chat

Go listen to him on Jon Stewart's Weekly Show episode and decide.

I don't have a horse in this race because I live in a mostly sane country, but if what he talks about actually were to come to pass, every USian on the Fediverse would be in heaven.

American Civil Religion includes veneration of troops no matter what they do as part of their enlistment. There is no real political base that can be made today outside the bounds of ACR.

You're correct, it's just his target audience choosing to look past (or quietly embrace) his fascist, murderous past that he is in no way apologetic about, let alone working to repair.

So the question is: why does his target audience do that? That audience is: electoral-brained liberals of all stripes. Same ones that gave Bernie a pass on Zionism. They're enveloped in the shallow logic and talking points of "lesser evil" electoralism and thought-terminating clichés. And the worst of them are actually tailist, they think the way you appeal to "the libs" is by embracing certain stereotypes of white America, including the casual racism, national chauvinism, military worship, and so on.

Liberals excuse (and promote!) this stuff all the time in rhetoric and action, they just usually reject aesthetic association with Nazis. They very recently embraced or tolerated settler colonialism genocide when "their side" supported it, at least until it became considered gauche. Actual Nazi shit, just without swastikas and heils. Liberals and Nazis are close cousins.

The dude has literally dozens of easily discoverable quote-bites of him excitedly expressing how much he loves killing, can't get enough of it, wants to get back to doing it asap.

Have you met Americans?

He has extremely weak competition, he's a very good speaker who says the right things, and Trump has lowered the bar enough that it's easier to survive scandals that used to doom political careers.

There is huge demand for any kind of left-wing populism. Platner appeals to that.

yankees love nazis and could not give the tiniest fuck about foreigners

I mean, a deaths head tattoo turned out to not really be that big a deal for some 'leftists' so, with as little snark as I can muster, what does anyone expect?

Leftists in the US are mostly a joke. I include myself in that grouping so

You're not thinking like a lib.

He is The Candidate, which means he is the Only Acceptable Choice. This is the most important and sacred truth about him. Anything else is either irrelevant or just an "attack" on him by the Unbelievers.

Kinda this but not really

The US media class are all nazis. The only thing they love more than promoting other nazis, is promoting nazis and pretending that they are somehow not nazis and that any critic must just want trump to win or whatever their current gaslighting script is.

Most people in Maine who are "Left" are more "I want government benefits, but I do not give a shit how many people must suffer for me to have them" types

You know, like most Democrats

(looking at popular youtubers and twitch personalities).

Why is everyone smelling bad? (Staring at pile of shit)

As with many things lately, the bar has pierced the earth's mantle

I've been reading Ken Klippenstein about this and the dems just keep finding the oldest, most compromised people to run against him

Since more than likely he's gonna win, I'm waiting to see what he actually does after. If he ends up being another Fetterman or whatever, oh well that sucks, but maybe he won't be?

There are sort of two lefts in Maine. The "populists" which have deep Trotskyist roots but are more like Greens (and the AFL), then the Marxist left which is much smaller and mostly Trotskyist ultras and two small MLish groups. The former have deep ties to the Bernie network (which is why he's gotten so much national coverage) and are all in for Platner. The latter might be quietly supportive of Platner but notably haven't endorsed him.