Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Lord Liaden]

Well, the byline says "Roger Friedman," and the website is "Roger Friedman's Showbiz*411," so I think it might be Roger Friedman.   But the website's title suggests the omitted punctuation between "Henry" and "Rape" could have been intentional, to enhance apparent salacious sensationalism.

[Ranxerox]

Yesterday, I discovered the Republican Voters Against Trump channel on Youtube.  I binged watched it and found it a balm for my soul.

 

Prior to Trump, I believed that, while Democrats and Republicans argued about many things, they actually agreed on far more than they disagreed.  That while there might be Republican values and Democratic values, there were American values which were greater than both.  Then came Trump.  Trump has no American values or values at all that aren't self serving.  Even after Trump's election, I held out hope for common shared American values.  Maybe they had been just voting against Hillary, who had after all been demonized by right leaning media for decades, or maybe they had simply fallen for Trump's con.  In time they would see through it and turn on him.  Then about two years into Trump's presidency, I learned that Trump enjoyed a same party approval rating of over 80%.  More of his own party approved of his performance than any president in the history of polling at that point in their first term.

 

This was quietly devastating for me.  By this point Trump had shown his true colors so many times, that it seemed inconceivable that by the majority of Republicans would not have seen who he really was.  Yet they loved him.  Damn, the man was out screwing porn stars when his youngest son was 4 months old.  That didn't matter.  Or it did matter in a positive direction.  The average Republican male must be wishing that he had super model wife and was able to screw porn stars on the side as well.  And what was the average Republican woman thinking?  That if they had a billionaire husband who kept them in a gold plated penthouse, he could screw as many other women as he wanted?  I don't know.  Still, they clearly loved Trump.  Perhaps they had been waiting their entire lives for a president that would show them by example that they could be selfish ***holes and that was all right.  I still haven't come to terms with the Trump presidency and the Cult of Trump.

 

Back to Republican Voters Against Trump.  I don't think that I would agree many of their specific political views, but I recognize in them what I used to consider common American values.  In them I see fellow American citizens and worthy political opposition.  After the removal of Trump and his congressional enabler (something they wish is for as badly as I do) it is voters like these that could potentially restore the Republican party to something worth having around.  It is good to know that they are out there.

[wcw43921]

They may be out there, but as of now they seem to be vastly outnumbered by the Trumpheads, as would be indicated by the results of the 2020 Republican Presidential Primaries.  Given the opportunity to reject his hatred, his juvenile behavior, and his lack of competence, Republican voters chose the bigoted, self-serving narcissist over candidates who were presumably more competent, and definitely more honorable.  And it wasn't just by a slim margin, either--Trump won by a vast majority in every state that held a primary, and in many states he won with over ninety percent of the vote.  A candidate would have to be unopposed to get those kind of percentages in any other election.

 

I agree, it's good to know that there are Republicans opposed to this--"man."  But we cannot count on them to turn the tide for us.  We have to get out there and make sure that everyone who can vote Democratic is able to do so.  There may be those of us here who do not support the Democratic party, but right now they are the better alternative to Trump, his Congressional enablers, and those who voted them into office.

 

My apologies for the electioneering, but those are my thoughts on the subject.  Take them as you will.

[Lord Liaden]

I've also watched quite a few of the testimonials on that channel. Some of them are Republicans, or former Republicans, who had initially fallen for Trump's promises, or were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Others held their noses and voted for him, and hoped he'd grow into the job. Still others rejected him from the start and never voted for him. But all of them are people who have actually paid attention to what he does and says, and come to understand what he is and where he's taking the United States (I won't say "leading"). It took some of them longer than others to reach that conclusion, but it's as heartening to me as it is to you that blind tribalism and Trump's cult of personality hasn't taken over all those who called themselves Republican.

 

However, that last part was rather eye-opening for me. So many of these people describe themselves as "lifelong Republicans," using the descriptor like one would call oneself Methodist or Jewish or African-American, as though party affiliation were part of their identity. As a Canadian it's a very strange concept to me  that someone would vote for one party reflexively over decades, whoever the candidates are and whatever the issues may be at the time, even to the point of making it a family tradition. Most of us Canucks vote for who we think is best suited at the time to lead our country in the direction we think it should go. Party loyalty does play a role, but only to the extent the party currently reflects our priorities.

[pinecone]

9 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I've also watched quite a few of the testimonials on that channel. Some of them are Republicans, or former Republicans, who had initially fallen for Trump's promises, or were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Others held their noses and voted for him, and hoped he'd grow into the job. Still others rejected him from the start and never voted for him. But all of them are people who have actually paid attention to what he does and says, and come to understand what he is and where he's taking the United States (I won't say "leading"). It took some of them longer than others to reach that conclusion, but it's as heartening to me as it is to you that blind tribalism and Trump's cult of personality hasn't taken over all those who called themselves Republican.

 

However, that last part was rather eye-opening for me. So many of these people describe themselves as "lifelong Republicans," using the descriptor like one would call oneself Methodist or Jewish or African-American, as though party affiliation were part of their identity. As a Canadian it's a very strange concept to me  that someone would vote for one party reflexively over decades, whoever the candidates are and whatever the issues may be at the time, even to the point of making it a family tradition. Most of us Canucks vote for who we think is best suited at the time to lead our country in the direction we think it should go. Party loyalty does play a role, but only to the extent the party currently reflects our priorities.

The US is very different. There are families who won't marry outside the party, more often than outside religion.

[Cygnia]

Body Bags and Enemy Lists: How Far-Right Police Officers and Ex-Soldiers Planned for 'Day X'

[Ragitsu]

43 minutes ago, Cygnia said:

Body Bags and Enemy Lists: How Far-Right Police Officers and Ex-Soldiers Planned for 'Day X'

 

We're just a crockpot of crazy, aren't we?

[DShomshak]

7 hours ago, Ranxerox said:

The average Republican male must be wishing that he had super model wife and was able to screw porn stars on the side as well.

 

As it happens, my brother knows a few Trump fans and yes, at least these few think that way.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

33 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

We're just a crockpot of crazy, aren't we?

 

For a change of pace, this one is a German crock pot. In a perverse way it's comforting to know the crazy isn't geopolitically concentrated.

[TrickstaPriest]

More to the point, even now among my friends I'm talked to about how the 'democratic party' and 'woke culture' is 'bringing us close to civil war'.  Literally, that woke culture is so apparently bad in this country that they are willing to destroy the country over it.  As if they haven't been paying attention to what Trump has been saying, and how he has been saying it, over the literal last three years of my life.

 

The point is that people (like my friends) are telling themselves they need it to have a future.  That a literal purge is necessary.  That it's a requirement to defeat this great evil and potential horror 'the left' will unleash. 

 

As if they (the Republican Party) haven't literally lied for nearly literal lifetimes about global warming, as if there aren't dozens of literal paramilitary right wing terrorist organizations in the US that have military training camps churning out 'warriors' for decades, as if they didn't entirely lie repeatedly about coronavirus and literally destroyed the US economy and future over it (but no, its the democrats fault for wanting to try and spend money and do things to 'prevent' an 'inevitable' problem.  As if the spent money is why the economy is in shambles).

 

This is the messaging that people are receiving on a daily basis.  That 'democrats' are the problem.  That 'democrats' (not homeless, unemployed) are the protesters, and that's why they must be dealt with. 

 

And when we have ten million more homeless, protesting people, what do you think they are going to say?  I've literally seen advertisements on right wing channels talk about 'wellfare people' as cockroaches, while literally suggesting that they (cockroaches) need to be exterminated.

 

Let me tell you, 'left wing violence' has barely ever been a thing in this country.  The last time it existed in real form was when America created the unions, because workers were attacked for daring to complain about job conditions.  As if the Ludlow Massacre was justified.  Protesters are protesters, and pretending that things are so explosive solely because of a 'democrat issue' wholly ignores the literal economic situations that have built this into a roaring fire.

 

 

As a thought experiment - remove the man who died, those protesters could still be out there.  Protesting different things, from a different spark, but there are so many sparks that protests of this size could easily still exist.  But if you removed coronavirus - or gave us an actual government response - would you still have the protests, huge and desperate, like this?  If you didn't have Trump literally charging up his base for years with violent, almost literal "kill the other guy for me" rhetoric, while the rest of the country watched in anger and frustration, would you have that level of opposition to it?  If you didn't have the Federal response literally use tactics in the military Field Manuals marked as "DON'T DO THESE THINGS AGAINST PROTESTS IN SYMPATHETIC AREAS UNLESS YOU WANT A CIVIL WAR OR INSURRECTION"?  These protests may have already been winding down.

 

Literally I listen to friends talking about how woke culture is tearing America apart when the reason we are in a near civil war is Republican voters are listening to Republican leadership.  There is literally no simpler common denominator.

[Old Man]

11 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

This is the messaging that people are receiving on a daily basis.

 

Exactly.  All you have to do is watch Fox News in parallel with other news media and it's easy to see how trivially easy it is to warp Americans' perception of reality.  The main tools are selective coverage, hysterical "analysis", and the occasional "error".  Egregious police brutality could be happening in every city in the U.S. and Fox will show the one clip of a black man lightly hitting a cop in the helmet with a cane, followed by a minute-long whine by a police chief about how they're the victims.  Now let's have an outside (totally unqualified but properly extreme) "expert" weigh in on how dangerous "antifa" is and how viewers better arm themselves because antifa buses are coming to their town right now.  Now let's show footage of a right wing riot "mistakenly" misattributed to antifa.  Repeat with every issue.

 

This happens all the time, even on my local Fox affiliate, not just Fox cable.  All a viewer has to do is buy into the original lie that corporate media is liberal biased, and only Fox and their Facebook feed are truthful, and the conservabubble has them.  People in the conservabubble will never see Trump's mistakes.  They'll never see anyone fact check his lies.  They'll never see him struggle to drink water or walk down a ramp.  They'll never see the evidence that he associated with child rapists or that he benefited from Russian interference in 2016.  They'll never hear how he mishandled the pandemic, just more lies about hydroxychloroquine.  Conservabubble inmates only see God's anointed culture warrior fighting a losing battle against violent immigrants and rioting leftists, and how America is doomed if he isn't allowed to ignore the Constitution in his holy jihad.  This is why his approval never drops below 40%.  Why would it?

[Lord Liaden]

Old Man, everything you write is valid. But honest information is out there. You don't even need to read the pundits and listen to the talking heads -- just pay attention to what actually comes out of Donald Trump's mouth. He condemns himself with every utterance, and has for years. Not recognizing it is a product of willful ignorance, refusing to even consider the evidence. His supporters are accomplices, not victims.

[pawsplay]

Mail-in balloting has worked for decades without any discernible problems. Further, if someone did commit mass mail theft, they would go to jail for 1000 years and all the affected people would be given the opportunity to cast new ballots by the election commissioner.

[Ragitsu]

I've found a new name for the right-wing: "crybully".

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, pawsplay said:

Mail-in balloting has worked for decades without any discernible problems. Further, if someone did commit mass mail theft, they would go to jail for 1000 years and all the affected people would be given the opportunity to cast new ballots by the election commissioner.

 

Note: small amount of language NSFW.

 

 

[Ragitsu]

This state of mine has been voting by mail for - apparently - a long time and we've done just fine.

[TrickstaPriest]

I'm sure voting by mail can become a target for malfeasance.

 

Which the current administration could secure instead of suggesting we delay the election.  Instead of directly trying to sabotage that system, close polling locations, or, you know... anything to service themselves at the cost of a stable country with an actual future.

[Ragitsu]

On 8/2/2020 at 4:50 PM, Old Man said:

 fighting a losing battle against violent immigrants and rioting leftists

You forgot the

 

• Marxists.
• Communists.
• Bolsheviks.
• Leninists
• Anarchists.
• Socialists.
• Satanists.
• Atheists.
• Agnostics.
• Muslims.
• African-Americans.
• Mexican-Americans.
• Arab-Americans.
• Iranian-Americans.
• Asian-Americans.
• Homosexuals.
• Bisexuals.
• Transsexuals.
• The media.
• The poor and middle classes.
• Pink-haired college girls.
• College and university students in general.
• Hell, 99% of academia.
• Scientists.
• Doctors.
• Meanie poopy heads.

 

I'm sure he's done something to piss off Amerindians, too.

[DShomshak]

2 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

This state of mine has been voting by mail for - apparently - a long time and we've done just fine.

 

In case anyone's interested, last Saturday (Aug. 1) All Things Considered interviewed Washington state  \Secretary of State Kim Wyman on conducting elections by mail. She told of one serious attempt to defraud the system, by paid signature-gatherers who decided it would be easier if they made their own voters through fraudulent aplications. They were caught PDQ. Ms. Wyman said that in the last major election about 140 fraudulent ballots were caught -- people voting twice, for instance -- out of more than 3 million ballots cast, which statistically is microscopic.

 

This does not mean someone might not attempt such a scheme as Archer described. I could imagine Russian trolls suggesting it to Trump zealots. But the (Russian) goal is not actually to swing elections -- it's to *be caught* and so create doubt in the election's result. Because even if the attempted saboteurs are caught quickly, some peoploe will wonder how long they managed to steal ballots, and if the ever-distrusted Authorities are "covering up" the extent of the damage.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Old Man]

7 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Old Man, everything you write is valid. But honest information is out there. You don't even need to read the pundits and listen to the talking heads -- just pay attention to what actually comes out of Donald Trump's mouth. He condemns himself with every utterance, and has for years. Not recognizing it is a product of willful ignorance, refusing to even consider the evidence. His supporters are accomplices, not victims.

 

You’re right,  but the bubble makes the willful ignorance that much easier. I mean, we’re fifty 9/11s into the pandemic, and we still see anti-maskers with covid only repent their ways literally the day before they die. That’s how entrenched the mindset is. 

[Ragitsu]

29 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

You’re right,  but the bubble makes the willful ignorance that much easier. I mean, we’re fifty 9/11s into the pandemic, and we still see anti-maskers with covid only repent their ways literally the day before they die. That’s how entrenched the mindset is. 

 

Every time I think about how we got here, I realize that there are no easy answers on how to get out. There are generations of families that teach their offspring the most vile interpretations of community, philosophy and religion; additionally, some of these families are passing on characteristics that make paranoia, xenophobia and plain old stupidity more likely to manifest. There are environmental pollutants capable of causing brain damage that won't be removed until whatever structure/infrastructure they are part of is completely demolished. There are politicians that know how to manipulate those people who are disadvantaged from Day 1 and they have enjoyed the benefits of a system that was rigged long before most of us were born. There are powerful individuals - politicians, sure, but they're not alone in this - that are dedicated to ensuring that public education is abolished or at least corrupted. On top of all of that, we're causing problems abroad that eventually end up creating enemies whose very presence justifies the aforementioned paranoia and xenophobia those people are cursed with.

 

It's all a mess.

[Lord Liaden]

Speaking of causing problems abroad: U.S.-German ties are bad under Trump — if Biden wins he may struggle to repair them.

[TrickstaPriest]

13 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

Every time I think about how we got here, I realize that there are no easy answers on how to get out. There are generations of families that teach their offspring the most vile interpretations of community, philosophy and religion; additionally, some of these families are passing on characteristics that make paranoia, xenophobia and plain old stupidity more likely to manifest. There are environmental pollutants capable of causing brain damage that won't be removed until whatever structure/infrastructure they are part of is completely demolished. There are politicians that know how to manipulate those people who are disadvantaged from Day 1 and they have enjoyed the benefits of a system that was rigged long before most of us were born. There are powerful individuals - politicians, sure, but they're not alone in this - that are dedicated to ensuring that public education is abolished or at least corrupted. On top of all of that, we're causing problems abroad that eventually end up creating enemies whose very presence justifies the aforementioned paranoia and xenophobia those people are cursed with.

 

And we exist in an era where literally tens of billions have been spent on market/political research to extensively manipulate human beings.

 

yaaaay

[Ragitsu]

 

[Lord Liaden]