[Steely_Dan]

Not exactly sure how to present what I feel is a huge mystery to me and probably to many others here on the DU.

I suppose the central question is this: Do Republicans (Conservatives) love our country as much as we do?

To watch some of their activity, one would wonder if they really love this country. Yet, I have to assume that they do. I can't get my brain around the idea that they actually want to see our country fail. The only difference between the two schools of thought is "how" we achieve a better America.

I also assume that everyone across the political spectrum (who are not extreme) argue in good faith. That is to say that they honestly believe in what they are saying and honestly feel that there position is the best for this country.

So, my questions stands: Do Republicans (Conservatives) love our country as much as we do?

-P

[demigoddess]

1. a theocratic dictatorship where women do not vote.

their bottom line. they think it would be heaven.

[sally cat]

4. Gonna be tough when they run a woman for President.

[Drale]

7. It won't be tough

Sarah Palin like all "Conservative women" hate there rights, and will gladdy vote against them every chance they get. That is why they vote republican to begin with.

[truedelphi]

23. For millenia, it has worked well to keep an autocratic religious/

state duality going, where you have to believe or you are shunned or burned at the stake, where women and those of the lower class are just expected to keep their heads bent in prayer while the lords of the manor tax every productive moment of the peasants' lives.

And the Powers that Be are working hard to bring about that religious/state duality back into existence again.

It already exists in areas where the CIA-created Taliban has control.

And the pastors of the Fundie churches are helping move us toward that duality soon. Very soon.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

2. It isn't as much about love as it is control and being fearful.

I'm sure that they love the country, they just want to run it their way.

[Steely_Dan]

16. Remember...

the study that was done where they psychologically inventoried a bunch of 1st graders...revisited them 20 years later? The 1st graders that were generally scared and not open to change in the classroom ended up becoming Republicans. Maybe there is something to be said that it is hard-wired in our systems.

-P

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. The country they claim to love does not exist.

They "love" a country that was depicted in Norman Rockwell paintings -- a country full of salt-of-the-earth farmers out in the country, and in the city there were dads who worked at the office and moms who stayed home and took care of their three adorable children. Nobody needed any help from the government because they were all hard-working, determined, self-sufficient folks who were able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Anybody who needed help got it from their churches. Everybody was Christian and everybody was white (except for cleaning ladies, roofers and railroad porters).

That was the country they love and that they want back, except it was never there in the first place.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

8. The country they love was seen through the eyes of children.

[Steely_Dan]

17. Well, I agree...

It is a world that did not exist. Perhaps we should look at them as the idealistic ones and we are more the cynical kind.

I have to believe that they have some attachment to reality. Don't they? Maybe not. Is it hard-wired or are is it something that they are taught?


Nurture vs. nature I suppose.

-P

[LeftinOH]

5. They love THEIR idea of the country: A hyper-idealised fantasy that never existed.

We see reality and prefer to deal with it. They see what they want to see -and prefer to block out whatever they happen to find unpleasant.

[thereismore]

10. That's exactly it! The country they want to take back only exists in their fantasies. nt

[kctim]

6. Of course they do

And yes, the "how" is their main difference.

The partisan stereotypes from both sides are why people even have to ask such a question.

[inna]

9. As a great DUer explained in the link below....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9559428

"the question of “loving your country” is so abstract as to be almost meaningless. What does it mean? Does it mean loving the laws and policies on which your country is based? Does it mean loving your country’s leaders? Does it mean loving most or all of your country’s citizens? Does it mean loving the physical geography of your country?

It can mean any or all of those things, and more. In my own personal view, loving or hating your country means above all loving or hating what your country does. What your country does is determined largely by its leaders. But all of us deserve at least some part of the credit or blame because to varying degrees we all support or enable what our country does, or we take various measures to cause it to follow a different path.

I hate a great deal of what my country does. It does good things too, but like most Americans I believe that it is definitely going in the wrong direction."


Personally, I don't see patriotism as a value, at all.


We should step away from the concept "love your country, right or wrong".

[Steely_Dan]

18. I suppose that "Patriotism" implies...

at least some degree of blind loyalty. Perhaps Republicans just have a higher degree of it. Regardless, I agree that "patriotism" has little to do with it.

-P

[Brewman_Jax]

11. Their "country" never existed

The "Leave It To Beaver" and "Father Knows Best" world, where "those people" did the menial hard labor and service work and lived out of sight across the tracks and had no rights nor access to government programs is what they want. It isn't gonna happen. Barack Obama is still President of the USA and they might as well get over it.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. "Patriotism is the most foolish of passions, and the passion of fools." Schopenhauer

The Republicans are particularly adept at proving Schopenhauer right.

[Steely_Dan]

15. I Remember Reading Schopenhauer...

in Grad School. Very dark. Like Nietzsche on steroids.

[hfojvt]

13. obviously they want to return to the freedom and prosperity

that existed before Democrats took control of Congress in 2006 and ruined the economy by raising the minimum wage.

The question is whether Democrats really love their country when they do vile things like raise the minimum wage and give tax credits to people who don't even pay taxes!!!

Bob Boudelang

[Steely_Dan]

19. And you see...

...this is my very point. There are some things that they do that are clearly not in best interest of the country. This is what confuses me.

-P

[Waiting For Everyman]

14. They're fine with letting the poor starve in the streets by the millions.

From that mindset, their solutions "work". Of course they don't realize and won't admit that they'd be in the street starving too in short order. Bottom line, a majority of the electorate is delusional. That is a tough problem to overcome.

[Steely_Dan]

20. And of course...

...the nest question would be...How do you make such a delusional electorate understand reality? Pretty depressing.

-P

[DCKit]

22. You can't. Their minds are set in stone.

I've got a few in my life, and finally just gave up on them. I wasted too much time and anger trying to show the light.

[Greyhound]

21. We know what they want.

George Carlin summed up our situation;

"Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice . . . you don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying . . . lobbying, to get what they want . . . Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want . . . they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that . . . that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin' years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers . . . Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your fuckin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it . . . they’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fuckin' place. It’s a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in The Big Club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people . . . white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means . . . continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you . . . they don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you at all . . . at all . . . at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it..."

We've been warned repeatedly for decades, but we consistently choose to ignore what is being done to us because fighting is hard, while submission is so very easy.

Well it ain't so easy anymore, is it?

[Warren DeMontague]

24. No taxes, no social services, but a huge military and a huge police force

to arrest all the gays, birth control users, and non-procreative fornicators.

How will this be paid for, you ask? Through the sheer POWER of tens of millions of American Schoolchildren, FREED to enjoy mandatory prayer in school, thereby showering the Flat Earth with miracles upon Miracles!