I think it's a mistake to call them moderates. The "moderates" in the US have gone to great lengths to brand themselves this way, but really they are neoliberals who have bought into every aspect of conservatism except maybe the most depraved social views from the alt right, which they excuse as "just an opinion". They love to play both sides and act like they have some moral/intellectual high ground because they consider "both sides" when really they are already waist deep into right-wing ideology.
Exactly. Whenever this conversation comes up I ask for people to give me Republican policies presented and pushed that aimed to help the middle class??
Other than tax cuts for the rich the Republican party has ZERO ideas on how to tackle anything that would help the average American. Healthcare? Nothing. Gun control? Nothing. Climate change? Nothing. Infrastructure? Nothing. Jobs? Trickle down give tax cuts to the rich that'll solve it! Sure it hasn't worked the last 40 years now but just more tax cuts for billionaires bro!
It's insane there's even a handful of people who think republicans are anything but self serving fascists that would step over corpses to enrich themselves even marginally at the expense of anything and anyone else.
Yet here we are, it's an actual debate, it's like children who refuse to admit they stole that candy from the store.. Children. Vile, fat, rich, spoiled, semi-conscious, thoroughly uneducated, self entitled, racist, backwards, moronic children. Hundreds of millions of them.
As a moderate, this isn't true in the least. People like that aren't actually moderate, they are just masking.
Every moderate I know is currently voting Democrat because it's obvious the Republican party has gone off the rails. The crazy stuff isn't the part we listen to, and they have stopped backing the non-crazy part.
I consider all politicians corrupt, but he's probably less than most. Their politics are money and power. I don't think many politicians at that level genuinely buy into either party, except for insofar as it gets them power.
Sure, but if you give these "moderates" a seemingly reasonable Republican candidate who puts up a good front and who also won't say the quiet parts out loud, they will vote for that candidate every time. E.g., if Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney ran again, they'd vote for them in a heartbeat. Then those candidates will do almost all the same things Trump did, just without drawing attention to it, such as lowering taxes on the wealthy, installing ultra conservative or big-business friendly judges, starving social services, removing regulations, etc.
Moderates have no principles, so this is always okay with them.
I haven't distorted any argument you made. You provided a very fence-sitty statement "all politicians are bad" just like all the other "enlightened centrists", then proceeded to accuse me of lying and not making good arguments when you yourself are unable to make actual arguments, critically about this subject, or otherwise bring something to the table. Is that a typical pattern for you?
They more or less tried to rebuild every part of the society the way a butthurt drunk corporal would consider best.
Ah, and their economic successes were in large part result of a few Ponzi schemes and just theft. That "restoration of economy" of theirs wasn't sustainable, because nobody would give them any more money.
They were led by a group of people, some very much noblemen and officers, and some well-educated and competent people.
The criterion for success was being defined by the corporal, because in some sense German conservatives of the Weimar republic times turned pessimist of their nobility, their upper and middle class, and, a bit like Russian narodniks would look for rebirth in the way Russian peasants lived (knowing nothing of that), they were looking for rebirth in the propaganda picture of some patriotic and depressed corporal, and they've found one.
I'm not sure, but I think I've read that various fraudulent schemes built on the German state's remaining credibility made a bigger input.
Murder of sick people, sterilization of gays, concentration camps, robbery and murder of minorities and whoever else - it was all not as much for practical gain as it was for making robbery and murder normalized in their society. Nazis were really philosophy-driven. Their state was an attempt at deconstructing (can't find another word) morality, "return" to a picture of some barbaric tribe living off conquest. Where the "weak" would perish and the "strong" would drive evolution.
Eroding culture and morality was their intention, as a means to turn Germany into some tribe which will conquer many parts of the world and change it forever. They were very appreciative not only of their ancestors in late Antiquity, but also of Mongol, Turkic invaders in history.
That doesn't quite work the same way as a corporal would imagine, though.
Almost like they kicked significant parts of the railway work force out and sent them to death camps in the name of opening those jobs up for mediocre "ubermensch"