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I don't know why P1 and TA fight when they agree on so much. You're both not reading each other very charitably.

TA is not saying that Jews and Nazis should just have a beer -- more that not everyone on the right is an irredeemable Nazi and shouldn't be stereotyped as such.

Nor is TA wrong to say many turned to Trump because they were turned off by "identity politics" -- which is to say, being reminded every now and then that "American" is not synonymous with being white, Christian, middle-class, English-speaking in a monogamous, heterosexual marriage with 2.2 children living in a single-family house. They were very much turned off by that. It's very clear that the right has "identity politics" of its own -- you merely have to mumble "happy holidays" in a department store in the heartland to find that out. If a black stormtrooper or an all-female reboot of Ghostbuster offends you on anything more than an artistic level -- that's identity politics speaking, right there. What TA calls "identity politics" and P1 calls "racism and sexism" are in fact the very same thing.

I'm not surprised that the GOP indulges in culture war politics -- at this point, it's all they got left. And to the extent that Democrats fight fire with fire, I think that reflect poorly on us. But going back to my earlier point -- I am not interested in which side has the worst minds, but which side has the best. Where are the people who are just interested in electing responsible leaders who have a clear-eyed and knowledgeable understanding of the many facets of running a government? Who are they voting for?

You know nothing, but that's mostly cause you're American, and from Alaska!!! Yaay

cashto wrote:QUOTE (cashto @ Nov 3 2018, 04:45 PM) TA is not saying that Jews and Nazis should just have a beer -- more that not everyone on the right is an irredeemable Nazi and shouldn't be stereotyped as such.

Look, Cashto, you don't experience this level of hate first hand. That's the whole point I make behind "you're white, cis, het, and male." It's not just nazis who do this, it's the bulk of the right. Look at the number of people who vote for Steve King. Look at how popular Trump was in the Republican primary. People aren't cheering on Trump despite his racism, his racism is the very feature they voted him in for. His 40% approval rating is the fact that 40% of the country agrees that non-white people shouldn't be allowed into this country.

cashto wrote:QUOTE (cashto @ Nov 3 2018, 05:45 PM) TA is not saying that Jews and Nazis should just have a beer -- more that not everyone on the right is an irredeemable Nazi and shouldn't be stereotyped as such.

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Nov 3 2018, 05:51 PM) His 40% approval rating is the fact that 40% of the country agrees that non-white people shouldn't be allowed into this country.

I think I'll probably just leave it here - cheers.

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Nov 3 2018, 04:51 PM) Look, Cashto, you don't experience this level of hate first hand. That's the whole point I make behind "you're white, cis, het, and male." It's not just nazis who do this, it's the bulk of the right. Look at the number of people who vote for Steve King. Look at how popular Trump was in the Republican primary. People aren't cheering on Trump despite his racism, his racism is the very feature they voted him in for. His 40% approval rating is the fact that 40% of the country agrees that non-white people shouldn't be allowed into this country.

No, I get it. Trump's 40% approval is about 39 points higher than it has any right to be, IMO. And it's a very difficult fact to explain. Can so many people really be "mentally defective"? Well, I won't say this, but I will say I evidently have unrealistically high expectations as to the rationality of the common man.

And you're right, I'll never have the joy of experiencing transphobia first hand. Or systematic racism, or sexism. I have that luxury. But I'm still a liberal, atheist, coastal elite married to a hispanic immigrant. I still mark a few boxes on the hate checklist.

If it makes you feel any better, I don't think it's hate, per se. The fraction that want you dead, won't talk to you, hide their children from you -- still probably pretty low. Elie Weisel said that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. They don't hate you, because they don't know you. You and I are an abstraction to them. At worst, they don't care about us, and they don't get upset when Trump says mean things about us, because it's not personal to them.

I think Clinton was right when she said that not all Trump supporters are deplorable. (She got a lot of flak for saying it, but it's 50% more credit than Trump will ever give us). Half of the people -- racism, sexism, and xenophobia isn't what drew them to Trump. They weren't dealbreakers either, obviously, but at the end of the day I think it was tribalism and good old-fashioned anti-liberal prejudice that brought them to the polls. These were the people they were voting against -- the caricature of the big-government, out-of-touch, elite establishment bureaucrat liberal.

Directed at Alaskan, not Cashto:

This is what I honestly expect from people these days tbh. It's this stubborn insistence that "no, they're not *bad,* they just don't know." Don't know WHAT? Watch Fox News. They don't make money highlighting accomplishments of the Republican administration, they make money telling people that a couple thousand asylum seekers are going to destroy our country by being illegally registered to vote so they vote democrat.

But I'm the crazy one because I live in a reality where when someone cheers on a President for saying that you should attack media members, I presume, for SOME $#@!ing reason, that they're cheering him on because of what he says.

Maybe once upon a time you could live in a fantasy world where Republican voters don't actually want to lock children in cages and actually *do* care about the sheer number of minorities who are shot in our streets by cops for no good $#@!ing reason, but you can't live in that world any more. Not when the Roberts court just *gutted* the voting rights act. Not when Ted Cruz is going to win an election immediately after coming out in public in favor of Rep. Steve King.

If you think IA's Steve King wins votes despite him being an actual, honest to god nazi apologist and a white supremacist rather than because of it, you're JUST NOT PAYING ATTENTION.

If you think the average person is seriously concerned about whether or not someone's a "globalist" or if there's money in politics and that's why they hate (and mail bombs to) George Soros, you're JUST NOT PAYING ATTENTION.

And when people scream and holler and shout HEY LOOK OVER HERE THESE GUYS ARE LITERALLY TRYING TO KILL US and you tuck your head between your buttcheeks and go "but mah civility," I am so $#@!ing sorry that I'm not willing to entertain your petty-ass dreams of a nuanced debate in America. Right now there are two sides: there is the side that is actively engaged in killing minorities for fun and profit and the side which is not. If the reason you're not on the "not" side is because the "not" side isn't polite enough for you, then blow it out your mother$#@!ing ass.

A supreme court nominee literally went on a 10 minute tirade about how all democrats are @#(!, got nominated anyways, and we're here talking about whether or not the left is civil.

The reason Goebbels playbook works is because humans naturally want to presume the best in the humans around them.

https://twitter.com/RevDrBarber/status/ ... 4235836417

What do you think "christian values" means. Do you think it's any of the stuff Jesus said or did, or is it more likely because he's taken a very firm stance against LGBT rights? Do you sincerely, honestly, actually, in the bottom of your heart believe that people keep saying Trump is defending christian values because he's doing the things in the bible? Do you actually, sincerely, factually, in this reality, believe that these people can be debated with? Their fundamental position is that I do not deserve to exist and you want me to sit down and have a cup of tea with them.

And do you seriously believe even for a single second that the people who are cheering on these people as they make these claims are doing so out of something other than agreement with the dog whistle?

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/stat ... 9412606976

Nope. No overt appeals to racism here. Or if they are there, it's probably because those overt calls to racism don't work since these people aren't actually racist.

holy @#(! today created some walls of text. you all should log in and play!

I did. I played from ~1pm to like 5:30, just finished beating up on Avis in a game that had me pulling my hair out and involved the loss of about seven techbases.

Where were you?

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Nov 3 2018, 09:19 PM) I did. I played from ~1pm to like 5:30, just finished beating up on Avis in a game that had me pulling my hair out and involved the loss of about seven techbases.

Where were you?

at work...