Democrat/Liberal Soul Searching

Edd70 said:
I could talk at great length about this but I’m pessimistic about swaying Trumpers primarily because of conservative media.

Anything the Dems propose will immediately be painted as an assault on freedoms by Rush and the rest. If the Dems offered free blowjobs for all Alex Jones will convince them it’s a stake in the heart of liberty. It need not make sense.
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All that sort of reaction is likely true... but give it a little while with Biden during the transition and at the helm in his early days. People can grow tired quickly of pushing back against a non-assaultive head of state. The effect after all can be quite startling. It can be like going to pick up a #10 storage canister you thought was full of sugar or dried split peas or some such but it happens to be empty. You can nearly dislocate a shoulder that way...

Anyway I don't care who listens to Rush Limbaugh, do you? Some media outlet will sooner or later report which celebrity ol' Rush is touting to replace the tired ol' guy what's his name got booted outta the White House.

The guy to worry about painting Dem proposals as an assault on freedoms or socialist or just "mean" (do we not expect the Rs to project their own schtick upon the Ds?) is Mitch McConnell.

If McConnell decides for some inexplicable reason (from my own POV, admittedly) that he's not going to negotiate w/ Biden for benefit to all sides, but instead will attempt to make Joe a one term prez as he threatened to do in Obama's first term, that could make the next two years pretty ugly if Mitch keeps enough of a hold on a slim majority in the Senate. On the other hand McConnell may remember that in 2018 American had grown tired of the obstructionism and flipped the House blue. Now that blue House margin has slipped some to the right. Mitch may not want to put that hint of more rightward potential at risk. No one voted for gridlock. Time will tell.
 
I do think the right-wing propaganda machine is dangerous, and the Facebook version of it is arguably more troublesome than Fox News. Ben Shapiro is a conspiracy theory spreader and his site is the most popular thing on all of Facebook I believe.

Propaganda has a pretty good track record throughout history and it almost won 2 straight presidential elections. I don’t know how to stop it from propagating on Facebook. I personally cannot understand why anybody likes Facebook at all, to be honest, but it is ubiquitous and it really worries me.
 
SuperMatt said:
I do think the right-wing propaganda machine is dangerous, and the Facebook version of it is arguably more troublesome than Fox News. Ben Shapiro is a conspiracy theory spreader and his site is the most popular thing on all of Facebook I believe.

Propaganda has a pretty good track record throughout history and it almost won 2 straight presidential elections. I don’t know how to stop it from propagating on Facebook. I personally cannot understand why anybody likes Facebook at all, to be honest, but it is ubiquitous and it really worries me.
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Sounds like they're fed up with social media who keep fact checking their lies and conspiracies and have moved over to something called Parler.com where they can can post unchecked. You know you have a problem when they also want to leave Fox News for being too liberal.
 
lizkat said:
If McConnell decides for some inexplicable reason (from my own POV, admittedly) that he's not going to negotiate w/ Biden for benefit to all sides, but instead will attempt to make Joe a one term prez as he threatened to do in Obama's first term, that could make the next two years pretty ugly if Mitch keeps enough of a hold on a slim majority in the Senate. On the other hand McConnell may remember that in 2018 American had grown tired of the obstructionism and flipped the House blue. Now that blue House margin has slipped some to the right. Mitch may not want to put that hint of more rightward potential at risk. No one voted for gridlock. Time will tell.
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I am expecting this from McConnell. It is my hope that statehood will be granted to PR, DC, and Guam. That will end the GOP’s lock on the Senate.
 
SuperMatt said:
I do think the right-wing propaganda machine is dangerous, and the Facebook version of it is arguably more troublesome than Fox News. Ben Shapiro is a conspiracy theory spreader and his site is the most popular thing on all of Facebook I believe.

Propaganda has a pretty good track record throughout history and it almost won 2 straight presidential elections. I don’t know how to stop it from propagating on Facebook. I personally cannot understand why anybody likes Facebook at all, to be honest, but it is ubiquitous and it really worries me.
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The ugly but useful upside of having spent four years with a President who made it crystal clear (not least by appointing that creature Stephen Miller as an inner circle policy advisor) is that Trump not only let it all hang out but encouraged divisive groups to step up and be heard... and they did come streaming out of the woodwork... and as a result of that we know a lot more about them --and their connections-- than we used to just assume existed "somewhere" and "somehow".

The downside is that ill educated and some just plain hateful folks --leaving aside overlap there with psychiatric disturbances-- have helped Trump stir pots all this time and set us to distrusting each other more than usual economic stressors can do. It's unforgivable really. Treasonous is not the right word in a legal sense, but in a moral sense Trump betrayed the ideals and realities of American progress in civil rights thousands of times over in his tornado-like crash though an American presidency.

We get bogged down in arguing over whether Trump was running a pre-Fascist regime or was "just a head case" or whatever. He should not be the focal point of our concern. It's true that his followers are the ones to worry about.

They are clearly primed to seek and to follow another exemplar of "the strong man" whenever someone with some money and influence manages to prop one up on a pedestal or on a TV screen down the end of the bar on the average weeknight. That's where the kernel of Trump's followers came from, after all. Name and personality recognition, via a popular TV show.

And it was a reality TV oriented audience that stole the show during the 2016 campaign, helped bring that show into our White House, stuck with Trump despite a Federal Register showing hundreds of EOs demonstrating he's not actually on their side... and tried pretty hard to launch a second season of Trump defining again their own vicarious alt-reality as King of America. It's easy to go down that road when you got a $50 parking ticket this morning and then see Trump on the evening news essentially telling the House Judiciary to fuck off. What would they give to be that guy in their wildest daydreams anyway? A vote? No problem!
 
It s also very telling that while I see threads both here (and in The Other Place, the Other Country) asking Democrats or Liberals to do a bit of thinking and soul-searching - even though they have won the White House (and thank you, @Huntn) this is not something you will ever see from the conservative, Republican side of the political divide.

Ask questions of themselves, what they stand for (besides "owning libs"), take a long hard look at the arrogance of running a man who is a moral monster - again - for office, and not even bothering with a policy platform?

Wonder how they managed to alienate sufficient people to motivate them come out - Covid, knee-capping the postal service and voter suppression notwithstanding - to give the highest recorded vote in history to a man - a decent, empathetic, experienced, thoughtful, and tolerant man of integrity, and, yes, good judgment, but also a man described by almost everyone as "lacking charisma"?

Although, personally, I have long been of the opinion that charisma is a vastly over-rated quality - in real life, I've never known anyone with charisma who remains at your side, and has your back, when things go pear-shaped.
 
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Watched Bill Maher’s show from Friday night, thinking it would lack relevance in light of Saturday’s events. But it was really good, with substantial discussion of dealing with Trump’s rotten leftovers. Recommend.
 
An unease has settled back over me. I imagine it might be like the feeling of a runaway child who ran because of abuse from their mom’s live in boyfriend and found a loving family in the next town over. Sure you are safe now but he’s still in your family home. Your mom is working on kicking him out but will she take him back in 4 years? If not him, then maybe somebody else exactly like him. The trust is completely gone. Plus he’s still out there and has friends all over who think he is a great guy and your allegations of abuse are lies, exaggerated, and possibly think you deserved the abuse.
 
Yes, 2 month transitions make sense when all parties are sane, but there’s a real urgency to evict the twit since he won’t concede.
 
Just read a second Stop the Steal Facebook group that popped up after Facebook killed the first one, attracting 60k+ members, just changed its name to Gay Communists for Socialism and the members are less than happy. :ROFLMAO:
 
Edd70 said:
Yes, 2 month transitions make sense when all parties are sane, but there’s a real urgency to evict the twit since he won’t concede.
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Yeah and his OWN NOMINAL PARTY should sign the eviction notice. Current admin honchos. This week as it became clear that Biden-Harris had won, the GOP"s so called leaders have lain back. They've let an acknowledgment of Biden's win issued by the only living former Republican president, George W. Bush, even try to nudge Trump towards a concession and so move on to the phase of a formal transition of power.

What a disgrace this crowd is to the memory of conservative Republicans back in the 1970s. An AP piece in October of 2019 touched on that --and on the differences between a conservative American base then and the pro-Trump base now. It's worth a read or re-read right now to clear one's mind of this version of the GOP as somehow a continuation or a norm in American politics.

apnews.com

GOP unlikely to reprise role it played in Nixon's 1974 exit

NEW YORK (AP) — On Aug. 7, 1974, three top Republican leaders in Congress paid a solemn visit to President Richard Nixon at the White House, bearing the message that he faced near-certain...
apnews.com apnews.com
 
It’s not only soul searching on the part of liberals/Democrats, but attaining a realization that after 4 years of the Shit Head and real palpable damage to the workings of the Federal Government, and damage to our relationships around the world, that by looking at vote tallies, the numbers of Trump Koolaid Gulpers have possibly grown, and it should chill you to the bone.

Is it the Cult of Thump, the hate of liberalism or is it the determination of 70M freaking people that the ideals set forth in the Constitution regarding Freedom*, Liberty, Equality, that Trump has been so gleefully trying to tear down, and is not a standard that they, the Trump crowd supports?

*Individual freedom does not mean stepping on the freedoms of others, and still requires contribution to the whole, the infrastructure that you and/or your business benefits from.

The first fantasy promoted by the GOP for 40 years is that the United States under Capitalism can survive, much less thrive without those with wealth paying for it. They want their suckers to believe that plus we can all be better off by continually cutting taxes on the rich who have steadily been getting richer for the last 7 decades, while the Middle Class as a group is on life support. Sure, when they cut your taxes by $.10, the wealthy get a $1000 cut and you think you came out ahead, while social programs that you could use such as UHC become unattainable in the resulting revenue stream. Yet somehow Republican idiots buy into these wealth fantasies, getting something for nothing, without losing other vital elements and those poor struggling rich people. 👀

Secondly, if it’s not apparent by now, the entire MAGA CONCEPT harks back to the age of plenty after WWII, which is not really about prosperity for Trump’s minions who have somehow immersed themselves in a ludicrous fantasy if they think Trump will bring the working class wealth. Picture the coal miners who believed in Trump‘s seductive lies. God, stop being his suckers. This goes for all working class. You are just his delusional volunteer slaves, who he not only distains, but laughs at. You feed him with your cheers while he sucks at your souls as he manipulates your prejudices, and plays with you. 😢

Thirdly, I’m convinced the real motivator behind MAGA is White Privilege, Racism, Xenophobia and onerous, suppressive Christian standards regarding a woman’s right to choose regarding her body, hostility towards uppity women who don’t know their places, minorities, and the LGBT community. This is the source of zealotry in the movement. From the evangelicals, it’s religion breaking bad, not moving forward. They want a time machine to take them back 100 years, but hopefully they won’t get it, especially through a dictator’s decree, which is what they’d end up with if Trump was allowed to flourish among the sheep.
 
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I think that there is a significant difference between the respective - for want of a better word - mindsets of the two "camps", or parties.

It is instructive that liberals/Deocrats want to reach out, and attempt to "understand" the pain, and alienation, and frustration of those who supported Mr Trump, whereas those who support Mr Trump not only don't want to understand (let alone empathise with) anyone who describes themselves as "liberal", they want - and wish - to cause them pain.

So, we wish to understand their pain, they wish to cause us pain.

Seriously, I doubt that this gulf - this veritable canyon - in perspective can be bridged at any time soon.

And I'm less certain that I want to bridge it - yes,it would be nice to understand them while wearing my political analyst's hat, and good to work with them on a bipartisan basis from a pragmatic perspective - but assuage their pain at the almost certain cost of my basic human and civil rights, as a woman, or the rights of a person of colour, or those of the poor?

No, thank you.

Actually, - and it is very instructive that Democrats and liberals start threads about "soul-searching" - and wanting to reach out, understand, take stuff into account (which implies a reluctant respect for the right of others to hold different views, irrespective of how repellant they may be) - while hardly any Republicans have expressed concern, let alone shame about the thrashing of the traditions and democratic standards of the state (and that is leaving aside all of the other stuff).

So, rather than soul-searching further, I'd like to see a thread about why Republicans feel no shame for what they have allowed, enabled, encouraged, and facilitated these past four years.
 
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Scepticalscribe said:
So, rather than soul-searching further, I'd like to see a thread about why Republicans feel no shame for what they have allowed, enabled, encouraged, and facilitated these past four years.
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That's actually pretty easy to answer. Before Trump it was believed that the Republicans lost their appeal and had no clue. In comes Trump and shows them a fired up base that shows up to vote. They didn't have to recalibrate to gain voters and appeal. They just had to go full Trump and be party before country.
 
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