UTExan said:

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" he's a second father to me and it felt like we just won one of the most phallic victories ever..."

Don't you mean "pyrrhic"?

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c-jags said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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I've struggled a little bit with how to respond to the above posts. To be perfectly honest, I'm more than a little caught off guard being called brainwashed and deranged because I think Trump is a bad person. I have a lot of friends and coworkers and family that also voted for Trump, but who tell me that every time he opens his mouth, they want to cry. I recognize that this is a small snapshot of people that voted for Trump, but I didn't think that being adverse to Trump's style and personality was so controversial - even among Conservatives.

There is an initial instinct to create a gigantic list every 'bad' thing he's said or done and ask if we are even talking about the same guy? But, I don't think this accomplishes anything.

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my "derangement" comment comes from this.

Quote:

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. . . but I cannot find a single redeeming quality about Trump personally.

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Trump Gives $1 Million Matching Grant to United Way of New York City

Trump's grants

Trump flies sick kid when airlines refuse

Trump saves farm from foreclosure after suicide

Trump houses Jennifer Hudson after her family's murder


i say derangement in that not being able to find one redeeming quality about somebody personally is just pure hatred. i can't think of anybody i know of that i can't find "one redeeming quality."

maybe you're being hyperbolic, and i would agree with you that her personal misdeeds far outweigh any acts of kindness, but I just don't get "nothing redeeming."

this isn't the poliboard. words matter.


again, i think everything being said here is in good faith, I just think our distaste for the other side makes us ALL a bit hyperbolic

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c-jags said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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I've struggled a little bit with how to respond to the above posts. To be perfectly honest, I'm more than a little caught off guard being called brainwashed and deranged because I think Trump is a bad person. I have a lot of friends and coworkers and family that also voted for Trump, but who tell me that every time he opens his mouth, they want to cry. I recognize that this is a small snapshot of people that voted for Trump, but I didn't think that being adverse to Trump's style and personality was so controversial - even among Conservatives.

There is an initial instinct to create a gigantic list every 'bad' thing he's said or done and ask if we are even talking about the same guy? But, I don't think this accomplishes anything.

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my "derangement" comment comes from this.

Quote:

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. . . but I cannot find a single redeeming quality about Trump personally.

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Trump Gives $1 Million Matching Grant to United Way of New York City

Trump's grants

Trump flies sick kid when airlines refuse

Trump saves farm from foreclosure after suicide

Trump houses Jennifer Hudson after her family's murder


i say derangement in that not being able to find one redeeming quality about somebody personally is just pure hatred. i can't think of anybody i know of that i can't find "one redeeming quality."

maybe you're being hyperbolic, and i would agree with you that his personal misdeeds far outweigh any acts of kindness, but I just don't get "nothing redeeming."

this isn't the poliboard. words matter.


again, i think everything being said here is in good faith, I just think our distaste for the other side makes us ALL a bit hyperbolic

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kurt vonnegut said:

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dermdoc said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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What form of reconciliation, exactly, are you looking for? What does it look like? I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it looks like your version of 'peace and reconciliation' is the libs admitting they are wrong and you are right.

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I remember the days of Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neil. Very different views but were gentlemen and civil. Voters are going to follow their leaders' behavior.

And although I disagree with Clinton on some things, he could appease both sides in a civil manner, I believe there was a big decline in civil behavior with the Bush contested win over Gore.

The biggest problem is lack of common sense and critical thinking. And humility in understanding you represent the entire country. I honestly believe most Americans are more alike than they think.

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I very much agree that we've lost our civility. My concern was this post:

Quote:

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Not talking about Kurt but libs completely lack self awareness as to how they are perceived by non libs. It never changes. They simply do not get it.

And until that changes, we will never be united.

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How am I supposed to read this? Pretend I made this exact comment about Republicans. You'd think I was mad, or nuts, or something.

The problem I have with the quote above is that it puts all of the blame for our current political uncivility onto liberals and puts the full responsibility of fixing it on them.

How else am I to perceive your quote?

Surely, you would agree with me that there is plenty of uncivil behavior from the conservative side. I don't think you need me to start throwing out Trump quotes and asking you if you think they are civil. But, I can.

It we are going to unite, we ALL need to change. We have to all accept the personal responsibility of our actions and we have to all accept responsibility for standing up to the leaders we vote for.

Blaming it all on the other side is exactly counter productive to fostering the civility that you miss. And you can say that you don't mean to blame it all on one side. . . . but you kinda just did.

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BluHorseShu said:

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dermdoc said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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dermdoc said:

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I agree with you. I believe the dems really hurt themselves and shielded Trump by using the media and left wing celebrities to endorse Harris and deride Trump. Came across as very elitist and almost you are dumb if you support Trump. The dems did not identify with normal Americans in my opinion.

They ran an arrogant, elitist campaign and it hurt them just like in 2016. Instead of yelling stupid, racist, xenophobe, etc. maybe try to talk to people?

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Didn't you just say this wasn't a personality contest?

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For me it is not. For a lot of people it is.

Dems completely turn off half the country with their arrogance and elitism. And they completely lack self awareness as they obviously do not how they are perceived. They, like Trump, are their own worst enemies.

The difference is that I think Trump is fully aware of what he is doing and is using it to his advantage. The dems really believe they are smarter and better than everybody else and can not understand how the unwashed masses do not understand that. Completely clueless due to their own pride.

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I am curious, though, about this idea that all Dems are arrogant and elitist and hate us Christians on the right. Granted, I'm from and live in Texas, so I have almost zero experience with experiencing that kind of treatment from anyone that voting Democrat and I honestly don't follow enough left media to hear or see that. Not saying it isn't there, I'm sure it is, but I have a few close friends and family that don't resemble any of that. So I have to believe its a much much smaller progressive faction that perhaps controls the Dem party and campaign that are expressing this.
Certainly the problem the Dems had was that they let the progressives pull them way to far left. That's what I think has hurt them the most. The working class weren't going to go along with that. But to assume we can brush an entire voting group as monolithic is naive.

I'll concede, though, that maybe if I lived in a much larger left leaning area, maybe I would experience it.

One last thing about Trump....He had so many opportunities to simply change what people call TDS. He could have admonished those on Jan 6, he could have refrained from demeaning people, and most importantly, when the reporter asked him 'Have you ever asked God for forgiveness for your actions' and he said '"I am not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don't think so," he said. "I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't." That last one said a great deal about the man for me. People can spin that all day long and claim "well Jesus forgave our sins"...that's a cop out because that's not the question and we are all called to repent. You can't keep sinning and just work it out on your own and assume Jesus is cool with it. The degree of respect he could have garnered by just saying, "absolutely I've asked for forgiveness and that's all I have to say about it" would have been incredible.

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nortex97 said:

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There is just a tad bit of irony in the 'let's just unify now and be civil' argument from the left after they quite literally campaigned on 'the other guy is Hitler/nazi/racist/hates Puerto Rico' a week ago as their closing argument (and repeated 'very fine people' lies), also after threatening to imprison the conservative candidate for life if he lost.

Bannon: Folks, if we had lost on Tuesday, Donald Trump was going to spend the rest of his life in federal prison—10 or 20 years, to die in prison. That was the stakes. Didn’t quite work out, did it, folks? Didn’t quite work out. pic.twitter.com/neWYBFYI1V

— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) November 7, 2024

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Quote:

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Certainly the problem the Dems had was that they let the progressives pull them way to far left. That's what I think has hurt them the most.

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Rocag said:

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Quote:

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Certainly the problem the Dems had was that they let the progressives pull them way to far left. That's what I think has hurt them the most.

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Other than LGBT issues, in what ways are Democrats today more liberal than they were 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago? Support for marijuana legalization, I guess? But support for that isn't just the far left. On just about everything else, Democrats have stayed about the same or moved towards the center.

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Rongagin71 said:

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nm

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Quote:

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Back then, what seemed to be coalescing around me was a kind of post-Marxist anti-capitalism. It was a political melting-pot of anarchism, localism, indigenous perspectives, radical environmentalism, liberal commitments to democracy and various other strands, all of it uncoordinated and fervently anti-hierarchical. It was a mess, but it was an exciting mess. There was an optimistic energy about it. And though a lot of people involved, including me, were allergic to labels and boxes, there was no doubt that this was a movement of the left. You wouldn't see any conservatives on the barricades at the anti-WTO protests. Most of them were either inside hymning the virtues of 'free' trade, or over in Washington or London ginning up the next Middle East war.

How times have changed. Here in the early 2020s, the most incisive opponents of corporate globalisation can often be found on the right; or at least, not from any identifiable sector of the left. Conservative and 'post-liberal' critiques of the impact of globalisation on local communities, nation states, social cohesion, family formation, working class prospects, culture and even (though not often enough) the natural world are pouring out daily. The post-working class left, meanwhile, has veered into an identity politics cul-de-sac, dictated largely by its commitment to the elite class war and the associated culture of inversion that I wrote about in my last two essays. And because this 'progressive' left, which dominates the elite strata of Western countries, is drawn from the beneficiary class of globalisation, it is overwhelmingly supportive of the process.

The left anti-globalism that I once thought was the movement of the future is today barely in evidence anywhere. When it does rear its head its proponents stand a good chance of being labelled 'red-brown' crypto-fascists by an online mob of supposed radicals which cheers on government vaccine mandates, Big Tech censorship, the freezing of protestors' bank accounts, and the demonisation of the problematic working classes of their own nation.

As for NAFTA: the treaty that drew the Zapatistas' ire as a symbol of all that was wrong with the imperial project of corporate globalisation was eventually torn up, not by indigenous guerrilleros or a socialist Mexican government, but by a reality TV star-turned Republican US president, who believed that globalisation was a con-job which empowered transnational capital at the expense of nations and their people. Whatever else he may have been wrong about, he was right about that. Unfortunately, the left were too busy calling him a Nazi to notice the irony.

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Rocag said:

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That's absolutely the intent. Now I am sympathetic to the argument that in many cases the way those policies have been implemented are either ineffective or counter productive because there's a lot of truth to that.

Either way, the idea that modern DEI initiatives are an outgrowth of previous affirmative action policies isn't controversial. Yes, they didn't originally include things like sexual orientation but the original conception of affirmative action didn't include sex either so we've clearly been adding things to the list all along.

Which goes back to the original point that when people talk about Democrats moving to the far left what they are primarily taking about LGBT issues and little else.

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Rocag said:

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That's absolutely the intent. Now I am sympathetic to the argument that in many cases the way those policies have been implemented are either ineffective or counter productive because there's a lot of truth to that.

Either way, the idea that modern DEI initiatives are an outgrowth of previous affirmative action policies isn't controversial. Yes, they didn't originally include things like sexual orientation but the original conception of affirmative action didn't include sex either so we've clearly been adding things to the list all along.

Which goes back to the original point that when people talk about Democrats moving to the far left what they are primarily taking about LGBT issues and little else.

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Silent For Too Long said:

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You are speaking about DEI as if they only impacted hiring practices but we know they go much further then that.

They are used as a litmus test to ensure ideological good thinkers are hired, and use various initiatives to shame and drive out those who aren't. This is how you get companies that are almost 100% staffed by hard left progressives when at best they make up 30% of the population.

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"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

Matthew 7:15 https://t.co/2u2J076H5P

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) November 10, 2024

nortex97 said:

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LOL. I hope everyone can laugh at this.

"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

Matthew 7:15 https://t.co/2u2J076H5P

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) November 10, 2024

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