Serious question: Do the republicans in office want to go back to the America of the 50's or am I trying to make sense of it by thinking too simple?

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Too many Americans are just fundamentally hateful, stupid people and those in power use this fact to further establish themselves. They're already extremely selfish and amoral so, while I don't doubt they're also xenophobic, misogynistic and shortsighted, why would they care if they say X, Y and Z as long as it allows them to keep the grift going? Those who are drinking the Kool Aid are probably fewer in number than those who just think "fuck it, I'm getting the bag" (it all goes back to basic moral relativism, greed and hedonism, as always).

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I think they latch onto the 50s because if you say 60s, you're thinking hippies and drugs. 70s? Having to admit how badly we'd fucked up in Vietnam and drugs. 80s? Drugs and drugs. Anything later than that is too young for conservatives unless they're trying to rape it.

Any of them who are old enough to really remember the 50s are too old to remember the 50s. Geriatric mush-brain and everything. It's just a way to say "back before black people, gays, and women had rights" while preserving the option to backpedal if they took the mask off (or, more fittingly, put the hood on) too early. Also probably would use terms other than black people, gays, and women if speaking freely.

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From an outside perspective republicans seems like a bunch of one issue voters (pro gun, anti abortion, etc) coming together and voting against the democrats.

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Very much the opposite. The US in the 1950s was a product of two things: 1) 20 consecutive years of Democratic presidents (Roosevelt from 1932 to 1945, then Truman til 1952), and 2) WW2, which put the whole country to work on war production, including large numbers of women who previously hadn't been part of the workforce. Eisenhower (Republican) was president from 1952 to 1960 but other than revving up the cold war, he didn't change stuff so much, it seems to me, though it was before my time.

Roosevelt in turn was sort of an antimatter version of Donald Trump (he clobbered the 1% for the benefit of the 99% instead of the other way around). He'd be considered extreme left by today's standards. He was re-elected 3 times before dying in office on his way to his 5th, 6th, 7th etc terms. Republicans HATED him. After his death they passed a Constitutional amendment limiting presidents to 2 terms (Dems were ok with the amendment because they feared a similarly popular Republican staying in office forever, as might have happened with Ronald Reagan, and now Trump wants a 3rd term).

Ever since the Eisenhower era but accelerating enormously under Reagan, Republicans have been trying to reverse Roosevelt policies that persisted through the rest of the 20th century and are partly still around despite those efforts.

So I would say they goai is more like the pre-Roosevelt era, like the 1920s. The Great Depression started in 1928 and resulted in near-revolution and Roosevelt getting elected by an overwhelming margin in 1932. But before the depression was the so-called Gilded Age where super rich people could do pretty much whatever they wanted, and that if anything is the current Republican dream.

Roosevelt went by his initials FDR, which was kind of an unusual thing but whatever, people went along with it even if they thought it was a little bit weird. Truman was Roosevelt's last VP so he became president through FDR's death rather than campaigning for it directly (he was re-elected in 1948). The next two Dem presidents, Kennedy and Johnson, used their initials (JFK and LBJ) the way FDR did, not because it was anything like a normal thing to do, but because they wanted to remind people of FDR, who was still very popular despite being long dead. There is a good book about post-WW2 US political history called "In The Shadow of FDR" by Walter Leuchtenberg that explains this. I see it's now been expanded to go through 2010 (Obama) but I had to read it in history class some time before that. Anyway it's good.

There was once a joke about a family at its breakfast table in the 1930s. Dad asks the 6yo kid what he wants to be when he grows up. The kid answers "I want to be president of the US!". The dad angrily responds "Why? What's wrong with Roosevelt?".

Anyway, returning to an era shaped by Roosevelt is the absolute last thing the GOP wants or ever wanted.

Edit: oops, the Gilded Age was "officially" 1870s-1890s, so some nuances should change in the above, but you get the idea.

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They're going back to the Germany of the 1930's.

Edit: Except with Epstein files.

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Read the Project 2025 (it's a 900+page brick and expensive, but the PDF is freely downloadable), you will get a better understanding what they may want to achieve.

Saying that as an EU citizen, if this matters.

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I don't think that's the goal. I think a return to "better" times is little more than marketing. They use it to strengthen support and give blame. The goal is money and control.

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Thank you for a very interesting answer!

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Republicans are trying to take us back to the 1850s, not the 1950s.

And Republicans want that because they want slavery back

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They're going by the 50's as presented by b&w tv - The Honeymooners, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons.

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1850's? Yes.

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TL;DR: Project 2025 is a 920-page conservative blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation and 100+ organizations to radically reshape the federal government if Republicans win the presidency.

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 is a comprehensive plan created by The Heritage Foundation along with over 100 conservative organizations to prepare for the next Republican presidential administration. The project aims to "assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State." Wikipedia Heritage

The Four Pillars

Project 2025 is built on four main components:

"Mandate for Leadership" - A 920-page policy blueprint covering every federal agency
Personnel Database - A "Conservative LinkedIn" to vet and place loyalists in government positions
Training Programs - To prepare conservatives for government roles
Implementation Playbook - Step-by-step guide for the first 180 days The Heritage Foundation

Key Policy Proposals

Labor & Economy:

Eliminate overtime eligibility for millions of workers by lowering salary thresholds Democracy Forward AFSCME
Weaken child labor protections and allow youth to work in more dangerous jobs AFSCME
Require federal contractors to be 70-95% U.S. citizens Wikipedia
Massive cuts to corporate and personal income taxes AFSCME

Social Programs:

Eliminate Head Start program serving 833,000+ children in poverty AFSCME
Impose work requirements on SNAP food assistance Democracy Forward
Phase out income-driven student loan repayment and Public Service Loan Forgiveness AFSCME

Reproductive Rights:

Remove abortion drug Mifepristone from market or limit to first 7 weeks AFSCME
Enforce the Comstock Act to ban mailing abortion medications AFSCME
Replace reproductive healthcare task forces with "pro-life task forces" AFSCME

Education:

Dismantle the Department of Education entirely AFSCME
Promote school choice and parental control over curricula

Immigration:

Cut off asylum at the border and slash legal immigration pathways Democracy Forward
Use local resources for mass deportations and detention Democracy Forward

Government Structure:

Reinstate executive orders restricting federal employee unions Wikipedia
Consolidate statistical agencies like Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics Democracy Forward
Replace career civil servants with political loyalists

Trump Connection

Despite Trump's public denials during the 2024 campaign, at least 140 people who worked on Project 2025 previously worked in Trump's first administration. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts described the organization's role as "institutionalizing Trumpism." CBS News Wikipedia After winning the 2024 election, Trump nominated several Project 2025 architects to key positions, and analysis shows nearly two-thirds of his early executive actions mirror Project 2025 proposals. PBS ACLU

Timeline & Funding

Project 2025 was established in 2022 and represents an eight-figure investment from conservative organizations. Wikipedia The Heritage Foundation planned to have 20,000 vetted personnel in its database by 2024. Wikipedia

Bottom Line

Critics argue Project 2025 represents an unprecedented effort to rapidly implement far-right policies that could affect millions of Americans - from cutting overtime pay for 4.3 million workers to reducing food assistance for 40 million people. Democracy Forward Supporters see it as restoring conservative principles and rolling back decades of liberal policies, with some looking to reverse precedents from the 1960s Great Society, 1930s New Deal, and even 1880s civil service reforms. PBS

The plan's comprehensive nature and rapid early implementation during Trump's second term has made it one of the most significant policy frameworks in recent political history.

Citations:

More sources:

Project 2025's "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise" | DocumentCloud

Generated by claude.

Also check out BBC's article. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c977njnvq2do

My concern as a citizen is the unfettered power of the president and loss of government institutions that were created to help and protect citizens. Our immigration process has been ducked for a long time but the anti immigration sentiment that is being stoked will have far reaching consequences that will impact families and our local economies from labor and tourism.

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More like 1850s laws where they could own people they deemed lesser, with a 1950s Leave it to Beaver Coat of paint slapped on top... Where women couldn't get divorced without specific cause or have their own bank accounts, and everyone was pretending to be Christian due to the red scare

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Did you know that in North Carolina, you need to be physically separated from your spouse for a full year before you can get divorced?

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No utopias there, just rednecks doing whatever they want with no consequences. Or, that's what they think as the consequences build up until they're all dead.

This isn't rebirth, it's fire. They're setting the place on fire, because they want to see people burn as they die. They think it's funny. Their fictional god told them it's OK!

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Other people have more detailed and factual answers, but a good heuristic is "there must be outgroups for the law to bind but not protect, and in groups for the law to protect but not bind". That's what they want. They want to do what they want while women and queers and non-whites are subjugated. They want to say something inappropriate and touch their women coworkers without consent, and know if she raises her voice she'll be fired.

They are scum.

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And the benefit of using the harassment of women against you in the future if you step out of line.

It's *consequences for thee and not for me" at the finest.

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Try 1830s

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The voters were probably thinking about the nostalgia they had as a result of the progressive eras, because they'd get all the benefits, while also not having do deal with racism since they're white.

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Correct.

They are legitimately too stupid to tell the difference between their specific childhood and the state of the entire world, so they think they can go back there if they try hard enough and force everyone else to pretend.

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