Donald Trump

mrussel1 said:

You are completely missing the point, or just don't want to acknowledge it.  No one is saying the Dems are as 'bad' as Republicans in this sense.  But there are humans on both sides of the aisle that are terrible, terrible people.  If you want me to name some on the liberal side, it would be pretty easy.  Plus, liberal groups have picked up on the right wing strategy of publishing lies on memes and on facebook.  Just last week there was the fake Trump report card.  It got outed pretty quickly, but it's the same bullshit that right wingers post.  We all laugh about it, but I guarantee there are lots of people who believe it to be true. 

Halifax2TheMax said:

mrussel1 said:

You are completely missing the point, or just don't want to acknowledge it.  No one is saying the Dems are as 'bad' as Republicans in this sense.  But there are humans on both sides of the aisle that are terrible, terrible people.  If you want me to name some on the liberal side, it would be pretty easy.  Plus, liberal groups have picked up on the right wing strategy of publishing lies on memes and on facebook.  Just last week there was the fake Trump report card.  It got outed pretty quickly, but it's the same bullshit that right wingers post.  We all laugh about it, but I guarantee there are lots of people who believe it to be true. 

Yes, please name the terrible, terrible people on the “liberal side.” And how do you know that the false report card was posted by “liberal groups?” I suggest you read the intelligence report regarding troll farms and sowing seeds of discord. The difference I see is that we hold our side more accountable and when I say our side, I’m referring to the dem Establishment. We shout ours down and are more critical of our leadership, less likely to walk in lockstep, to issue retractions and god forbid, apologize. And when we do, we’re painted as weak, feminine, etc., etc. Maybe you don’t see that?

PJ_Soul said:

You all seem to just be explaining why there are wars. In a fantasy utopia everyone would get along, be able to settle profound differences to eliminate corruption and greed and evil and ignorance, etc etc etc, and there wouldn't be such massive divisions. Unfortunately, we live in reality. If any of you guys actually have that much faith in humanity .... I've got a bridge to sell.

mrussel1 said:

Halifax2TheMax said:

mrussel1 said:

You are completely missing the point, or just don't want to acknowledge it.  No one is saying the Dems are as 'bad' as Republicans in this sense.  But there are humans on both sides of the aisle that are terrible, terrible people.  If you want me to name some on the liberal side, it would be pretty easy.  Plus, liberal groups have picked up on the right wing strategy of publishing lies on memes and on facebook.  Just last week there was the fake Trump report card.  It got outed pretty quickly, but it's the same bullshit that right wingers post.  We all laugh about it, but I guarantee there are lots of people who believe it to be true. 

Yes, please name the terrible, terrible people on the “liberal side.” And how do you know that the false report card was posted by “liberal groups?” I suggest you read the intelligence report regarding troll farms and sowing seeds of discord. The difference I see is that we hold our side more accountable and when I say our side, I’m referring to the dem Establishment. We shout ours down and are more critical of our leadership, less likely to walk in lockstep, to issue retractions and god forbid, apologize. And when we do, we’re painted as weak, feminine, etc., etc. Maybe you don’t see that?

Harvey Weinstein, Justin Smollett, Kevin Spacey, Gov. Northam, Lt Gov, Justin Fairfax, Ilhan Omar, Bob Menendez, Keith Ellison...

Now you're going to name a bunch of right wingers, but that's not the point.  Of course you can.  And yes, I know the troll farms hit both sides, but our side is taken by them too.  People forward that bullshit on to me, and it's as easy to pick apart as the right wing bs.  It's teh same damn thing.  

HughFreakingDillon said:

PJ_Soul said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

who is talking about a fantasy utopia where everyone gets along? the only point being made is that you simply can't explain away bad behavior because "the other guys do worse things". 

if my kid 1 comes home with a report card with a D on it, and I sit down to have a chat with her, and she says "talk to me when kid 2 stops getting F's", H2M is essentially saying I should accept that explanation and give kid 2 shit again. 

we can expect better from "our team" regardless how the "other team" conducts themselves. 

I'm talking about a fantasy utopia... I'm simply saying that these suggestions about bridging the divide, and the accusations of someone "picking sides" against the right being part of the problem, are IMO ignoring what's impossible in the current reality. I get where Halifax is coming from when he says he's "happy to be a part of the problem". I think he is choosing the only realistic option that will make anything happen. The other option is what you guys are doing, which I totally get as well, and know is very well intentioned, but I think will ultimately just end up being equivalent to chasing tails. The vague suggestions of what he should be doing otherwise seem really unrealistic and useless to me. The only realistic part, maybe, is that one side might actually manage to meaningfully decrease the negatives within itself. But the two sides are never going to come closer together at this point until one side is basically beaten into submission by the other and future generations don't learn it from their parents and the media. 

I'm not ignoring anything. I'm saying hold ourselves, ALL of ourselves, accountable for our actions. he's saying his team gets a pass on everything because the other team is worse. 

I don't know if the divide can be bridged. But the current way of shouting at each side that the other is worse accomplishes zero. 

PJ_Soul said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

PJ_Soul said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

who is talking about a fantasy utopia where everyone gets along? the only point being made is that you simply can't explain away bad behavior because "the other guys do worse things". 

if my kid 1 comes home with a report card with a D on it, and I sit down to have a chat with her, and she says "talk to me when kid 2 stops getting F's", H2M is essentially saying I should accept that explanation and give kid 2 shit again. 

we can expect better from "our team" regardless how the "other team" conducts themselves. 

I'm talking about a fantasy utopia... I'm simply saying that these suggestions about bridging the divide, and the accusations of someone "picking sides" against the right being part of the problem, are IMO ignoring what's impossible in the current reality. I get where Halifax is coming from when he says he's "happy to be a part of the problem". I think he is choosing the only realistic option that will make anything happen. The other option is what you guys are doing, which I totally get as well, and know is very well intentioned, but I think will ultimately just end up being equivalent to chasing tails. The vague suggestions of what he should be doing otherwise seem really unrealistic and useless to me. The only realistic part, maybe, is that one side might actually manage to meaningfully decrease the negatives within itself. But the two sides are never going to come closer together at this point until one side is basically beaten into submission by the other and future generations don't learn it from their parents and the media. 

I'm not ignoring anything. I'm saying hold ourselves, ALL of ourselves, accountable for our actions. he's saying his team gets a pass on everything because the other team is worse. 

I don't know if the divide can be bridged. But the current way of shouting at each side that the other is worse accomplishes zero. 

I actually think he's making a good argument against your assertion TBH. I think he's right. The Dems tend to actually hold most of those wrongdoers accountable, and the Reps don't.

Halifax2TheMax said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

PJ_Soul said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

who is talking about a fantasy utopia where everyone gets along? the only point being made is that you simply can't explain away bad behavior because "the other guys do worse things". 

if my kid 1 comes home with a report card with a D on it, and I sit down to have a chat with her, and she says "talk to me when kid 2 stops getting F's", H2M is essentially saying I should accept that explanation and give kid 2 shit again. 

we can expect better from "our team" regardless how the "other team" conducts themselves. 

I'm talking about a fantasy utopia... I'm simply saying that these suggestions about bridging the divide, and the accusations of someone "picking sides" against the right being part of the problem, are IMO ignoring what's impossible in the current reality. I get where Halifax is coming from when he says he's "happy to be a part of the problem". I think he is choosing the only realistic option that will make anything happen. The other option is what you guys are doing, which I totally get as well, and know is very well intentioned, but I think will ultimately just end up being equivalent to chasing tails. The vague suggestions of what he should be doing otherwise seem really unrealistic and useless to me. The only realistic part, maybe, is that one side might actually manage to meaningfully decrease the negatives within itself. But the two sides are never going to come closer together at this point until one side is basically beaten into submission by the other and future generations don't learn it from their parents and the media. 

I'm not ignoring anything. I'm saying hold ourselves, ALL of ourselves, accountable for our actions. he's saying his team gets a pass on everything because the other team is worse. 

I don't know if the divide can be bridged. But the current way of shouting at each side that the other is worse accomplishes zero. 

I never said our side gets a pass. It’s a false equivalence and our side holds ours more accountable. When the other side does the same, catches up to us, then we can discuss eliminating the toxicity in the body politic. And they can start by holding Team Trump Treason accountable to common decency. Maybe start there?

I look forward to when Team Trump Treason is charged with high crimes and misdemeanors and the repubs shrug their shoulders and some on here say dems need to behave themselves and follow the rule of law.

PJ_Soul said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

PJ_Soul said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

PJ_Soul said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

who is talking about a fantasy utopia where everyone gets along? the only point being made is that you simply can't explain away bad behavior because "the other guys do worse things". 

if my kid 1 comes home with a report card with a D on it, and I sit down to have a chat with her, and she says "talk to me when kid 2 stops getting F's", H2M is essentially saying I should accept that explanation and give kid 2 shit again. 

we can expect better from "our team" regardless how the "other team" conducts themselves. 

I'm talking about a fantasy utopia... I'm simply saying that these suggestions about bridging the divide, and the accusations of someone "picking sides" against the right being part of the problem, are IMO ignoring what's impossible in the current reality. I get where Halifax is coming from when he says he's "happy to be a part of the problem". I think he is choosing the only realistic option that will make anything happen. The other option is what you guys are doing, which I totally get as well, and know is very well intentioned, but I think will ultimately just end up being equivalent to chasing tails. The vague suggestions of what he should be doing otherwise seem really unrealistic and useless to me. The only realistic part, maybe, is that one side might actually manage to meaningfully decrease the negatives within itself. But the two sides are never going to come closer together at this point until one side is basically beaten into submission by the other and future generations don't learn it from their parents and the media. 

I'm not ignoring anything. I'm saying hold ourselves, ALL of ourselves, accountable for our actions. he's saying his team gets a pass on everything because the other team is worse. 

I don't know if the divide can be bridged. But the current way of shouting at each side that the other is worse accomplishes zero. 

I actually think he's making a good argument against your assertion TBH. I think he's right. The Dems tend to actually hold most of those wrongdoers accountable, and the Reps don't.

that's really not what my point is. 

I was saying "you guys" because mrussel1 was a part of the conversation and you two seemed kind of teaming up with this one, haha - I was more referring to a point he made.

mrussel1 said:

PJ_Soul said:

You all seem to just be explaining why there are wars. In a fantasy utopia everyone would get along, be able to settle profound differences to eliminate corruption and greed and evil and ignorance, etc etc etc, and there wouldn't be such massive divisions. Unfortunately, we live in reality. If any of you guys actually have that much faith in humanity .... I've got a bridge to sell.

Wars are about religion and wealth, not disagreements like this.  It's why the much maligned "globalists' are responsible for the 70 years of inter-continental peace, probably the longest in 500 years.  It's because we created shared prosperity.  Losing that is the most dangerous part of this neo-nationalism, in my mind.  But that's a different argument, and also why I gladly call myself a globalist.  

Such breaks with the Trump narrative on Fox are rare, though. Unlike Glenn Beck, Hannity has been allowed to spew baseless conspiracy theories with impunity. For more than a year, Hannity and other hosts spread the lie that the hacking of Democratic Party e-mails during the 2016 campaign was an inside job. Hannity claimed that the hacking had been committed not by Russian cyber-warfare agents, as the U.S. intelligence community concluded, but by a Democratic staffer named Seth Rich, who had been murdered by unknown assailants on a D.C. street. Benkler and his co-authors studied Fox’s coverage, and found that not only did the channel give the Seth Rich lie a national platform; it also used the conspiracy story as a distraction, deploying it as a competing narrative when developments in Mueller’s investigation showed Trump in a bad light. In 2017, after Rich’s parents demanded an apology and advertisers began shunning the network, Fox finally ran a retraction, and Hannity dropped the story.

By then, Fox hosts had begun pushing a different conspiracy: the “Uranium One” story, which Hannity called “the biggest scandal ever involving Russia.” On an October, 2017, broadcast, Hannity claimed that Hillary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State, had given “to Vladimir Putin and Russia twenty per cent of America’s uranium, which is the foundational material to make nuclear weapons.” Ostensibly, the deal was in exchange for giant payments to the Clinton Foundation. Hannity also claimed that “the corrupt, lying mainstream media” was withholding this “bombshell” from Americans, because it was “complicit” in a “huge coverup.” More than a year earlier, the Times had run a front-page story about the deal, based on the right-wing book “Clinton Cash.” But the story had gone cold, because other reporting had poked holes in it, revealing that multiple government agencies had approved the deal, and that the quantity of uranium was insignificant. Yet Fox kept flogging it as the real national-security scandal involving Russia. On “Hannity,” the former Trump White House adviser Sebastian Gorka argued that the Clintons’ crime was equivalent to the Cold War treason of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—and reminded viewers that the Rosenbergs were executed. Within two days, Trump picked up Fox’s story, tweeting, “Uranium deal to Russia, with Clinton help and Obama Administration knowledge, is the biggest story that Fake Media doesn’t want to follow!”

Link me to the dem/lib equivalent.

As Murdoch’s relations with the White House have warmed, so has Fox’s coverage of Trump. During the Obama years, Fox’s attacks on the President could be seen as reflecting the adversarial role traditionally played by the press. With Trump’s election, the network’s hosts went from questioning power to defending it. Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Law School professor who co-directs the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, says, “Fox’s most important role since the election has been to keep Trump supporters in line.” The network has provided a non-stop counternarrative in which the only collusion is between Hillary Clinton and Russia; Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is perpetrating a “coup” by the “deep state”; Trump and his associates aren’t corrupt, but America’s law-enforcement officials and courts are; illegal immigration isn’t at a fifteen-year low, it’s “an invasion”; and news organizations that offer different perspectives are “enemies of the American people.”

Benkler’s assessment is based on an analysis of millions of American news stories that he and two co-authors, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts, undertook for their 2018 book, “Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation and Radicalization in American Politics.” Benkler told me that he and his co-authors had expected to find “symmetric polarization” in the left-leaning and the right-leaning media outlets. Instead, they discovered that the two poles of America’s media ecosystem function very differently. “It’s not the right versus the left,” Benkler says. “It’s the right versus the rest.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house

French, Kasich, Christie, et. al. would all be much better served cleaning up their mess first, the quotes and Faux News being just one mess among the many in their house. That's my point. Stop clinging to power at the expense of democracy, beat us with ideas and policy and not gerrymandered voting districts and legal and illegal vote suppression, regain some civility in your discourse and stop shoving it up our ass (I'm looking at you Mitchy Baby) and maybe, just maybe after we've learned to trust you (you in the generakl sense), we'll respond in kind.