Political Memes

The MAGA movement is a christo-fascist death cult. Conservative think tanks which may have been influenced by Strauss as much as Schmitt have influenced the MAGA movement with Project 2025 at the very least. However, it would be giving the MAGA movement and Strauss to much credit to say that the MAGA cult is exclusively a Straussian cult. Fascists movements share general attributes with each other, but cannot be accurately described as exclusively the embodiment of one philosopher's views.

Regardless, a no would have been sufficient to the asked question.

The good thing is - getting to know your local Republican, and sorting through the emotions it brings up in you can help, because the fundamental issue is deeply psychological.

The bad thing is, nobody wants to do that, because it’s lots easier to just say “those guys suck” and “we’ll best them at the polls”.

But, once people realize they can’t escape a thing, and it needs to be faced, they face it.

Climate change is the existential threat to life as we know it on the planet Earth. Republicans are the ones who need to learn to face this fact. No matter how much political victory they achieve the problem will remain unless we take action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

In the absence of Republicans accepting the body of research that has been done on climate science, it is up to the rest of us to out vote them. This is true of most positions that Republicans advocate for. They aren't based on evidence or on a desire to benefit the majority of the population. Republican positions are designed to benefit themselves and the owner class at the expense of everyone else.

Garnering the political will to out vote an over-represented minority every two years is neither easy nor based on emotion. It is a strategic decision based on evidence to prevent the destruction of the planet and our way of life. It is useful to out vote Republicans because preventing our destruction is a necessary step to improving our society.

As part of that, it is important to dismantle flawed arguments in favor of the Republicans. Such as a misattribution to psychological factors. Which at best is an unfounded attempt to vaguely refer to a reader's insecurities.

Republicans and many other people, regardless of their political leanings, have a tendency to moral reasoning. They attempt to reach a goal by following steps that are justified by subjective morality. Moral positions may inherently feel correct, but aren't inherently supported by any measurable metric. Despite this philosophers assert that morality should be used to dictate the actions of people. While this position may feel intuitively correct, it has a consistent issue.

People can state goals and then can designate a subjective moral position to those goals. However choosing actions to achieve those goals based on reasoning derived from the same subjective moral position is not guaranteed to achieve that stated goal. A way to resolve this is to evaluate actions based on their utility. Does a given action advance the stated goal? If so then it is a course of action worth considering. Rather than asking do the ends justify the means, we should ask do the means accomplish the ends. Thinking about actions in terms of their utility enable us to act in our self-interest. Moral reasoning denies us this as moral ideals demand an inhuman level of dedication to achieve. We are best able to pursue our ideals when we can do so in a way that is useful to that pursuit.

Fascism has taken hold of the Republican Party. Attempting to meet fascists in the middle does nothing to stop climate change. The fascists believe climate change does not exist and that no action is required. No matter how close to the fascists' position on climate change a person gets, that person will be unable to leverage the support of fascists. So while comprising may be a moral position that feels good and has been useful in certain cases such as infrastructure funding, using it is as a strategy is insufficient to accomplish the stated goal of preventing climate change. The position between systemic change and doing nothing will not make use of the limited time window we have to advert key tipping points in the planet's ecosystem.

Climate change seemed the most appropriate example given the statement in your argument of needing to face something that is inescapable. As Republicans are unwilling to act based on evidence on the majority of topics their support cannot be leveraged in a meaningful way for any of those topics. So in general, if a person wants to forward their political goals it is not useful to comprise on issues with a party whose only interest is ruling and not leading.

But unless the underlying issue is addressed, you’ll lose again. And then time will pass, and you’ll win, maybe, and then lose again.

Also, once the fascists take power we will lose our democracy. As our democracy is our most powerful tool to enact systemic change and wealth redistribution we have a vested interest in protecting our democracy from fascist takeovers. edit: typo