09-08-2022, 03:27 PM
(09-07-2022, 11:16 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(09-06-2022, 05:10 AM)David Horn Wrote:(09-04-2022, 03:44 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: If it's so difficult to get even your own side to rally behind him, how are you ever going to convince conservatives and libertarians, who have no reason to trust his track record either politically or personally, to do the same?
It shows the difference the two parties have embraced: appeals to the very worst versus appelas to our intellect and sense of <insert the platitude of the day>. Scaring the bejesus out of people works really well at arousing passions, but it creates many more problems than is cures (if it cures any at all). The more reasoned approach puts even the interested to sleep in short order, though it pushes us toward real though boring solutiins. And its' not uniques to the USA. Look at Liz Truss the new UK Prime Minister for a picturebook ideal of the scare 'em model.
I wish it was otherwise.
If scaring the bejesus out of people doesn't work forever and causes more problems than it cures then maybe you guys should stop doing it as much as you guys have been doing it. Like I said, I know all of you guys pretty well and you've got a pretty good idea about me and how nasty it would be to seriously tangle with me or anyone like me in real life. You want to know what that senile dumb (profanity excised) that you and everyone like you elected did, he moved us one step closer to millions of Americans having the right to kill your dumb asses and essentially destroying/removing your guys primary means of survival these days. Ever wondered what you would do if/when big blue government financially imploded like the Soviet Union, would you be able to survive without it at this point? Scary huh, best you ignore and continue to go along with all the stupid shit *fascist looking shit, communist looking shit, quasi socialist shit" associated with today's left and the Democratic party of today. I'll see you again next month and see if any of you have wised up/ pulled your head out or your butt yet.
Sure... have faith in someone who believes in nothing but his own selfish interests and who cannot restrain his self-indulgence, someone full of anger without having been oppressed, someone whose intellectual hollowness makes him a joke... that's Trump for you. In different styles that is other tyrants and despots. It's scary that he could admire Vladimir Putin but not recognize Angela Merkel for what she is. Let's put it this way -- if America had a thoroughly amoral leadership, then the worst sort of leader that the vile elite could face in a great war would be someone like Angela Merkel.
Faith in something foolish is no virtue. Cult leaders, demagogues, and con-artists elicit such faith. I can live without such faith. Doubt can be a position of intellectual integrity.
By the way -- you need to take an anger-management class before you do something that puts you in the morgue or prison. I've known of people who speak like you about armed uprisings against the Establishment, Left and Right. They get pushed to the fringe of public life only to act up violently only to get blown away or put away.
If any part of the American polity is to implode it will be the Hard Right. We on the center-Left are adopting more conservative style. We recognize the validity of tradition as a fallback when the avant-garde fails; we believe in sobriety and rationality; we value skill, formal learning, and imagination; we believe in law and order, the rule of law, precedent and protocol; we believe in sexual modesty and decency (gay is OK, but it's just not my way -- but even without the ruling on abortion whose sticking power I doubt, we are becoming much more repressive about spouse abuse, rape, child sexual abuse, and kiddie porn); we believe in fair pay for a job well done in the hierarchy of competence that people can latch onto if they have talent; we believe in individual integrity and in moral restraint; we see free enterprise the default. Where we differ from recent conservatives is that we recognize the validity and appropriateness of traditions not our own for people who somehow differ from ourselves, and we are free from the self-fulfilling despair of pessimism about human nature. Your Right has descended into unreason, violence, and bigotry; it has succumbed to a Cult of Personality. If it could fall for Trump then it could fall for someone else with a similar confidence game.
The Hard Left associated with Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism is largely irrelevant. On the other hand it is now difficult to distinguish the current mainstream of the Republican Party from the John Birch Society. The John Birch Society has not changed; it is as crazy as it was sixty years ago.
Your side plotted to kidnap and lynch the Governor of Michigan. Then it tried to thwart the accession of Joe Biden as President with a takeover of the Capitol Building. Your side included someone who disgraced a Marine Corps banner by using the flagpole bearing it as a weapon against the Capitol Police. I am not a current or former Marine, but I can assure you that the Marine Corps did not like that imaginative but disgusting use of one of its banners. Your side cannot tolerate dissent.
Now you tell me -- does the Center Left or the Hard Right better fit a tradition of Constitutional norms and a heritage of benign government?
Death to fascism, including Nazism, Ba'athism, ISIS/Daesh, and Ku Kluxism!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.