Thought for the Day

[KnightHawk 2.0]

It looks like the Republican civil war might be over with barely a shot fired. After a week or two of soul-searching, the party establishment appears to have decided that they can't do without Trump and his supporters, so they've reverted to their old habits of appeasing him.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...d-trump-463684

Not surprised at all the Republican Party reverted back to their old habits by appeasing the Demagouge And Malignant Narcissist Donald Trump,and all that talk about unity from the Republicans was bullshit,because they never had any intention on coming together and uniting and healing the country.

[broncofan]

Without starting some big thing, I would like to point out that if we're going to talk about political parties "holding themselves to a higher standard," it is quite disingenuous to apply this demand to Republicans while ignoring the behavior of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY for the last 4 years - in particular its behavior since the George Floyd incident.

Democratic elected officials have promoted rioting, sedition, and murder. The party's adherents have turned some parts of this country into literal war zones. For 4 years they have behaved like 4-year-olds, utterly failing to accept the results of the 2016 election. "Not My President" has been the cry from these naive children.

The Republicans, in defeat, have been quite tame compared to the violent excess of the Democrats. Stricly objectively, it's the very limit of hypocrisy for Democrats to act as if they suddenly occupy the high moral ground of political methodology. Half of the people crying out for Trump's post-presidency impeachment should rightfully be in prison right now, and probably would be if the election had gone the other way.

Anyway, again, not looking to start some big debate. We all know nobody here is going to change anyone else's mind about politics. But let's not act as if Republicans have the monopoly on political temper tantrums. If anything, they are mere plebs compared to the Democrats when it comes to showing one's ass.

I am against rioting no matter who is doing it. I guess what I'd ask you is whether Joe Biden supported vandalism or violence? Did he incite violence or engage in the kind of conspiracy mongering Trump did? You will remember that all of our intelligence agencies concluded that Russia did hack the DNC. Nobody credible concluded anything about shredded ballots or the batshit stuff Trump has promoted. He filed 60 lawsuits without any real evidence and tried to subvert every political process we have including using the potential for violence to pressure Pence to impede the peaceful transfer of power.

The former President promoted outrageous lies about the election, he refused to concede at any point, and during the counting of the votes tried to claim victory because he knew the mail-in ballots were counted last and he had discouraged his supporters from sending in those ballots. He then spent more than two months claiming he would remain President. During that time he tried to extort Brad Raffensperger into calling Georgia for him. The vandalism he incited was not against a privately owned building, which is indefensible, but was, more dangerously, against our capitol.

Many of the people who broke into the capitol were looking to hang Mike Pence and kill legislators. They did kill a police officer and injured many others. Afterwards he told them he loved them.

You might have an argument if storming the capitol to overturn an election were simply vandalism, if saying "not my President" was the same thing as the President promoting outlandish conspiracy theories and refusing to concede, and if the people who stormed the Capitol were protesting some civil rights violation and were not people waving the confederate flag and wearing Camp Auschwitz shirts. Everything about what he did threatened the very basis of our democracy and tried to empower the worst people in our society (Neo-Nazis).

No the Democrats aren't perfect and any fringe person shouldn't be in the party. For Republicans, that is who is at the helm. A Representative who thinks there are Jewish space lasers and senators and congress-people who lie up until the minute people start getting killed and then pretend they didn't.

[filghy2]

The Republicans, in defeat, have been quite tame compared to the violent excess of the Democrats.

I assume this is some kind of joke - you making a deliberately outrageous statement just to provoke a reaction.

On the oft chance you are actually serious, here is a link to Hillary Clinton's concession speech, which you seem to have missed. https://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/09/p...ech/index.html

Perhaps you'd like to give us some links on how the Democrat party tried to overturn the result in the courts and Congress, pressure state electoral officials and goad an armed Democrat mob into storming the Capitol.

[Stavros]

Without starting some big thing, I would like to point out that if we're going to talk about political parties "holding themselves to a higher standard," it is quite disingenuous to apply this demand to Republicans while ignoring the behavior of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY for the last 4 years - in particular its behavior since the George Floyd incident.

Democratic elected officials have promoted rioting, sedition, and murder. The party's adherents have turned some parts of this country into literal war zones. For 4 years they have behaved like 4-year-olds, utterly failing to accept the results of the 2016 election. "Not My President" has been the cry from these naive children.

The Republicans, in defeat, have been quite tame compared to the violent excess of the Democrats. Stricly objectively, it's the very limit of hypocrisy for Democrats to act as if they suddenly occupy the high moral ground of political methodology. Half of the people crying out for Trump's post-presidency impeachment should rightfully be in prison right now, and probably would be if the election had gone the other way.

Anyway, again, not looking to start some big debate. We all know nobody here is going to change anyone else's mind about politics. But let's not act as if Republicans have the monopoly on political temper tantrums. If anything, they are mere plebs compared to the Democrats when it comes to showing one's ass.

A few points.

1) In a two party system it is easy to fall into the either/or trap. I don't know that the Democrats have been presented here as 'the good guys', if you care to read back through a lot of posts you will find I have been critical of the party. Do both parties benefit from Gerrymandered districts? Yes. Do both parties run their machines free of corruption? No (name me one party anywhere in the world that does not habitually bend or break the rules). Do both parties manipulate the procedures in Congress to their own benefit? Yes, as in, that's the nature of Congressional politics.

2) The agument that the Democrats never accepted the result of the 2016 election on one level is factually wrong, as filghy2 points out Hillary Clinton conceded the election to Trump, and moreover, attended the 2017 Inauguration ceremony. The obvious problem, one that your election system can present at times, is that Clinton won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College, which to some Americans, is a challenge to legitimacy -yes, you have this system, but it has rarely produced two different results, and you have no mechanism to resolve the contradiction.

3) Legitimacy -what has been unique in the Trump dilemma, is that the legitimacy of the 2016 result has been challenged because Trump himself not only broke the 1971 Election Campaign Law when he twice in one day publicly solicited the help of the Russian Governmen in his campaign, the evidence of the Mueller Enquiry and the Senate Intelligence Committee is that the Trump campaign met with Russians close to the Russian Government more than 100 times, at the same time that the Russians were hacking the computers of the DNC. Call it co-operation if not collusion, then ask how many members of that campaign ended up in Prison for what they did? How many members of Democrat campaigns over the years ended up in prison for breaking the law?

It looks to me like there is a case for treason if it can be established that at the very momen the Russians were attacking the USA, the Trump campaign, which had a moral and a legal duty to reject Russian offers of help, moreover, to inform the FBI/CIA that such offers had been made, chose instead to join the Russian attack against the USA.

If you factor in the basis of the Impeachment, that the US President sought the help of a foreign government in his election campaign against a fellow American, then you have the deep suspicion that Trump and his campaign have used and relied on foreign support unike any other President or Presidential campaign in US history -that is the measure of the challenge to Trump's legitimacy problem, underlined even more when sitting next to Vladimir Putin, Trump publicly endorsed the views of Russian, rather than American intelligence.

Has any US President ever publicly undermined the Intelligence Services of his country in favour of a Foreign Government, and, moreover, one viewed as hostile to the USA?

4) yes, we can agree that as a man, Trump is ignorant, stupid, vulgar, vain, a liar and a racist, but that's just tough luck on the US. But ask yourself how many Presidents have lined their pockets with tax-payers money as Trump has done, playing golf only at places he owns, knowing the cost will benefit his business? Obama played golf too, but never made a dime from it, Trump has made millions from it, and with a security detail for life has a guaranteed revenue stream as long as he only plays golf in places he owns. Trump might have done the US a favour by deliberately undermining the Office of the Presidency by breaking its norms and values, if it means Congress fine tunes the law on what a President can and cannot do.

5) You might suggest that just as the Republicans have their QAnon supporters, the TEA Party, Armed Militias, 'Christian' Fundamentalists and the Koch Brothers, the Democrats have BLM, Wall St and other Billionaire backers -presumably Bill Gates and George Soros-and a motley group of Feminists, Radical Feminists, Green/Environmental activists, LGBT+ activists -but is it not the case, that these groups are all working within the US political system to extend its remit, its inclusiveness, rather than against it?

Republicans actively purge voter rolles, suppress the vote, and spent more than 40 years filleting the Voter Regstration Act of 1965 as part of the Cancel Culture they accuse Democrats of. They have made every atttempt they can to Cancel Roe-v-Wade and have succeeded at the State level in doing so through the re-definition of term limits.

Thus, even if you set aside the assault on the Capitol, of the two parties, neither of which are perfect, only one has actively sought to de-legitimise the electoral process, to exclude Americans from voting, and that is the Republican Party. It has reached a point where not only is the US system in a fragile condition, so too is the Republican Party, now tearing itself apart because it cannot decide who its leader is, what its policies are and should be, and to whom it is appealing for support. The Democrats are divided too, but their divisions are shaped by policies not personalities, which makes them more congenial to the open debate that is what enables Liberal Democracies to survive.

For now the fundamental question is this: does the Republican Party believe Liberal Democracy is the best system of Government for the USA? And it is the only one of the two parties asking the question, and appearing in some cases to reply, 'No' -this is the core dilemma now for those who vote for and support the Republican Party, and that 'other America' they ignore, who must live with the consequences of four destructive years that resulted in 25 million people infected with Covid-19, over 400,000 deaths and a President who didn't care.

[Nick Danger]

Wow looks like I've dropped myself right into the middle of a hornets' nest here.

But if you guys would be willing to accept just one simple fact, I think we can all get out of here alive. That fact is that you are looking at the world through liberal-colored spectacles, and I am looking at it through conservative-colored spectacles.

It's not much more complicated than that. I saw what Trump did. I'm pretty sure he was in bed with Putin. I'm 100% sure he used the office of the Presidency to enrich himself and his family. And certainly, from one perspective, it could easily be said that he handled the pandemic crisis poorly - although for myself I've maintained all along that it was more damaging to the USA to shut down the economy than it would have been to allow the virus to simply run its course and cull the weak, which pretty much happened anyway and would have happened despite our best efforts. I.E., we have yet to parse the number of deaths that can be attributed directly to the impact of the economic shutdown rather than the virus itself, but I'm guessing...comparable numbers. Point being that Trump and I are in agreement on how he should have handled the pandemic.

And in summary to my original point, the things you see as problems, I see as clever. For example, I don't see the big problem with the "Russian election interference" issue. The Russians interfere in every election, whether you know that or not - and so does every other first-world nation with an intelligence service. They all have their preference in an American election. It bothers me more that Putin preferred Trump over Clinton than it does that he helped get Trump elected. But it doesn't bother me that Trump used all the pieces already in play to secure his victory.

Trump was no more poorly-behaved than any other President, but his flaws were amplified constantly by the media. I won't say this is unprecedented, George W. Bush got quite a bit of that treatment but he got it in the days before social media was omnipresent.

So I'm a little brainwashed right now, guys. And so are you. We probably agree on a lot of fundamental issues but we'll never know it, because now we're all just pawns of the media, suckling at the giant corporate teat of information, misinformation, disinformation, spin, outright lies and under-reported truths.

Unfortunately what we've had for the past 4 years is a uniquely 4-branched government that has been forced to concede to the (mostsly) liberal media on several occasions. No other President in history has encountered such vigorous opposition from the press, and the average American citizen, bless his little pea-sized brain, is now essentially unable to discern the difference in media spin and hard truth.

The very definition of "divisive" is up for grabs right now. Was Trump divisive? Sure, I guess, if you call "winning when a bunch of people didn't want you to win" divisive. Seems like the Democrats are totally willing to throw the word "divisive" out there to describe any action with which they disagree, so who's actually doing the "dividing?"

Anyway, I'll tell you guys right now, I am not even a little upset that Biden won. It's nothing more than the usual ebb and flow of politics. If you want my opinion on what's going to happen over the next 4 years, here it is: The LGBT community is going to get everything it wants. Blacks, Hispanics, Women, and Immigrants are going to get everything they want. Inflation is going through the roof, that will be unavoidable. Unemployment will rise as business regulation increases. By the end of Biden's 4 years we will be living in a borderline dystopia in which everyone is equally fucked.

Then in 2024, amidst the economic shambles, we'll elect another Republican. He'll reverse a lot of Democratic policies, kill Obamacare (again), and fix the economy. HOPEFULLY that will keep him too busy to cater to the Religious Right, and everyone who has obtained their human rights during this coming Democratic administration will be allowed to keep them.

There is no happy ending, guys. Just a continuous back-and-forth cycle of opposing ideas. We could hash all those out here and now. But for me, I'm prepared to simply agree to disagree at this point. Frankly, the USA is giving me a headache.

[broncofan]

although for myself I've maintained all along that it was more damaging to the USA to shut down the economy than it would have been to allow the virus to simply run its course and cull the weak, which pretty much happened anyway and would have happened despite our best efforts. I.E., we have yet to parse the number of deaths that can be attributed directly to the impact of the economic shutdown rather than the virus itself, but I'm guessing...comparable numbers.

The choice wasn't between shutting down the economy and herd immunity by infection. In fact, carefully tailored health measures in a bunch of countries resulted in fewer deaths and less economic loss. People could have been encouraged to wear masks instead of being told by the President well after April 3 (when there was a consensus about presymptomatic transmission) that the verdict was still out on whether they're effective. Or being told that the virus was like the flu, would magically disappear, that hydroxychloroquine works, or any number of pseudo-scientific things.

We have 450,000 deaths from covid and our excess deaths this year are in that range. Excess death data will tell you with some reasonable probability whether you have an additional cause of death in a given year and whether it's consistent with the deaths you attribute to a new cause of death. Do you have any evidence that anywhere close to 450,000 deaths have been caused by the "economic shutdown"?

I focus on this part of your post because it's the part that isn't just vague characterizations about how everyone is biased, both sides are the same, one man's insurrection is another man's disagreement etc.

[broncofan]

Trump was no more poorly-behaved than any other President, but his flaws were amplified constantly by the media. I won't say this is unprecedented, George W. Bush got quite a bit of that treatment but he got it in the days before social media was omnipresent.

Someone else can maybe address this, though that's not a demand if you think it's pointless. Before I saw Nick responded I was going to write a paragraph about how the fact/opinion distinction is not always conceptually clear. Facts can be made to look murky by bad faith and opinions can be almost universally agreed upon. Whether someone's behavior is poor is a matter of opinion but to the extent most people have similar criteria for it I don't think this is true. I also don't see any way to resolve this except by listing behaviors of Trump, describing why they're "poor" and asking you to name comparably bad behaviors of previous presidents that aren't mischaracterizations.

[broncofan]

Nick tldr: there is no such thing as a fact and everything is reducible to opinion. Black is white, white is black, and there isn't any difference because it's all subjective and that's part of the game. Vice is virtue, Trump is good, but so is corruption. Also, here are a bunch of opinions, each one of which can be easily rebutted but the rebuttal is simply an expression of your bias.

[Nick Danger]

We have 450,000 deaths from covid...

Exactly. And the exact same people who would be wearing masks if there was a nationwide mask mandate from the first sniffle in Wuhan are wearing masks, and the same people who won't wear masks even if it means not being allowed into a grocery store are still not wearing them.

I've been alive long enough to recognize a half-measure when I see one - the kind of measure governments take when they're expected to do something but don't know what the fuck to do. The mask thing is a farce IMO, just another token half-measure by a government that is in truth helpless against this pandemic.

Now, at the same time I feel that way, I also respect YOUR right to buy into the mask mandate. I respect it so much that I wear a mask, Bronco. Even though I don't think it helps, I stifle my face with one of those hot, uncomfortable pieces of recycled garbage every time I get out of my car. EXCLUSIVELY out of respect for YOUR opinion.

Now that's the kind of bi-partisan, across-the-aisle cooperative effort that's going to lead humanity hurtling full-speed into the current light at the end of the current tunnel.

[filghy2]

If you want my opinion on what's going to happen over the next 4 years, here it is: The LGBT community is going to get everything it wants. Blacks, Hispanics, Women, and Immigrants are going to get everything they want. Inflation is going through the roof, that will be unavoidable. Unemployment will rise as business regulation increases. By the end of Biden's 4 years we will be living in a borderline dystopia in which everyone is equally fucked.

Then in 2024, amidst the economic shambles, we'll elect another Republican. He'll reverse a lot of Democratic policies, kill Obamacare (again), and fix the economy. HOPEFULLY that will keep him too busy to cater to the Religious Right, and everyone who has obtained their human rights during this coming Democratic administration will be allowed to keep them.

If your previous over-confident predictions fail, why not make some new equally over-confident predictions. How many of your predictions in this thread proved to be correct? http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/sho...trannies+trump

I'm not going to waste time addressing your points because it's all just a false equivalence game. As long as you kind find examples of things other politicians have done that resemble what Trump has done in some way you can say "see, he's no worse than others", but you're asking us to ignore the degree and overall pattern of his behaviour.