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Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

I don’t see how maga is the logical conclusion of the mindset. Both sides do suck, and the answer isn’t blind tribalism, it’s common sense and reason. There is a lot of basic stuff that most of America would be on board with if they stopped trying to make everyone fight over a few issues that they’ve been fighting over for decades.

Get some wins on the easy stuff, build some momentum and cooperation, and then maybe it will be easier to tackle some of those harder problems.

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Much of the culture war crap that helped justify Tea Party and proto-alt right commentary started out from 2000s and early 2010s South Park.

The "Bernie bro" to MAGA pipeline is very real, as was the "I wanna make sexist or racist jokes" to Alt-Right pipeline.

Anyhow, it doesn't matter what Matt Stone and Trey Parker do now. South Park is boomer media and not easily accessible on modern streaming.

It's on Paramount+. How is it "not easily accessible on modern streaming"?

> It's on Paramount+

That's the issue. Paramount+ only has roughly 59 million subscribers in the US.

Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, and Hulu/Disney+ remain the big 4 nationally [0].

Additionally, you don't see the same degree of memes, zeitgeist, and discourse for South Park that you would see a decade ago, let alone 2 decades ago (remember ginger kids - it got so bad that multiple kids committed suicide due to bullying arising from kids misinterpreting the episode. Or ManBearPig turning into an epithet for climate change denialism for over a decade until the writing staff retconned it).

This isn't to say it's a bad show. It's just older, and Paramount+ distribution is difficult to access for the 18-34 demographic, amongst whom Family Guy and American Dad remained the two dominant streamed adult cartoons in 2025 [1] despite there also being a South Park season last year.

Frankly, South Park mismanaged the COVID transition - they basically took an almost 5 year hiatus which dropped viewership in a now very competitive adult animated market.

[0] - https://flixpatrol.com/streaming-services/subscribers/united...

[1] - https://www.cartoonbrew.com/streaming/nielsen-end-of-year-st...

> The "Bernie bro" to MAGA pipeline is very real, as was the "I wanna make sexist or racist jokes" to Alt-Right pipeline.

It would have been so easy for the Democrats to embrace economics and labour over culture war and scolding. To push for getting money out of politics (Citizen's United). They could have kept the Bernie crowd, Gen Z men, and maybe even Rogan (that guy went from left of centre to right of right so quick though... there's more to it for sure).

Losing in 2024 was insane though and it still feels like the Democrats might screw it up again. FFS people scolding South Park...

> even Rogan (that guy went from left of centre to right of right so quick though... there's more to it for sure).

The right has owned the talk radio space for ever now. I'm rolling podcasts into that as well. I'm not familiar with many left talking heads, but I can name off many from the right. I'd suspect that Rogan noticed where the audience was and adjust programming based on that.

Positions that were mainstream in the Democratic Party 10-15 years ago are now being labeled as far right. There are a lot of normal people who haven’t changed their politics very much, but were left behind by the Democratic Party. The right happily scooped them up, as they had nowhere else to go. I think Rogan, and much of his audience fall into this camp.

Do you have any examples of such positions?

Illegal immigration. Preventing it, and correcting lax enforcement of the past is now labeled a maga issue, with democratic cities actively trying to work against ICE and people who support the left protesting against it.

Here is a short clip of Obama, Hillary, and Bill Clinton supporting deporting illegal aliens, especially those who have broken laws. If they said this stuff today they’d be called maga.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/tb37decBZFk

You're taking a small slice of left progressives and applying it to all democrats to try and push this "the left are all commies" narrative. ICE is running around like the gestapo in targeted blue cities, so of course it's an issue. If they were doing this in red cities (where the crime actually is), there'd be the same push back. It's obvious that republicans are intentionally trying to create issues and division using every tool at their disposal. There won't be enough leopards for all of these faces.

I didn’t call anyone a “commie”. The push to allow illegal immigrants to stay, or to just give them citizenship unchecked, started well before any of the more recent ICE issues. Sanctuary cities existed before Trump’s current term.

If cities cooperated with ICE instead of fighting them, ICE could just go pick people up at the jail instead of ended up in this “gestapo” scenario. Federal and local governments fighting against each other is the problem here. 15-20 years ago they would have likely been on the same side of this issue and could have worked together to handle thing with more professionalism and tact.

The data doesn’t seem to support crime being localized to red or blue cities. Your characterization and Trump’s both seem incorrect.

https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-donald-trump-claims-crime-u...

Subsidizing unionized EV and Battery manufacturing jobs in deep red states [0], expanding tax credits and subsidizes for the bottom 50% of Americans [1], expanding Medicaid access [2], and other tangible pocketbook benefits showed that a portion of American voters do not care about their pocketbook, and would rather vote based on culture war topics.

And you aren't even American based on your very obvious commonwealth spelling. Butt out of our political commentary.

[0] - https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/08/16/georgia-ev...

[1] - https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/biden-low-inc...

[2] - https://ballotpedia.org/Medicaid_work_requirements_during_th...

> Butt out of our political commentary.

Don't be ridiculous. I'd love it if I didn't have to care about US politics, except it has infected the rest of the world. Telling someone to butt out when your dear leader is invading other countries, intentionally influencing foreign elections (Vance stumping for the AfD), and claiming others are 51st states, etc. I also have friends and family in the US that only ever want to talk politics these days.

For the record, I think Biden deserves kudos for pursuing a far more progressive and labour oriented strategy than people expected. The Bernie Bro's soured on Democrats in the 2016 elections. I'm not sure they were a real problem in 2024.

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