[dcrazy]

They don’t get punished at the polls because people accept, or are at least willing to entertain the implication, that the left wing dislikes America. And what sense does it make to vote for an unpatriotic politician? Would you want to work for a CEO who publicly disdains the company? (Gil Amelio’s infamous quote about steering the sinking Apple ship comes to mind.)

As long as the Democratic base insists on caveating every American achievement with the Omnicause, it will keep playing into the Gingrichian rhetoric.

[mindslight]

> what sense does it make to vote for an unpatriotic politician?

I don't know? Ask everyone who voted for a second Grump term. Every one of his rambles is some kind of sour puss complaint about our country, and yet people are still lapping it up!

I'd say the better framework is constructive versus destructive. The average American just doesn't want to think about constructive solutions or constructive criticism. The nuance required for incremental improvement is just too much work. But tell them you're going to smash things and hurt people, and they'll buy right in. It's essentially pan-religious fundamentalism.

Of course then the corpos are all too happy to step in with their own constructive but proprietary and anti-individual-liberty solutions. Which points back to the real motives for why the destructive memes end up being so popularized to begin with - destruction creates a power vacuum for the corpos to step into, while constructive governmental solutions get corrupted by lobbyists to overtly benefit corpos.

[kelnos]

> what sense does it make to vote for an unpatriotic politician?

I really dislike the concept of "patriotism". What does it even mean? I think you'll get different answers if you get different people.

If people think that being critical of the US makes someone "unpatriotic", then that's their problem. If that makes a critical politician less electable, so be it. The alternative -- politicians censoring themselves and pretending everything is amazing -- is much worse.

And I'm not sure where the right is coming from anyway. The whole concept of MAGA is that the US kinda sucks right now and Trump is the savior who will fix it. If anyone has been critical of the US, it's been Trump and the MAGA crowd. But of course hypocrisy is never a problem for the right.

[s1artibartfast]

I think it mostly about perspective of history.

For those that were attracted to it, Trump presented the idea that America and it's people are good at good at their core, and this can be brought back.

Those same people view rhetoric from the other side as saying America is and was fundamentally evil and corrupt. They take this personally as a condemnation of them and their family.

[jquery]

He only presented that idea to a certain slice of Americans. If you were a Haitian American, you probably ate cats and dogs according to him.

[jquery]

I looked up Gil Amelio’s “infamous” quote and it doesn’t seem incorrect given what Apple was going through at the time. Steve Jobs had just sold 1.5 million shares of Apple stock and tanked the stock, would you accuse Steve Jobs of hating Apple?

Toxic positivity is when you can’t criticize something even when it deserves criticism. Is America full of brilliant people? Yes. Is it in a steep decline at the moment? Also yes. Apple thrived because Steve Jobs did a coup and steered the ship. America needs the same, but not from an incompetent nincompoop like the current moron.