You lost all moral high ground with your constant references to Trump a man of German ancestry as Hitler
Doesn’t work that way.
You want me to play ball on topics then that must be reciprocated.
If not I don’t care
I believe you believe you’ve never lost an argument on the Internet in the decade plus you’ve been on this site
Of course it works that way. I speak/engage/argue on the issues I choose to, and none others.
And I don’t want you to “play ball” on anything. You said some stupid shit and I defeated it easily. You think there is some sort of reciprocity involved there? You didn’t even put up a fight. You admitted you didn’t know what the fuck you were talking about and then quickly punched yourself in the chin. This part is just the bonus field-salting I get to do on account of your being a racist dick.
I’d tell you to enjoy the game, but if you are as un-American re: sports as you are re: everything else, you won’t be watching it.
Of course he won’t be watching - too many athletic non-Aryans.
I believe @therajraj prefers how things were… in the old days wink wink
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Madagascar won’t be so bad I promise
I made a long post about social capital with a few examples of how Dems have also burned it in recent years - These bonds of trust and relationships of mutual respect that enable our society to function. Of course, it goes both ways, but then I deleted my post because really, I don’t think any one individual approaches Trump in the ability to burn through social capital at such a rapid clip.
I need to read more about the Vietnam era, but I believe something similar happened when the tide of popular opinion turned against the war, it made it nearly impossible for a president to maintain enough support to continue. Once enough people decide they will not follow, a president becomes ineffective. Anybody know enough to draw parallels on that?
I did see your post; although you’re certainly free to keep it down, I thought it made some good points.
OK, time to watch the Super Bowl. Later, y’all.
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Thanks. I restored it, even though much of what I said is old news since we’re all focused on Trump now. The current degree of ugliness in our political discourse is really discouraging. That seems to be new for some of you. I’ve been discouraged about it for a while.
There are Nazis everywhere
Your cousin is rationalizing (not that there’s anything wrong with that). If it helps him sleep at night to interpret the MAGA tagline as referring to a less regulated American business climate, great. But ask him if he really–really–thinks that is what Trump’s team had in mind when they formulated it.
The GOP has been engaging in ‘straight white Christian identity’ politics for almost 40 years now, but you want to blame progressives for calling them on it? You excoriate Biden for his unnecessarily inflammatory remark regarding Romney, but conveniently forget the difficulty he (Romney) faced getting the evangelical portion of the GOP base to accept him–because in their view, he was not a ‘true’ Christian.
Finally, you (and others on this board) insist on standing the progressive observation in this regard on its head. The suggestion is not that ‘anyone who voted Trump is a bigot, misogynist, xenophobe, etc.’ Rather, it’s that in crafting his campaign, the Trump team intentionally (and rather pointedly) trafficked in these lesser angels of our nature, hoping that one or more would resonate with enough members of a timorous electorate to tip the election. (Newsflash: It worked.)
No one is saying that all Trump voters are bigots. We’re saying Trump intentionally sought the bigot vote. Big difference. It would help if you would take note of it.
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I don’t believe that is the case. I think that you–personally–believe Trump had something nefarious in mind when formulating the slogan and that you believe it to be self-apparent. However, perception is reality–there are millions of people who see that and think a combination of less small business regulation monsters and less apologies from our POTUS (perhaps not for yourself, but for many many people the so called “apology tour” really upset them).
There are lots of people who think in purely economic terms and there are a lot of small business owners like Zeb who consider the regulations hydra to be their biggest nightmare. That would not require any rationalizing, just a different perspective.
I think you would be wrong here. In fact, I know it.
I know that YOU are not suggesting that the majority of Trump voters are bigoted, sexist, racist, etc. You are intelligent and well spoken.
However I also know–quite personally–people that are saying this…including some sad human beings that called said voters “human garbage and filth”. I also know that there are a number of publications and media sources that are also suggesting that this is the case. In fact, even if they are not trying to quantify the ‘garbage’ they are suggesting that the primary driver to his victory lay in that sector. This simply isn’t factual when you try to crunch the numbers. It just isn’t.
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Hi raj,
I wanted to expound a little on the example I am of what you’re talking about:
My initial post was brief, but the wording was purposeful and was the same reason I denied smh’s initial quotation. The word “real” was meant to indicate that I only have one significant / substantial issue with your posts, not that I am otherwise in complete agreement with your beliefs outside of the responses they elicit from others. That’s why I bristled over the nihilism over principle comment directed, I felt, at me. I have both noticed and become progressively more annoyed with the burgeoning phenomenon of unrequited opinions being increasingly interpreted as manifestations of character flaws rather than as the starting line for a meaningful dialogue.
I don’t consider the ethics of your sociopolitical opinions to be insignificant, per se, but I also don’t come here for chronic hypertension and headache. A largely unfamiliar poster’s comments just don’t warrant anything more than an occasional furrowed brow as I weigh their case. Since you are, to me, not much more than a picture, a name, and some text that could be construed as trolling, I’m about as emotionally affected in your comments as I would be reading quotes from a textbook. I appreciate that you are an actual person, please don’t take this as an insult, but the reason I am otherwise detached from your comments is the same reason I don’t get picked clean by panhandlers every time I walk down the street.
I have fond memories of reading smh methodically thunder away after push et al. on a variety of Bush/Obama topics years back, which is why my recent observations of him seemingly swimming straight towards the riptide of whatever unproductive (to me) literary flow he’s in were being met unfavorably. Plus, the walls of fucking quotes. The increasingly frequent, and increasingly elaborate, insults were starting to distract from my reason for following the discussion in the first place.
So, not sure what you were expecting to see. I was unclear in my initial comment, having an unfortunate habit of inferring from others a more intimate familiarity with my basic premises than is advisable, and didn’t catch the underlying rationale for him commenting the way he did. I do enjoy occasional verbal roughhousing and can laugh off the punches, but at the end of the day, he’s free to post however he’d like and I wasn’t kidding when I said that I’d rather we just enjoy the weekend.
Please let me know if you’d like something more or less apologetic. I’ll even throw in some melancholic handwringing if it helps distance me from whatever you consider “the right” to be.
/self-indulgence
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Welp, there’s only one way to find out. Let us know what he says, PP.
Regarding the ‘alternative interpretation’ of MAGA as nostalgia for a less-regulated America: The fact is, the Trump campaign hired Steve Bannon, not Steve Forbes. Steve Bannon is who he is. Further, Trump made Bannon one of the most influential people in his administration. So when it comes to what Trump meant by ‘MAGA,’ you’ll forgive me for sticking to my guns.
Yes, we all know individuals (and lesser media outlets) who are saying every sort of crazy thing–out of anger, frustration, etc. Let’s not give their opinions more credence than they’re due, or weight than they deserve.
Likewise, let’s not use their craziness as an excuse to cloak ourselves in unearned victimhood, or to twist the facts to suit our narrative. The Trump organization ran a dog-whistle campaign. That they did so doesn’t mean everyone who voted for Trump responded to the sound.
I would like to see the analysis that led to the level of confidence implied by this comment.
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Ah, yes! The conspicuous absence of racism is a sure sign of racism!
Its presence is inversely proportional to its absence. By not saying anything racist, he was being completely racist!
Come on, Skyzyk, you’re a bright guy. Are you really suggesting that Trump wasn’t pandering to that crowd?
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No, I’m saying you can’t blame the speaker for what someone wants to hear.
The white power crowd has been disenfranchised since their party elected a black guy. They needed someone. That Trump stands and speaks in stark contrast to HRC and Obama just made it easy for them.
Calling it dog whistling is just an easy out from the fact that Trump didn’t say or do anything racist. No videos, no quotes, nothing. So it’s “dogwhistling”.
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Yes. Unforgivably so. I’ve nothing but distaste for the man. That’s not my point though, my point was that there are millions of low-information voters and people who don’t come from your background or perspective. Now, you and other high information voters might agree that MAGA was geared towards a dog whistle campaign. In fact, I’d be inclined to agree with you. However that doesn’t matter to people who view all of life differently than us. They do not perceive any rationalization, and they do not have trouble sleeping at night because their perception is completely different at its core.
It may be ill-informed, but it is what it is. The nature of politics is that in large part each voter sees what they wish to see…sadly. I also believe there are many like SkyzykS that are intelligent and just don’t see what you see.
I agree on both parts. I was responding to your statement suggesting that PP’s cousin is rationalizing rather than that he really believes his view. I don’t think that’s a good way to interpret many of the voter’s views (not the facts, but the way they see things). That doesn’t require twisting of facts, it simply requires recognizing that other people may see things differently entirely.
I believe one of the major ones was on Nate Silver’s 538 blog post mortem of the election. If I recall correctly similar articles appeared on various media outlets. There aren’t enough racist crazies to give him the election. I thought that the existence of these articles (both the allegations that racism, etc. was the reason DT won and the analysis) were common knownledge.
Do they even need pandering and is their voting block large enough to make it worthwhile? Would they have voted for Hillary otherwise?
I can see how you might get that impression, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think he was just using Quakers and Menonists as examples since there was a significant number of them present in Virgina at the time. We have to remember that the excerpt I posted was Madison’s argument against the Church of England receiving special treatment ie tax dollars. Couple that with the Virginia statute for Religious Freedon, which was drafted by Jefferson in 1777 (ratified in 1786), who was Madison mentor, guarantees religious freedom to all faiths and led to the establishment of Virginia’s first Synagogue (Kahal Kadosh Beth Shalome) in 1789. We also know that Jefferson drew heavily from Virginia’s politics when drafting the Bill of Rights. When you put these things together, I think it’s a safe assumption that Madison & Jefferson were speaking about religions and not sects of Christianity.