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by joenot443 281 days ago
> it works, so therefore it must be destroyed. This is really how Republicans think

I've been living here four years and met some really wonderful Americans, both Democrat and Republican, yet I don't think I've met a single one who thinks the way you're presenting. This seems like a pretty bleak way to view your country's politics, respectfully.
2 comments
Arainach 281 days ago
What voters think is largely irrelevant. Republican politicians campaign by claiming everything government does doesn't work, and once in office they do everything possible to ensure those claims become true.
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UtopiaPunk 281 days ago
Yeah, I basically agree. The goals of republican politicians are to satisfy the wealthy elite (corporations mostly). Public services, almost by definition, do not make large profits and make it much harder for a private corporation to compete while making large profits themselves. Privatizing public services is a great way to make the rich richer.

The republican politicians then have to craft a message that will get enough normal, not rich people to vote them into office. So they talk about hot-button culture war issues, selecting the positions they must take to get numbers they need (abortion, gun rights, "freedom of speech," gay marriage, immigrants, vaccines, etc etc), all the while reminding their base that the government (except the military and police) is bad.

So that is say, normal people who vote republican can be very nice and reasonable, and they have one or two things that strongly motivates them to vote for a terribly harmful platform.

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cthalupa 281 days ago
All you have to do is look at all of the impositions that republican administrations and politicians have placed on USPS and the heaps of denigration they've piled on it to see the truth of the matter.

From forcing them to fund all future retirement funding in a way that no other government agency is (the PAEA) to all of the attacks on it around "mail-in vote fraud," to the constant attacks on the budget issues that they created, it's plainly apparent that the Republicans desire USPS failing and being privatized.

Many of them have also literally said as much. AEI and Cato are big proponents of privatization, Trump has talked about it many times, Wells Fargo has created some proposed frameworks, etc., and the worse it performs as a public entity the better they can make the argument for privatization.

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