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Grew up in Texas, and while southern kindness and acceptance can certainly be found, it is often surface level. I was raised to refer to black people as the N word, and that athiests, muslims, and LGBT people are dangerous, and that we should carry guns just in case they try to hurt us.

I was also taught in my state-approved Saxon science books that the earth is 6000 years old, and bad weather is because God is mad at sinners. The worst of which of course being the gays which go directly to hell no matter how kind they are.

Also was raised very sexist, that women paying for things or working is a result of the men in their lives failing them, and that they are property to be earned like capturing a wild horse.

Texas outside of the cities is a deeply backwards uneducated place full of people living in constant fear of attack by sinners.

Incidentally Texas is also home to NASA and Moody Gardens, and my many visits to those gave me an interest in science and technology that allowed me to confirm everything I was taught was propaganda and nonsense and ultimately go my own way in life.

George W. Bush was never hard-right. For that matter, Trump isn't hard-right either. GW was pretty centrist all around (as far as US politics is concerned) and Trump is a right-leaning populist, which is kind of a weird position.

I've leaned pretty libertarian most of my life... I have conservative friends and pretty progressive friends (and those that I do NOT talk politics with).

A lot of this will come down to is definitely regional. A lot of the U.S. identity itself isn't the same, and different regions are very different. Texas itself is larger than like 80% of the countries in the world. The U.S. as a whole is massive. It's every bit as diverse in some ways as going anywhere in the E.U. despite mostly speaking the same language.

As to the U.S. and going left or right... it varies and depends. I think a lot of the left's "big tent" is falling, in that there is a very outspoken subset of the left that has shifted farther away from where most people are comfortable with. It's fractured, but there. There's also a bit of a yearning towards some more conservative values and a return to a stronger national identity. Both can be, and are true.

In my experience, most people in the US have a pretty live and let live pov... that of course stops to a large extend at coercion of children.

> Trump is a right-leaning populist, which is kind of a weird position.

“populist” isn't an ideological position at all, its a rhetorical approach that can go with positions pretty much anywhere in ideological space.

Yes, and it isn't exactly conservative or otherwise hard-right.

It is entirely irrelevant to whether the ideology is conservative and/or hard-right, since populism describes not the substance of policy or ideology but style of rhetorical framing in a way which is largely orthogonal to ideology.

The original claim, which my message was trying to substantiate towards the post I was replying to that expressed confusion at the , was the idea that American culture has shifted hard to the left, which is not the same as saying that the American government or political system has necessarily shifted hard to the left. To the contrary, I attempted to clearly distinguish this in my post by noting that all three branches of government in the US have indeed been moving to the political right in the last decade or so, even has the wider culture did appear to be shifting towards the left for much of that time period.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the mainstream cultural values of the US should have set the political preference for the US government in what is nominally supposed to be a "democratic" country - that entirely logical and rational assumption increasingly appears to be false.

As weird as it might sound, I think the "live and let live" thing is actually quite sociologically interesting - it seems to present a framework rooted in individualism that achieves social tolerance outcomes comparable to China's ideas around "social harmony" (which I admittedly am far from an expert on). Perhaps it's just a rehashing of "the golden rule" wearing a cowboy hat, but as someone who leans towards what Europeans would call classical liberalism, it's hard for me to not appreciate the parallels with the "non-aggression principle", as well.

And for what it's worth, I harbor no ill will towards anyone from any political background or perspective, even the purists. I'm fond of the idea of treating everyone with dignity, kindness, and compassion, even when I disagree with their ideas or would criticize their actions.

> It's kinda amazing that a president we considered pretty bad is now a role model.

Why do you consider him a role model? Based on how he spoke instead of the actions he took? Most politicians, put on a facade. They play the crowd, kiss the babies, etc. They change their positions with whatever way the polls go. What good is a smile and manners if someone is robbing you when you're not looking?

Bush started an entire war on a completely fabricated lie. And Obama carried the torch, despite running originally against the Iraq war! Maybe you don't feel the consequences of this because you don't have to pay the bill and your family members were never deployed to a war zone.

Trump, for all his flaws, his instincts are for negotiation and peace. He just negotiated a peace deal between Rwanda and Congo:

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/rwanda-democratic-repub...

And again between Azerbaijan and Armenia: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39dzl1lzrgo

He also seemed to handle the Iran-Israel conflict in a way that for befuddling reasons to me, actually deescalated the situation, despite the controversy at the time.

I'll take mean tweets and strong negotiation over smiling faces and reckless invasions any day of the week.

I meant a role model relatively speaking to trump. He was at least presidential.

I totally agree he did a lot of actions that were very questionable like the iraq war and also the extreme surveillance. I just meant Trump makes him look good :)

I disagree about Trump but I don't want to get into that.

And I think what he is saying is that a person should be judged by their actions, and consequences, rather than their rhetoric. This is even more true in modern times when people generally have no clue what people who they don't like are actually saying. Because they are listening to media that also generally don't like the same people and who will regularly take things out of context, disingenuously interpret them, or even just plain lie. And since we're talking about people that are disliked by somebody, they'll never know any better - because it's not like they're ever going to actually go seek out what the person said; they want their biases confirmed.

This issue is most embodied by the various little social experiments on YouTube where people will ask college students what think about action [x], [y], and [z] that they invariably agree with, then they're told it was done by a politician they don't like, and you can see, in real time, the cognitive dissonance kick in where they suddenly try to figure out why they don't "actually" like these actions. Or vice versa for disliked actions by a politician they do like. This, more than anything, sums up the divides in America today.

Trump literally just invaded Washington DC, which he has the right to do because the constitution says so, but that's what it is.

Well, he only had that right for 48 hours if I understand correctly.

30 days, but it's likely that it can/will be extended.

> is instincts are for negotiation and peace

That's a pretty wild statement given that he just invaded Iran. He's also made direct military threats towards allied Denmark, even in press conferences. There's also the less overt threats about making Cananda a US state and giving Ukranian land to Putin.

Pretty militant for the first six months, even from an objective historical context. Should he keep up that tempo for a full term of office, that would measure up with the more intervention oriented presidents including Nixon himself.

I'm not aware of any ground forces holding onto positions in Iran or controlling any ongoing surface movement at all, in any way.