BREAKING: U.S. Civil War commences

Oddly I agree, inflexibility is a human trait which is common to left and right.

Probably best to avoid the conscript/SS analogy but the idea everyone who voted for Trump is mentally deficient is unhelpful.

I wish OF would just tell us what he really thinks so we could just ban his ass.

well proper (by popular opinion) inspiration makes it all okay then. Again I have a solution that's drastic, but drastic times call for drastic measures. And my ideas would fit right in with the Biden regime's ideals and philosophy:

1) no more white cops unless those white cops are unarmed. Many cops in England don't carry guns, I say let's give it a try at least.
2) no more arresting or detaining blacks.

BOO-YA! No more summer riots, or at least it will help reduce the number of them. Can you believe I'm not running for HMIC?
At the very least I bet Biden can create a cabinet post for me.

I'm thinking the same thing about you. Regardless I've already posited my beliefs & ideals - you however remain mysteriously silent for the most part.
You are voting "properly" so that keeps you off the radar for now at least - well played.

Here's the thing. Unlike your friend's grandfather, GOP voters aren't conscripted to vote Republican. They aren't forced by their very survival to stay silent or to go actively along with the whole Republican agenda or its tactics. They can denounce the things that they do or should consider unacceptable (blatant lies, the support of violence, white supremacy for starters) while seeking whatever policy goals.

Instead, the majority of Republicans now seem to support Trumpism. And while many Republicans privately and even publicly oppose it, we are way past the point where taking an ostrich-like stance toward it could be acceptable.

Or just no more police killing people out of hand?

If you really can't see the difference between the two "protests " then put it this way:

I'm not trying to win points here, I'm not a member of antifa, I'm not even someone who identifies as "left wing".

I'm just someone who sees a huge distinction between a mainly peaceful and justified civil rights movement on the one hand and a violent politically motivated insurrection on the other.

That's not just wordplay.

I don't know if anyone is arguing that voting for Trump makes one mentally deficient.

I think a fairer version is that someone who voted for Trump in 2020 after he gave plenty of evidence over the previous four years of reasons not to (including, but not limited to, his incompetence at virtually every aspect of the actual job, his near-constant lying, his corruption, his bullying, his tolerance of or active support of white supremacists, his embrace of autocrats and rejection of allies, his lack of character, his attacks on democracy itself) fall into three camps: those who actively support him even knowing this evidence (indeed, who consider some or all of these things desireable) those who support him reluctantly because they think such things are prices worth paying for pro-life judges, tax cuts or other forms of political or social power, and those who support him either being ignorant or in denial about large swaths of evidence he has provided in the past four years.

I would say you can be in any of the three categories without being mentally deficient. But morally deficient is another question. If someone voted for Trump and even after the insurrection doesn't do a little soul-searching, I don't know what to say.

good point, and I for one would love for Trump to STFU and golf. Get some new blood in the Republican party. Ron DeSantis is looking like a good prospect for example.
But thanks to the Democratic party stirring the hornet's nest with their second impeachment joke, it probably only empowered any Trump 2024 fans, but that's just a theory.

You don't know what to say but you sure mention it a lot. Questioning the morality of people who don't vote the way you do is part of the problem, and a great example of why the right doesn't trust the Democratic party and liberals in general. If Biden wants unity he better mandate it or STFU about it.

I think politics has become about team sports. You're not going to get a lot of introspection from voters, it's all about the team.

You know perfectly well that about 80% of voters always vote party line. It’s easier than actually thinking. D always votes D, R always votes R.

That most voters vote party line most of the time does not justify voting party line all of the time. When someone emerges who shows as many obvious problems athere comes a point where accepting them is not acceptable, no matter what party they are from. My argument is are well past that point with. Trump.

I would like to think that Democrats would not consider someone merely accused of a fraction of what Trump has done in any way acceptable. And there are never-Trumper conservatives, although unfortunately they do not hold the sway that they should.

It's wrong to question the morality of people who support indefinite separation and imprisonment of families for crossing an imaginary line on the map in their quest to save their children from poverty?

"Oh well, they didn't vote for that, they voted for Trump" -- Trump is the guy to do something to stop that. Where were all the Trump supporters telling him to put an end to it?


That said, I do agree that often we jump to condemning each other on moral grounds as a way of "winning" the argument without having to have an actual discussion. But in Trump's case I think the relevant discussions have been had, or should have been had for anyone who cares, about what is and is not Okay.

I don’t know. You might see more people like Liz Cheney emerge from the party and she might even be gearing up to run for President. I think a lot of the old guard is sick of him, but the base loves him so they’re going to have to figure out how to reconcile the two.

He's certainly going to be a major figure for the next few years.

But without twitter, without the bully pulpit, and as more and more people internalize what happened on Jan 6th, he's likely to be marginalized over time.

And then there's the endless civil suits and almost certainly quite a few criminal charges coming his way.

I think @oldfella1962 should serve well here as an illustration.

He made the choice in 2016 to vote Trump and I can't blame him for that, in a two party system you have little choice and he's a right wing voter. No one knew at that point how the future would play out.

Come 2020 and he still supported Trump for whatever reason, but what was he going to do?

He's ideologically against "the left", he can't vote Democrat, so he either abstains or doubles down.

The logical move if you can't stomach either option would be to abstain from voting altogether but that means admitting you have been wrong for the past four years. That's not an easy swallow when you have become entrenched in a binary competition, when you have consistently espoused a position and engaged in heated, often insulting, exchanges.

So, like many, he stood by his position and found ways to bolster his argument to find proof he had made the right choice all along. That's a well documented human tendency, the tendency to justify our choices after the fact rather than acknowledge an error. No one wants to be that wrong and he can't dissociate himself from hundreds of past statements, so he doubles down on them.

Combine that with the tribal nature of modern politics and it's not hard to see how intractable voters can become and how given a choice between softening their position or moving further to extremes one looks a lot more like "victory" than the other.

Never seen a corrupt left wing government?

Most people would have made similar comments about Republicans only a few years back. The lesson here should be that no nation is above the risk and we should be very very careful about where we go next.

In other words become a dictator?

I have no idea what "voting 'properly'" and "off the radar" mean. Coming from a radar tech this seems important. Explain please?

I'm calling absolute bullshit on the "there was no way to know in 2016" line.

We fucking knew.

There was the "grab 'em by the pussy" tape.

There was his assholism at the debates.

There were his stated positions at the debates.

There was the "I'll pay your legal bills" violence at his rallies.

Hillary warned us about what he'd do to the supreme court, and women's rights, and as corny-ass as "Trumped up trickle down" was, she was fucking right.

Oh, and "basket of deplorables" was fucking right too.
All the fucking butt-hurt in the right over that, and then they turned right around, and were fucking deplorable.
Shit on the walls deplorable.

We had the record of how he treated his ex-wives.

There was the Central Park Five shit.

There were movies and documentaries on his buddy Roy Cohn.

On, and on, and on....

If you didn't know, you were under a rock.
Wordforgers aren't under a rock.
We talked about this shit.
Oldfella fucking knew.
He didn't fucking care.
It was revenge for Obama.
Obama broke Republicans brains, and they had to lash out.
It's as raw and animal as that.
There was no deep philosophical soul searching, or Machiavellian calculating.
"Own the libs!! Own the libs!! We'll show you!! We'll show you!".

And we knew THAT in 2016 too!
Don't act now like you fucking didn't.
Don't you fucking dare.

Care to wind the tone down just a tad?

I didn't vote Trump, I warned people at the time.

However here and now I'm describing what I have observed about people, how large scale movements gain momentum. Feel free to correct any of those observations, but I'm doubting you can because they're all all so well documented.

The question is not who we can harangue over the internet in displays of impotent rage but how we can mitigate against such things happening again.

One suggestion I would make is that a two party system is particularly vulnerable to tribalism.

Where there is no legitimate third option or protest vote people will inevitably tend to vote according to form and that is s self perpetuating phenomenon. The worse their decisions turn out to be the more they will dig in and try to justify them, until they corner themselves and have to choose between a very painful and socially ostracising reversal or extremism.

Factor group dynamics, selection bias in the datasphere, peer pressure and the ways in which people value group identity and this will always happen unless the system itself is reviewed.

I guess you’re not familiar with the Clintons.

Interesting! Do you ever anticipate that a lefty version of "Trump" could be elected and that you, by default/association, would be so amoral that there is no need for argument
to condemn you? No, never with the left, it's scientifically impossible!

What is it you think the Clintons did?

Mind you, I do not like either Bill or Hillary, but my issues with them are not political. Hence my question.

You say "lefty version", but what you are missing from the "version" is that most of the left do not listen to propaganda. We listen to verifiable, reliable news sources. So, it would never be as easy to sway "the left" in the same way "the right" is swayed.

Biden has publicly stated (google it) that anybody who leads by executive order is a dictator.....and then he sets about signing more executive orders on his first day than the last five presidents combined. That's our boy Joe!

What are you even trying to say here?

I mean, I can tell that it's an attempt at deflection. But the train of logic appears to have jumped a few tracks.

I’m pretty sure Bill Clinton is a sexual predator who’s assaulted women. Hillary broke a federal law that should have landed her in prison for ten years. Democrats were willing to ignore both of those things.