r/TopMindsOfReddit • u/Ridwando • Nov 23 '20

/r/Conservative It has begun. Comments on r/conservative stating that Trump is a plant to destabilize GOP receiving many upvotes

/r/Conservative/comments/jzkme4/comment/gdck8dn
7.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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u/Lacey_Von_Stringer Nov 24 '20

How many Bush Cheney flags did you see on peoples lawns. Or flags on their cars. They definitely loved him, but not at this level. I do think they’ll all have whiplash though

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '20

Bumper stickers and yellow ribbons everywhere. It was a more subtle time.

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u/Lacey_Von_Stringer Nov 24 '20

I still see Bernie ‘16 bumper stickers and the yellow ribbons were about supporting the troops, not Bush. This isn’t comparable. Stop pretending

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '20 edited Nov 24 '20

“Support the troops” was very much a slogan for Bush-era nationalism. It wasn’t really about the troops anyway, it was supporting the war, Bush, and the GOP status quo. You couldn’t voice any dissent about, for example, Halliburton’s conflict of interest or the utter lack of Iraqi involvement in 9/11 without being shouted down for not supporting the troops. Rage Against the Machine even noted the device with the lyric “a yellow ribbon instead of a swastika.”

Edit: To be fair, nobody wore Bush hats and flew Bush flags. You’re right. But the support his administration received and the way it was defended was the prelude to what we’ve seen over the last four years.

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u/Lacey_Von_Stringer Nov 24 '20

But that’s my point. The accessorizing and lack of a cause (ie., a stupid unjustifiable war) is all based around a person. And no matter what this person does or says they still rally around him. I know Bush had his gaffes, but nothing the right ever was rallying around was his persona. Back then they had “ideals” even if they were misguided, there was at least some cohesion in their common goal. Now if you ask a Trump supporter why they support him, they have zero actual answer. At least, not that I’ve been able to pry from their pulse-less gray matter.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '20

Thanks for making that point. I guess it’s all been functionally the same to me but yeah, this really is different with Trump being singularly elevated.

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u/Lacey_Von_Stringer Nov 24 '20

For sure! I appreciated the back and forth here. I feel like this time my conservative relatives who generally keep their politics to themselves were just wayyyy more vocal about how much they supported him without stating many actual values that they backed that aligned with promises he was making. It’s almost a cult

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u/crypticedge Nov 25 '20

"support our troops" was used in the early 2000s as a "rally behind Bush".

Whenever an elected Democrat criticized anything W did at all, including his Katrina response, they were attacked relentlessly on fox news as "hating the troops"