:up:

:victory:

Speaking of Neocons, what does it mean now that Mr. Bolton has gotten the axe?
That ignorant smart (not really) ass Mr. Carlson among the other deplorables at Fox now describes Mr. Bolton as a "man of the left". I've heard many things about Mr. Bolton over the years, but a man of the left? Come on.
Is Mr. Carlson just reading what has been written for him or is he really that dense?
(Please excuse the New York Times-like salutations)

Speaking of Neocons, what does it mean now that Mr. Bolton has gotten the axe? — Teller

Trump is not a neocon, all evidence points to Trump being guided solely by what Trump sees as good for Trump.

That ignorant smart (not really) ass Mr. Carlson among the other deplorables at Fox now describes Mr. Bolton as a "man of the left". I've heard many things about Mr. Bolton over the years, but a man of the left? Come on. — Teller

Carlson is a propagandist. This particular propaganda servers several purposes. First, simply saying Bolton is to the left of Trump appeases Trump supporters that Trump is still far right; the content of the argument doesn't really matter, it sounds good.

This is the same reason why Trump took jibes at Bolton for being "Mr. Toughguy" followed by stating that he's tougher than Bolton (lot's of tough things they're doing was too tough for Mr. Tough guy), this plays to his audiences intuitions that more wars is not what they want (what Bolton's toughness represents) but at the same plays to the "conservative are tough" virtue signalling by just saying "Bolton wasn't tough enough" (is actually a phony tough guy beside the "real toughness" of Trump). Trump supporters can thus both be comforted by not going to war, as they've learned it's painful through recent experience, but still live in the imagination land of themselves and Trump being the true warriors willing to go to war at the drop of a hat.

The other thing this piece of propaganda accomplishes is just "left bad, Bolton out, Bolton therefore bad, Bolton therefore left". This doesn't have any of the subtleties of the above tiptoeing around loving war and the empire but seemingly backing away from war and more empire building, because Trump supporters don't require any basis in fact or plausible argument to attack the left. This is the same category as saying the Nazi's weren't fascists but socialists because socialist is right there in their title; if they were fascists they would be "the national fascist" party; those Trump supporters that know this makes not sense on any level repeat it anyway to "trigger the snowflakes" and those that genuinely have zero historical knowledge make every effort to keep it that way so that they can genuinely believe Nazi's where socialists in league with communists and trade-unionists.

Pulling any of these threads of course reveals a completely absurd world view required to backup any of these claims, but the key to this sort of propaganda is to never play the "backup claims" game. All statements are just weapons against the opposition, to bring supporters to rally around a feels-good chant and show impenetrable solidarity by openly mocking the idea of civil discourse or then to frustrate and waste the time of the opposition in getting them to devote time to trying to explain such basic facts and logical rules that it's hard to explain to someone refusing to accept any premise no matter how basic.

And it also serves another purpose of keeping the myth alive that republicans are for small government, by equating big government with the left. They don't want word to get out that other forms of government, like fascism and corporatism, are also for big-government insofar as it benefits the wealthy and powerful (bailouts, standing army to expand empire, large police apparatus to put down dissent, big government surveillance); the Nazi's had a big government going on: therefore Hitler was a lefty.