Member of Congress Among 5 Reportedly Shot at Baseball Field

[henryp]

Passed again, eh?  Boring.

Since you're clearly not up to that convo, let's try another, again based on your comments.  Find me a moderate pro-trump politician?  Let's start with that.  What, in your estimation, have moderates been saying about Trump?

If you want to skip the Socratic stuff, and just get straight to your point, I can respond to that, if you want.

[Autumnlicious]

How does one hold a discussion if one side refuses to state their position? It seems Khemikal's questions are reasonable.

The Socratic method allows you to explain your point of view and thus hold a discussion.

As opposed to shouting at each other while using a potentially invalid representation of the opposition.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Sure, there are moderate politicians.  They know the rhetoric is all a part of the game.  I'm sure a few of them drink their own kool-aid, but for the most part, they know it's just a tool they hand out to the masses to try and win elections.  That's why W, who was 100% a racist war criminal is somehow able to be friends with Obama a Kenyan who hates america and vice versa. 

My point is that arguing that there are moderate Republicans but no moderate Democrats is silly. There are moderates and extremists on both sides of the aisle.

Maybe there are some moderates, and I'm just overlooking them.

That's what I think.

Maybe they just keep quiet, because if they tell people like Khemikal that Trump isn't like Hitler in any meaningful way, people like Khem will call them a Nazi sympathizer and socially ostracize them, and it's not worth the hassle?

Extreme leftists absolutely do that. I'm no leftist at all -- I'm a centrist with libertarian leanings -- and it seems to me that the rhetoric on both sides has been shrill since around the Lewinsky affair. Not to say there hasn't been hatchet jobs before then, but it seems to me that that was when character attacks from both sides became the meat-and-potatoes of American politics.

Both sides need to step away from the precipice. That comedienne who waved Trump's head around? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Birthers? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Tea Partiers showing up to rallies with slung arms? What sort of response -- or respect -- did they expect?

Politics is the art of giving your opponent to compromise without losing face.

The American political scene is fucked for that reason. There can be no compromise from either side when both sides are more concerned with shoring up the base that, you know, running the goddamned country as they've been elected to do.

Passed again, eh?  Boring.

Since you're clearly not up to that convo, let's try another, again based on your comments.  Find me a moderate pro-trump politician?  Let's start with that.  What, in your estimation, have moderates been saying about Trump?

If you want to skip the Socratic stuff, and just get straight to your point, I can respond to that, if you want.

Or, you could simply explain the basis for your views, rather than positing baseless claims. Just a thought.

[Brian37]

College educated well-to-do liberals didn;t make Trump pull a Hitler. I'm really not getting what you find surprising in opposition to going full hitler among college educated well-to-do liberals.  They read the reich as a morality play, Our Fuhrer seems to think it was an instructable.

Nice people do and would and -should- wish for the deaths of all the worlds little hitlers.  If they didn't, they really wouldn't be all that nice.  Ask the jews.  

"I hope nothing bad happens to hitler" - said no decent person, ever.

When President Trump begins to imprison 6 million Jews and gassing them to death then I'll start calling him another Hitler. Since he's not doing that he's not Hitler.

You are one dense motherfucker.

It is not what he alone can do, but what his TONE has done and has the potential to do.

If more politicians see his win as something to copy THAT TONE over long periods has the potential to erode our western values.

That fucking idiot does not understand this is not a cable TV show, or a episode of Jerry Springer. 

He is not a shock jock on pay radio or pay TV. He is not Bill Maher or Rush Limbaugh. He is diplomat, not just for the nation but to the world. In that context you DONT act like a fucing wrecking ball, which he has. 

He is a sideshow fine for cable TV at best. He sucks at diplomacy. The last time this nation saw that level of demagoguery we were in the age of segregation, Jim Crow and McCarthyism.

[henryp]

How does one hold a discussion if one side refuses to state their position? It seems Khemikal's questions are reasonable.

The Socratic method allows you to explain your point of view and thus hold a discussion.

As opposed to shouting at each other while using a potentially invalid representation of the opposition.

They don't.  I'm politely'ish declining.

[Joods]

How does one hold a discussion if one side refuses to state their position? It seems Khemikal's questions are reasonable.

The Socratic method allows you to explain your point of view and thus hold a discussion.

As opposed to shouting at each other while using a potentially invalid representation of the opposition.

They don't.  I'm politely'ish declining.

So then you have zero grounds to stand on for which to make your point. Why bother to participate in a discussion if you aren't willing to explain your views? This isn't third grade, ya know.

[henryp]

They don't.  I'm politely'ish declining.

So then you have zero grounds to stand on for which to make your point. Why bother to participate in a discussion if you aren't willing to explain your views? This isn't third grade, ya know.

Khem responded to a post I made replying to Thump out of context and tried to bait me into some good old fashioned internet bullshitting.  Some people like that, but it doesn't seem appealing to me at this time.  There are plenty of people here willing to go to bat for team "Trump isn't really a Nazi."  And they can both repeat the same thing over and over at each other just fine without my participation.

---

Sure, there are moderate politicians.  They know the rhetoric is all a part of the game.  I'm sure a few of them drink their own kool-aid, but for the most part, they know it's just a tool they hand out to the masses to try and win elections.  That's why W, who was 100% a racist war criminal is somehow able to be friends with Obama a Kenyan who hates america and vice versa. 

My point is that arguing that there are moderate Republicans but no moderate Democrats is silly. There are moderates and extremists on both sides of the aisle.

That wasn't really my argument.  As I've said a few times, anecdotally, I've found people I'd expect to not partake in the extreme rhetoric diving in head first.  All of these people are on the left, but the sample group was also overwhelmingly on the left.  I found it relevant to the discussion, because as it relates to violence/hate, these are also the people I'd least expect to buy into that as well.  

Unfortunately, if you say anything bad about the left, the response is "YEAH BUT REPUBLICANS..."  and down the rabbit hole we go.

I don't know many moderate republicans.  Maybe they are delving into the absurd as well.  But that's not a particularly relevant to the original point, and I can't speak on it, because I have no idea.  What was relevant to the discussion I responded to was that the group I'd least likely expect to start celebrating death and violence is celebrating death and violence.   That strikes me as a bad sign.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Have you asked yourself why?

[The Grand Nudger]

Let me get this straight.  A disturbing number of otherwise decent people suddenly start to say and do the sorts of things in response to a common issue that disturb you, things you didn't think they would do........and you think that the problem, is with all of them....all at once, all of a sudden?  Just woke up this am, and decided they'd all be dicks, no particular reason.

What do those people keep telling you the problem is?

[bennyboy]

It seems to me that the second amendment was to allow citizens to protect the land of the US against tyranny, and taxation without representation.

Well, with the poor being taxed more and more, and so much of it being funneled in pretty direct ways toward the rich, I wonder if the pacifism of the left in the US is well-founded at all. Is it "good business" to allow billion-dollar golden parachutes for the Wall Street executives who hung the country out to dry and put millions out of their homes? Does the average Joe really have an obligation to fall into line while the American dream is being very deliberately pulled out of his children's hopeful hands?

Nah. Sometimes pacifism is the bravest act a person can engage in. But that half of Wall Street aren't hanging from trees in front of their banks and stock markets shows me that it's cowardice, not a real hope for peace, that rules the common American citizen now.

May the fathers of America roll in their graves, knowing that instead of fox hunters, the country is now ruled by a king with a fox pelt on his fucking head.