The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(01-15-2020, 04:19 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-15-2020, 09:58 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-13-2020, 06:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-13-2020, 10:31 AM)David Horn Wrote: Sorry to burst your bubble, but America is not yours to own.  And please, let's agree that dirty tricks are the GOP's stock in trade.  The Dems and other non-party liberal groups are rank amateurs.  BTW, threats,, implied or direct, have negative consequences.  You need to tone it down.  Remarkable as it may be to you, liberals are both patriotic and brave.  If you actually start a civil war, be prepared to lose it.  That's how it played last time.

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but America is not yours to have or give away. Just so you understand where I'm coming from, my American ancestors directly participated in the American Revolutionary war against the British and the American Civil War against the Confederacy and the American war against the Axis Powers during World War II.  Yes, I agree with you, the American side won the last time and the times before it as well. I expect that to continue/prevail against the quasi socialists of our time as well. So, how much of the country are you able to lose and still be able survive and adequately maintain liberal government with all its liberal policies and programs these days. Your state could on the verge of splitting and seeing its tax revenues significantly reduced by a bunch of self righteous fools who have this crazy notion in their heads that have the same power as the government of New Zealand or Australia.

As far as I know, there are no warmongers itching for blood and soil on my side of this tiff.  Antifa is a pale antithesis of the white power types, and I actually see them around in my own community.  Rebel flags are both common and intended to be provocative.  And no one on my side is trotting around carrying assault rifles everywhere.  Can you say the same for your side?  And btw, why the need to go about armed to the teeth?  Is this nascent cowardice or simply old-fashioned paranoia?

If antifa switched from sticks and bottles and whatever else to deadlier weapons, what do you have on your side that we have a right to use our firearms to defend ourselves with these days or even shoot them with these days. Me, the rebel flag is nothing more than a symbol associated with southern pride/ southern culture that your liberal goons and morons don't have the right to destroy. Hint...I'm a northerner, if you can do that, what's next? You may want to start packing your bags because we are on to them and the rhetoric is going to start getting nasty. This is warning to a liberal that hasn't come to gripes with the fact that his days are over. Karma is a bitch.

What if Antifa...?

Face it: everybody is against fascism, and even the fascists take care to avoid using the word fascist to describe themselves. Violence even at the level of throwing projectiles is not free speech, let alone bombing or shooting. 

As for the flag of the defense of slavery... blacks have a right to see it in the same light as Jews see a Nazi swastika  or anti-communists see a hammer-and sickle device.  I accept the use of the Confederate flag in re-enactments and at memorials for the Confederate dead. Other than that it is a disgrace as an assertion of contempt for freedom. Do you want to honor Southern pride? Then here is a legitimate hero, a true Southerner:



Not coincidentally this is his 91st birthday, and he is the antithesis of bomb-throwing radicals of either side of the ethnic struggle. Remember well: you are not truly free if others are not free.

I know, I know... some people have tried to associate Confederate symbols with "Heritage, not hate"... but out-and-out fascists such as the KKK have used the Confederate flag as a meme for disenfranchising, suppressing, and oppressing black people. As a white gentile I cannot say that I can know what a Confederate flag means to blacks any more than what a Nazi flag means to Jews. I am an anti-Communist, and the only valid use for the hammer-and-sickle flag is for honoring the Soviet dead of the Great Patriotic War and for depicting the Soviet era for what it is. I am appalled that the Russian Federation uses the music of the Hymn of the Soviet Union for its anthem. If one is of certain nationalities, especially Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians, then anything connected to the old Soviet system must be appalling. In the event of a full-blown American dictatorship I would latch Nazi, Soviet, and Confederate symbols to such a regime.   

Another place in which I would put the Confederate flag is among flags of disgrace, including the Nazi flag, the Soviet flag, the flag of the Italian Social Republic (Mussolini's puppet state), perversions of national flags to include Communist  symbols, and Ba'athist flags of Iraq and Syria.

...We liberals do not see our days at an end. We are the default against tyranny of any kind, including fascism and communism. We are also a default against conservatism that abandons its respect for the rule of law, division of powers,  free elections, and honest communications. We liberals find plentiful wrong in a President who even resorts to the Orwellian practice of Newspeak -- the transformation of words into lies, and that is even more objectionable than the plutocratic agenda of this President (that agenda having existed before him).

[Classic-Xer]

(01-15-2020, 11:43 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: But is the equivalency false if there really are fringe bad actors on both sides?

But the main line actors are far more forgiven if they renounce the own side’s bad actors.  Conservatives can renounce their racists.  Progressives can renounce legislation from the bench, attempts to change culture by force when they do not have the supermajority votes to amend the constitution.  (There really is a legal right to own and carry weapons.)  That is the sort of thing that would have to be done to bring the two factions together, to allow them to live in the same reality, to share a common set of values.

True. We can renounce our so called racists and we can convict them for their crimes and even execute them too. It's nice to see that we seem pretty close to being on the same page now.

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-15-2020, 06:12 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What if Antifa...?

Face it: everybody is against fascism, and even the fascists take care to avoid using the word fascist to describe themselves. Violence even at the level of throwing projectiles is not free speech, let alone bombing or shooting. 

As for the flag of the defense of slavery... blacks have a right to see it in the same light as Jews see a Nazi swastika  or anti-communists see a hammer-and sickle device.  I accept the use of the Confederate flag in re-enactments and at memorials for the Confederate dead. Other than that it is a disgrace as an assertion of contempt for freedom.

I will second the above post. The use of the Confederate flag by pseudo fascists, the KKK and other racists in modern displays is not to honor the heroic fallen, but to promote racism. Those who promote the use of the Confederate flag as a racist symbol are racists.

[Classic-Xer]

(01-15-2020, 06:12 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What if Antifa...?

Face it: everybody is against fascism, and even the fascists take care to avoid using the word fascist to describe themselves. Violence even at the level of throwing projectiles is not free speech, let alone bombing or shooting. 

As for the flag of the defense of slavery... blacks have a right to see it in the same light as Jews see a Nazi swastika  or anti-communists see a hammer-and sickle device.  I accept the use of the Confederate flag in re-enactments and at memorials for the Confederate dead. Other than that it is a disgrace as an assertion of contempt for freedom. Do you want to honor Southern pride? Then here is a legitimate hero, a true Southerner:



Not coincidentally this is his 91st birthday, and he is the antithesis of bomb-throwing radicals of either side of the ethnic struggle. Remember well: you are not truly free if others are not free.

I know, I know... some people have tried to associate Confederate symbols with "Heritage, not hate"... but out-and-out fascists such as the KKK have used the Confederate flag as a meme for disenfranchising, suppressing, and oppressing black people. As a white gentile I cannot say that I can know what a Confederate flag means to blacks any more than what a Nazi flag means to Jews. I am an anti-Communist, and the only valid use for the hammer-and-sickle flag is for honoring the Soviet dead of the Great Patriotic War and for depicting the Soviet era for what it is. I am appalled that the Russian Federation uses the music of the Hymn of the Soviet Union for its anthem. If one is of certain nationalities, especially Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians, then anything connected to the old Soviet system must be appalling. In the event of a full-blown American dictatorship I would latch Nazi, Soviet, and Confederate symbols to such a regime.   

Another place in which I would put the Confederate flag is among flags of disgrace, including the Nazi flag, the Soviet flag, the flag of the Italian Social Republic (Mussolini's puppet state), perversions of national flags to include Communist  symbols, and Ba'athist flags of Iraq and Syria.

...We liberals do not see our days at an end. We are the default against tyranny of any kind, including fascism and communism. We are also a default against conservatism that abandons its respect for the rule of law, division of powers,  free elections, and honest communications. We liberals find plentiful wrong in a President who even resorts to the Orwellian practice of Newspeak -- the transformation of words into lies, and that is even more objectionable than the plutocratic agenda of this President (that agenda having existed before him).

What's next, are you guys going to go along with banning it from history books and then go along with their reasons for removing ours too? You belong with your dense German cousins and may as well be a Nazy. Right now, I don't even have on the American left doesn't just stand for that crap either. Grow a pair and use your brain if you prefer to remain American. I hear a bunch of negative stuff about clueless/sensitive/spoiled rotten millienials which would be offensive to us if we knew it's our kids that everyone is talking about these days. Are you at all familiar with the real differences between liberals and conservatives?  WTF is up with so called liberals and their emotional qualms with symbols.

[Classic-Xer]

(01-15-2020, 07:12 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-15-2020, 06:12 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What if Antifa...?

Face it: everybody is against fascism, and even the fascists take care to avoid using the word fascist to describe themselves. Violence even at the level of throwing projectiles is not free speech, let alone bombing or shooting. 

As for the flag of the defense of slavery... blacks have a right to see it in the same light as Jews see a Nazi swastika  or anti-communists see a hammer-and sickle device.  I accept the use of the Confederate flag in re-enactments and at memorials for the Confederate dead. Other than that it is a disgrace as an assertion of contempt for freedom.

I will second the above post.  The use of the Confederate flag by pseudo fascists, the KKK and other racists in modern displays is not to honor the heroic fallen, but to promote racism.  Those who promote the use of the Confederate flag as a racist symbol are racists.

The pseudo fascists identify with the Nazi flag which is a foreign flag. The KKK mainly identify with itself, it's garb, it's symbols, it's religious belief and it's ceremonial tradition. As Far as I know, the KKK has no flag or political affiliation these days.

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-15-2020, 08:54 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The pseudo fascists identify with the Nazi flag which is a foreign flag. The KKK mainly identify with itself, it's garb, it's symbols, it's religious belief and it's ceremonial tradition. As Far as I know, the KKK has no flag or political affiliation these days.

Both groups are fringe conservative.  I'm sure they vote with the conservative Southern Strategy.  Many conservatives reject racism, and are very uncomfortable with seeing them associated with the conservative movement.  Hardly all.

You often see the KKK flying old Confederate flags.  The pseudo nazis focus on the racist aspect of the old 20th century version of fascism.

I appreciate your trying to distance yourself from some of the more deplorable deplorables, but many conservatives are associated with racism, so Neo Nozi and the KKK are considered a fringe conservative group.  

As I have said, I consider some conservatives quite honorable and respectable.  I just think this is not their time.  There has been a conservative time since Nixon, and the point of diminishing return on conservative philosophies has long been passed.  A lot of cyclical history is due to factions riding their philosophies too far for too long.  With political agendas, the temptation is for those in power to continue to press what got them in power.  Eventually they go so far that it is obvious that the opposing faction deserves their turn.  Thus, the true conservatives are wrong now, clinging to power, past their prime.  I look at your pretense that the liberals are desperate and on the edge of failure and find it laughable.  Ok, boomer?

But the KKK and the Neo Nazi just aren't my cup of tea.  Trump uses them.  They are not the bulk of the true conservative movement.  Yet, they don't belong on the liberal side, for sure.  I'm afraid you are stuck with them.

But will you renounce them, and racism in general?  If you were building an big conservative tent, would you invite them in?

I ask because I consider you more likely to renounce the racists than for the liberals who are so common on this site to renounce the attempts to legislate from the bench to change culture without the super majority required for a constitutional amendment.  Following the impeachment, the Democrats seem to be wrapping themselves in the constitution and rule of law.  And yet, they seem only to be interested in rule of law and the constitution if it meshes with their agenda.  They seem to believe parts of it are obsolete, they get to decide which parts, thus they will abandon rule of law and govern by whim and intuition.  Or is that whim and hypocrisy?  Sometimes I can't tell.

[David Horn]

(01-15-2020, 04:19 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: If antifa switched from sticks and bottles and whatever else to deadlier weapons, what do you have on your side that we have a right to use our firearms to defend ourselves with these days or even shoot them with these days.

Ask again if that actually occurs. Better still: call the police. That's their job, not yours.

Classic-Xer Wrote:Me, the rebel flag is nothing more than a symbol associated with southern pride/ southern culture that your liberal goons and morons don't have the right to destroy. Hint...I'm a northerner, if you can do that, what's next? You may want to start packing your bags because we are on to them and the rhetoric is going to start getting nasty. This is warning to a liberal that hasn't come to gripes with the fact that his days are over. Karma is a bitch.

That you are a northerner is obvious. That you think the Confederate Battle Flag is a sign of Southern pride is a sure sign you don't live here and never have. All those flags, and all the Confederate War monuments for that matter, were put in place by whites once the Southern whites managed to institute Jim Crow. If you're black, you know it's intended to intimidate you, and the history of lynchings makes that real.

So why are you afraid? No one has threatened you? Put your guns away. Save them for hunting or target shooting.

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-15-2020, 04:19 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: If antifa switched from sticks and bottles and whatever else to deadlier weapons, what do you have on your side that we have a right to use our firearms to defend ourselves with these days or even shoot them with these days. Me, the rebel flag is nothing more than a symbol associated with southern pride/ southern culture that your liberal goons and morons don't have the right to destroy. Hint...I'm a northerner, if you can do that, what's next? You may want to start packing your bags because we are on to them and the rhetoric is going to start getting nasty. This is warning to a liberal that hasn't come to gripes with the fact that his days are over. Karma is a bitch.

I would add you should read a few of the succession papers, and there is a note written by the designer of the flag that made clear it was intended as a symbol of racism and the southern slave economy.  

It is possible for one symbol to have multiple meanings.  There can be people who sincerely believe they can use the flag to remember some southern heritage.  I will let them pretend when they are visiting some monument or old battlefield.  If the intent of the gathering is to remember the past, I have not much quibble.

But this is a revisionist meaning.  The old south was quite racist in the beginning of the war time, without trace of apology or considering the possibility that they might lose and have to change the meaning of their symbols.  They had to be, given the nature of the economy they were attempting to preserve. The original meaning is the racist one.  I would add that the deplorables participating in a confrontal demonstration intend the flag to take the more confrontational meaning.  If you are going to some sort of white pride event, anyone would be quite justified in applying the original and true meaning of the flag.

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-15-2020, 04:19 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: If antifa switched from sticks and bottles and whatever else to deadlier weapons, what do you have on your side that we have a right to use our firearms to defend ourselves with these days or even shoot them with these days. Me, the rebel flag is nothing more than a symbol associated with southern pride/ southern culture that your liberal goons and morons don't have the right to destroy. Hint...I'm a northerner, if you can do that, what's next? You may want to start packing your bags because we are on to them and the rhetoric is going to start getting nasty. This is warning to a liberal that hasn't come to gripes with the fact that his days are over. Karma is a bitch.

I would add you should read a few of the succession papers, and there is a note written by the designer of the flag that made clear it was intended as a symbol of racism and the southern slave economy.  

It is possible for one symbol to have multiple meanings.  There can be people who sincerely believe they can use the flag to remember some southern heritage.  I will let them pretend when they are visiting some monument or old battlefield.  If the intent of the gathering is to remember the past, I have not much quibble.

But this is a revisionist meaning.  The old south was quite racist in the beginning of the war time, without trace of apology or considering the possibility that they might lose and have to change the meaning of their symbols.  They had to be, given the nature of the economy they were attempting to preserve. The original meaning is the racist one, not to idealize some past that was yet to occur.  I would add that the deplorables participating in a confrontal demonstration intend the flag to take the more confrontational meaning.  If you are going to some sort of white pride event, waving some multi meaning symbol, anyone would be quite justified in applying the original and true meaning of the flag and reading that into the intent of the wielders.

I do remember sitting in the shade of a tree on a hot hot day at the Angle of Gettysburg, overlooking the rolling terrain on which Picket's Charge passed.  A double handful of children supervised by a handful of adults was retracing the charge over the original land.  Well, I must admit that I had just finished the same walk.  I was tempted to make their charge more realistic by yelling 'bang bang'.  As they had left their cars behind on Lee's line, they had to retrace the retreat too.

[Classic-Xer]

(01-16-2020, 01:17 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I would add you should read a few of the succession papers, and there is a note written by the designer of the flag that made clear it was intended as a symbol of racism and the southern slave economy.  

It is possible for one symbol to have multiple meanings.  There can be people who sincerely believe they can use the flag to remember some southern heritage.  I will let them pretend when they are visiting some monument or old battlefield.  If the intent of the gathering is to remember the past, I have not much quibble.

But this is a revisionist meaning.  The old south was quite racist in the beginning of the war time, without trace of apology or considering the possibility that they might lose and have to change the meaning of their symbols.  They had to be, given the nature of the economy they were attempting to preserve. The original meaning is the racist one.  I would add that the deplorables participating in a confrontal demonstration intend the flag to take the more confrontational meaning.  If you are going to some sort of white pride event, anyone would be quite justified in applying the original and true meaning of the flag.

Yep, that is what it may have meant back then during the civil war and what it meant until the end of Jim Crow or racism's political death. As I recall, the northern Democrats didn't get what the wanted to get following the civil war. The northern Democrats basically wanted the south (spoils of war) for themselves. The civil war was actually fought over state rights pertaining to future American states. Why are you waging a purely political war that clearly ended nearly 60 years ago and punishing/trashing a bunch of American people who live in the south today who pretty much have/had nothing to do with either of them. Do you want to know what that American flag also represents to other Americans these days? The flag represents good old fashioned American defiance that Americans value/honor/respect that you and every other liberal fool who either reads liberal posts and posts themselves clearly hate about America and diabolically oppose these days. To a liberal of any stripe these days, there is nothing worse on this earth to contend with than a good old American rebel. 

I'm an American northerner Bob. I'm not some wimpy white southerner/rural person that someone on your side can identify and can pick on, scare, manipulate and turn into a supporter or whip saw into shape and keep in line like Sean Love. I bet he's voting for Trump. I bet every old poster like him who attacked me for doing nothing and not seeming to care about economic issues and conditions directly related to foreign trade are voting for Trump. Hint...the Democratic party lost both civil wars over slavery and lost a war that it basically ran from Washington DC while sticking to and remaining under strict UN guide lines and has had no viable alternative economic identity since the Soviet Union collapsed.

[pbrower2a]

(01-15-2020, 08:06 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-15-2020, 06:12 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What if Antifa...?

Face it: everybody is against fascism, and even the fascists take care to avoid using the word fascist to describe themselves. Violence even at the level of throwing projectiles is not free speech, let alone bombing or shooting. 

As for the flag of the defense of slavery... blacks have a right to see it in the same light as Jews see a Nazi swastika  or anti-communists see a hammer-and sickle device.  I accept the use of the Confederate flag in re-enactments and at memorials for the Confederate dead. Other than that it is a disgrace as an assertion of contempt for freedom. Do you want to honor Southern pride? Then here is a legitimate hero, a true Southerner:



Not coincidentally this is his 91st birthday, and he is the antithesis of bomb-throwing radicals of either side of the ethnic struggle. Remember well: you are not truly free if others are not free.

I know, I know... some people have tried to associate Confederate symbols with "Heritage, not hate"... but out-and-out fascists such as the KKK have used the Confederate flag as a meme for disenfranchising, suppressing, and oppressing black people. As a white gentile I cannot say that I can know what a Confederate flag means to blacks any more than what a Nazi flag means to Jews. I am an anti-Communist, and the only valid use for the hammer-and-sickle flag is for honoring the Soviet dead of the Great Patriotic War and for depicting the Soviet era for what it is. I am appalled that the Russian Federation uses the music of the Hymn of the Soviet Union for its anthem. If one is of certain nationalities, especially Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians, then anything connected to the old Soviet system must be appalling. In the event of a full-blown American dictatorship I would latch Nazi, Soviet, and Confederate symbols to such a regime.   

Another place in which I would put the Confederate flag is among flags of disgrace, including the Nazi flag, the Soviet flag, the flag of the Italian Social Republic (Mussolini's puppet state), perversions of national flags to include Communist  symbols, and Ba'athist flags of Iraq and Syria.

...We liberals do not see our days at an end. We are the default against tyranny of any kind, including fascism and communism. We are also a default against conservatism that abandons its respect for the rule of law, division of powers,  free elections, and honest communications. We liberals find plentiful wrong in a President who even resorts to the Orwellian practice of Newspeak -- the transformation of words into lies, and that is even more objectionable than the plutocratic agenda of this President (that agenda having existed before him).

What's next, are you guys going to go along with banning it from history books and then go along with their reasons for removing ours too? You belong with your dense German cousins and may as well be a Nazy. Right now, I don't even have on the American left doesn't just stand for that crap either. Grow a pair and use your brain if you prefer to remain American. I hear a bunch of negative stuff about clueless/sensitive/spoiled rotten millienials which would be offensive to us if we knew it's our kids that everyone is talking about these days. Are you at all familiar with the real differences between liberals and conservatives?  WTF is up with so called liberals and their emotional qualms with symbols.

No, we have liberals no desire to expunge such symbols of political disgrace such as swastikas or hammer-and-sickle devices from history books. Those symbols were everywhere in horrible political systems but not elsewhere. They were associated with criminal causes, gangs that took power and abused it horrifically. Those symbols are not to be confused with national flags that have admirable and shameful deeds done in their name (I have nothing but contempt for the militaristic Japanese Empire that I associate with the Pearl Harbor attack and the Bataan Death March, but much respect for Japanese culture and technology). The Japanese flag is associated with the thug regime but since then a country that has behaved itself well. I associate a swastika with racist genocide. If I must choose between Jews and Nazis I choose the Jews who had a God-given right to live unmolested that ungodly Nazis denied. I associate the hammer-and-sickle with a system that was always evil for brutality, tyranny, and expansionism that Gorbachev tried to reform into something admirable or at least benign -- something that proved impossible. I want the swastika connected to the Holocaust and the hammer-and-sickle to the Holodomor.

I have said that if I ever had the unlikely choice of having to be a Nazi or a Jew I would be a Jew because Judaism would require no ethical compromises. Culture? At that the Ashkenazim are my brethren.  

Note well that Nazi Germany was a slave system, and that Fritz Sauckel, the head of the Nazi effort to secure slave labor, was hanged for crimes against humanity after conviction for such at the main Nuremberg tribunal. To be sure, the Confederacy defended an old evil in chattel slavery, but it used a new symbol inextricably liked to the defense of that old evil. Someone who uses the Confederate flag for any use other than re-enactments or honoring the Confederate dead disgraces himself. 

The Nazi swastika flag, the Soviet hammer-and-sickle flag, debased national flags with Commie symbolism, the Italian flag debased with the fasces (paradoxically the American and French republics adopted fasces as symbols of just and effective power), and the Confederate flag are rightly seen as symbols of disgrace. They have no benign connotation as symbols of power. 

History is often an obscene and bloody tale written in the blood of innocent people. We study it for good reason -- mostly so that we know the tragedy and blunders.

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-16-2020, 06:18 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Yep, that is what it may have meant back then during the civil war and what it meant until the end of Jim Crow or racism's political death. As I recall, the northern Democrats didn't get what the wanted to get following the civil  war. The northern Democrats basically wanted the south (spoils of war) for themselves. The civil war was actually fought over state rights pertaining to future American states. Why are you waging a purely political war that clearly ended nearly 60 years ago and punishing/trashing a bunch of American people who live in the south today who pretty much have/had nothing to do with either of them. Do you want to know what that American flag also represents to other Americans these days? The flag represents good old fashioned American defiance that Americans value/honor/respect that you and every other liberal fool who either reads liberal posts and posts themselves clearly hate about America and diabolically oppose these days. To a liberal of any stripe these days, there is nothing worse on this earth to contend with than a good old American rebel. 

I'm an American northerner Bob. I'm not some wimpy white southerner/rural person that someone on your side can identify and can pick on, scare, manipulate and turn into a supporter or whip saw into shape and keep in line like Sean Love. I bet he's voting for Trump. I bet every old poster like him who attacked me for doing nothing and not seeming to care about economic issues and conditions directly related to foreign trade are voting for Trump. So, who are the real baby killers these days and which party is associate doing it these days? Hint...the Democratic party lost both civil wars over slavery and lost one of the two wars that it ran under UN guide lines during the 50's and the 60's and has had no economic identity since the Soviet Union collapsed.

Hmm.  Different groups had different goals.  The Robber Barons wanted political power to go with their industrial wealth, and to get that they wanted to  cut out the southern landowners as political players.  They also wanted to open up the West to their free economy.  The South wanted to resist that as it would give the the free economy more votes.  I would say the Robber Barons got what they wanted. The Robber Barrons let industrialization proceed unhindered.

The abolitionists wanted to end slavery.  They got that. technically.

The slaves wanted to be free.  They got that to some degree during the Reconstruction, only to see that fail in the Jim Crow era.  This would count as a fail.  It was not until the times of Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King that they took a few steps forward.  Not enough.  In Trump’s time, it is becoming clear that there are more steps to be taken.  Racism is set deep enough in US culture that it cannot all be erased in one wave of some magic wand.  At certain times, you can only get rid of a few of the worst and most blatant aspects.  We may be moving into such a time.

The South wanted to preserve slavery and expand in Mexico and the Caribbean. They lost that, but their recovery of white supremacy in the Jim Crow era was hardly much better. Saying the South won is probably not accurate given the pain inflicted during the aftermath of the war, but fixing the way the blacks were treated took many small steps. With the Black Republican movement and the abolitionists fading with the technical victory, we got Jim Crow.

And, yes, there were carpetbaggers who wanted the spoils after the Civil War.  You can say bad things about them if you wish, but not say all northerners were carpetbaggers.  Many had very different motivations and goals. It is sorta like the aftermath of WW I. If you treat the losers badly enough you get in trouble.

Today there are still those with prejudice, and still tribal thinkers that think if you are a white male evangelical you have a privileged place.  I would try to discourage that mode of thinking.

The Democratic Party was once the party of the South and slavery.  With the Southern Strategy, the Republicans became the party of the South and racism.  I will say bad things about both all you like. The switchover was LBJ siding with the blacks and MLK to win the black vote, and Nixon replying with the Southern Strategy. Democrats lost their conservative wing of the party and Republicans their progressive wing about that time, simplifying US politics.

And I think America had to refine their resistance to Communism.  The idea of having to fight a hot war to prop up a corrupt regime that the locals disliked was a bad one, but grew out of the beginnings of World War II.  The notion of having to fight a hot war every time the communists tried to expand was questionable.  It did take until after Vietnam for the Domino Theory to be moderated to something reasonable.

I do agree our foreign policy since the Soviet Union collapsed is quite questionable.  We were into the see saw by then, and had alternating foreign policies depending on who was in the White House.  The Republicans had a combination of the world’s most potent armed forces eager to prove themselves after Vietnam, and oil money controlling the party to a great degree.  The result was an attempt to take the Middle East oil by force.  This resulted in a policy that was essentially Neo colonialism.  The world reacted against this, contained the US expansionism, but the Middle East became destabilized as a result.  The Middle East was a mess before Trump made it worse.

The Democrats are more interested in doing what is best for the locals, but their good intentions get messed up badly when a Republican gets in the White House. The world has learned they cannot trust the US to hold a steady foreign policy when the White House periodically changes hands.

And it is rather hard to have an economic identity when Trump is trying to undo everything that Obama did.

Rambling a lot.  Each paragraph could be expanded to an essay.  However, I am only responding by giving my perspective.

[Bob Butler 54]

CNN Senate Article. CNN is hitting the same dilemma I have been mentioning for a bit.  The GOP wants to support the president, or they will not be able to win a Republican primary.  But they do not want to endorse criminal acts, or they will not be able to win a general election.

Couldn't happen to a finer bunch of folks.  It will be amusing to see which way they go.

[David Horn]

(01-16-2020, 01:17 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: It is possible for one symbol to have multiple meanings.  There can be people who sincerely believe they can use the flag to remember some southern heritage.  I will let them pretend when they are visiting some monument or old battlefield.  If the intent of the gathering is to remember the past, I have not much quibble.

There's a reason we don't give the same deference to the Nazi flag.  The Southern or Lost Cause had a symbol less tainted.  If the issue is history and heritage, then that's a symbol less affiliated with overt racism and violence.  Here it is:



Later versions included the Battle Flag, but this one is purely political.

[David Horn]

(01-17-2020, 03:07 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: CNN Senate Article. CNN is hitting the same dilemma I have been mentioning for a bit.  The GOP wants to support the president, or they will not be able to win a Republican primary.  But they do not want to endorse criminal acts, or they will not be able to win a general election.

Couldn't happen to a finer bunch of folks.  It will be amusing to see which way they go.

Here's a ploy.  Stretch out the trial, until the filing dates for primaries in the various states have passed, then convict the sucker!  It won't happen, but it should.

[Eric the Green]

(01-17-2020, 08:31 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-17-2020, 03:07 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: CNN Senate Article. CNN is hitting the same dilemma I have been mentioning for a bit.  The GOP wants to support the president, or they will not be able to win a Republican primary.  But they do not want to endorse criminal acts, or they will not be able to win a general election.

Couldn't happen to a finer bunch of folks.  It will be amusing to see which way they go.

Here's a ploy.  Stretch out the trial, until the filing dates for primaries in the various states have passed, then convict the sucker!  It won't happen, but it should.

Unfortunately though, stretching out the trial will take most of the progressive voices off the campaign trail in the Democratic primary, and leave that field to one relatively-unknown and poorly-qualified billionaire activist candidate.

I thought instead that the House should just continue its investigations indefinitely and get the truth out to the voters.

[Marypoza]

(01-17-2020, 12:50 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-17-2020, 08:31 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-17-2020, 03:07 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: CNN Senate Article. CNN is hitting the same dilemma I have been mentioning for a bit.  The GOP wants to support the president, or they will not be able to win a Republican primary.  But they do not want to endorse criminal acts, or they will not be able to win a general election.

Couldn't happen to a finer bunch of folks.  It will be amusing to see which way they go.

Here's a ploy.  Stretch out the trial, until the filing dates for primaries in the various states have passed, then convict the sucker!  It won't happen, but it should.

Unfortunately though, stretching out the trial will take most of the progressive voices off the campaign trail in the Democratic primary, and leave that field to one relatively-unknown and poorly-qualified billionaire activist candidate.

I thought instead that the House should just continue its investigations indefinitely and get the truth out to the voters.

-- i heard Bernie's chartering a jet 2 taking him 2 his campaign events during the impeachment farce

[David Horn]

(01-17-2020, 03:11 PM)Marypoza Wrote: -- i heard Bernie's chartering a jet 2 taking him 2 his campaign events during the impeachment farce

Don't tell Greta Thunberg, whatever you do.

[Marypoza]

(01-17-2020, 04:17 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-17-2020, 03:11 PM)Marypoza Wrote: -- i heard Bernie's chartering a jet 2 taking him 2 his campaign events during the impeachment farce

Don't tell Greta Thunberg, whatever you do.    

-- l personally think he should send Nina & the Squad out as surrogates. Then should any of that sexist bs come up Nina /Squad can say, "look if that were the least bit true l wouldn't be standing here now. Next!" hopefully that will put that bs 2 rest

[Classic-Xer]

(01-16-2020, 07:28 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-15-2020, 08:54 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The pseudo fascists identify with the Nazi flag which is a foreign flag. The KKK mainly identify with itself, it's garb, it's symbols, it's religious belief and it's ceremonial tradition. As Far as I know, the KKK has no flag or political affiliation these days.

Both groups are fringe conservative.  I'm sure they vote with the conservative Southern Strategy.  Many conservatives reject racism, and are very uncomfortable with seeing them associated with the conservative movement.  Hardly all.

You often see the KKK flying old Confederate flags.  The pseudo nazis focus on the racist aspect of the old 20th century version of fascism.

I appreciate your trying to distance yourself from some of the more deplorable deplorables, but many conservatives are associated with racism, so Neo Nozi and the KKK are considered a fringe conservative group.  

As I have said, I consider some conservatives quite honorable and respectable.  I just think this is not their time.  There has been a conservative time since Nixon, and the point of diminishing return on conservative philosophies has long been passed.  A lot of cyclical history is due to factions riding their philosophies too far for too long.  With political agendas, the temptation is for those in power to continue to press what got them in power.  Eventually they go so far that it is obvious that the opposing faction deserves their turn.  Thus, the true conservatives are wrong now, clinging to power, past their prime.  I look at your pretense that the liberals are desperate and on the edge of failure and find it laughable.  Ok, boomer?

But the KKK and the Neo Nazi just aren't my cup of tea.  Trump uses them.  They are not the bulk of the true conservative movement.  Yet, they don't belong on the liberal side, for sure.  I'm afraid you are stuck with them.

But will you renounce them, and racism in general?  If you were building an big conservative tent, would you invite them in?

I ask because I consider you more likely to renounce the racists than for the liberals who are so common on this site to renounce the attempts to legislate from the bench to change culture without the super majority required for a constitutional amendment.  Following the impeachment, the Democrats seem to be wrapping themselves in the constitution and rule of law.  And yet, they seem only to be interested in rule of law and the constitution if it meshes with their agenda.  They seem to believe parts of it are obsolete, they get to decide which parts, thus they will abandon rule of law and govern by whim and intuition.  Or is that whim and hypocrisy?  Sometimes I can't tell.

The KKK and Neo Nazi's aren't my cup of tea either. I don't think there is a more powerful form/sign of renouncement than execution. I view both as having their own unique identities and agenda's which separate them from America these days. So, I would not invite either of them into the American tent so to speak.