The 2021 Georgia Special Election thread

Here are some things that you can do about blatant corruption without calling for much of a sacrifice on your part or having super powers or anything.

1. Recognize it and publicly acknowledge it. It shouldn't take much effort to get you to admit blatant corruption is blatant corruption. And yet it has.

2. Talk and think about it honestly. You default to "everyone's doing it" and whataboutism without evidence. Even accepting for discussion's sake that every politician probably has some form of skeleton in their closet, that doesn't mean they have this particular skeleton.

3. Advocate for better candidates. Yes, maybe the die is already cast with Loeffler for this election cycle. But if you think that her corruption is truly intolerable, you can either push her to improve as one of her constituents and to try to make good for what she has done in whatever way makes sense to you, or you could support better candidates whose haven't committed acts of blatant corruption.

4. Stop treating politics as a game where you reflectively treat every Republican as worthy and every Democrat as suspect, instead of judging them by their actions.

Are you saying the Democrats haven't raised a big enough public fuss over Loeffler's stock trading and pandemic denialism?

What more would you suggest they do?

If it doesn't engender outrage in OF's basal ganglia, then it wasn't enough of a fuss.

This seems like as good a place as any for this.

Frankly, I don't know how it could be any clearer that a Perdue/Loeffler win means a slower recovery.

Mitch McConnell made it abundantly clear in 2009 that his only priority when there's a Democratic president is to make the country's situation as bad as possible so that his members get to blame the president for it in the midterms. Anything that has the potential to help the economy bounce back, he will block.

Perdue quarantining after being exposed to corona virus. Developing....

it will never not be this bozo's most bizarre affection that he constantly put's his own name in quotes because....WHY?

Imagine having a choice between an oligarch literally profiting off of the potential deaths of thousands, and someone who may or may not have had an underling allow a nasty prank at a camp and thinking this is a hard choice.

White Georgia cops or black man who's also a minister...who's possibly lying...hmmm

That incident is just the handiest excuse. There are other...reasons of course. But trying to debunk them is like playing whack a mole. It goes like this: he trots out a "reason". Someone debunks it. He dismisses the debunking because it comes from the "Lamestream Media". You ask what source he would trust. He responds that you'll just dismiss any source he cites and can't be bothered. Nice, eh?

In short, oldfellator is a worthless human being.

Telling.

In fairness to oldfella, if you buy into his way of thinking, Loeffler is one of only two senators standing between our country continuing to function as it has and the U.S. turning into a socialist hellscape. Even though that construct is blatantly false, the ends justify the means and it would not matter if Warnock was the most perfect human being and politician possible (other than being a Democratic dupe) and Loeffler were essentially the second coming of Hitler.

I do keep thinking, well, what would I do if there were a liberal equivalent of this, where a fundamentally objectionable candidate was the only thing saving the country from a fascist takeover. And of course, the first thing would be to push for a non-objectionable canddiate. Perhaps I would rationalize as oldfella seems to have done that "well, politicians are all corrupt anyway so Bizarro Liberal Loeffler's problems don't matter because we have to keep the country out of the hands of the fascists." What I am pretty sure I wouldn't do is justify my support of Bizarro Liberal Loeffler by pointing out ticky-tac problems with Bizarro Conservative Warnock's past from nearly 20 years ago, or pretend that Bizarro Liberal Loeffler is justified in her misdeeds.

for #4 - UNLESS by "what you can do" is meant as what "anybody" can do. Because as you know both sides do this. Is that an excuse? Not at all, but if you are singling me out (not accusing you) just making note of it - that would be some partisan hypocrisy of which I'm sure you disagree with.

Are you physically incapable of not resorting to whataboutism/bothsidesism?

You asked what you could do. It turns out some of the things you could do -- in fact, pretty much all of them -- are things anybody can do.

In so far as "both sides do this," as is often the case, it isn't actually as true of one side as another. There is a fair amount of dissent and internal criticism by Democrats of other Democrats. AOC and the Squad routinely take the centrist wing of the Democratic party to task for various things and vice-versa in a way that generally the Republicans have not been willing to criticize others within their party over what should be far more serious differences. And Democrats have generally been willing to work across the aisle in a way Republicans have not.

yes, of course.......your side is better. Didn't see this coming. And there is quite a bit of dissent and internal criticism among Republicans too, but since you aren't a Republican I'm not expecting you to be aware of this.

I think in honor of the new year I'll just cut and paste Raoul's comment in reply to all of your posts: "Are you physically incapable of not resorting to whataboutism/bothsidesism?"

I'm the only wordforge member who engages in whataboutism/bothsidesism? I did not know that! That makes me feel special!

Not. What. I. Said.

*Looks up which side is cheering on and bailing out Kyle Rittenhouse*
*Finds it's yours*
Yes.
The answer to your question is yes.

What about all those other people who engage in whataboutism/bothsidesism?

I can only hope you are trolling, in which case, bravo.

I did not say that one is better than the other, or that there is not criticism of Republicans of other Republicans. What I said was "it isn't actually as true of one side as another." Which should clue you into that there are times when it happens.

He lives in a binary universe.

If you aren’t careful he’s going to start calling you “smart” or even worse “genius”

Did you come up with that one all by yourself, genius?

Worse, my posts will trigger @Jenee and she'll launch into one of her Lisa-like "STOP PICKING ON OLDFELLA!!!" rants. Which, curiously, she doesn't aim at anyone but moi.

That's actually one of OF's favorite go-tos. You need to pay more attention.

I don’t pay him much attention.

Got something to say @MikeH92467 ?