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Over the past year as the world has grappled with a once in a century pandemic we have seen an entire political movement against masks, vaccines, social distancing… pretty much anything we can do to stop or slow down the spread of COVID. These folks will often hide behind notions of freedom or whatever other excuse they find to justify their positions.
Actions taken include the banning of mask mandates, not only at the county level but also in schools. In Florida they banned cruise ships from requiring patrons to be vaccinated. And then there’s the nonstop onslaught on right wing television aided by these public officials against health experts, science, and any confidence the public could possibly have that this virus is real, dangerous, and that we have vaccines that can get us out of this.
Imagine the following scenario: You are a secret agent of a foreign country and your mission is to do whatever you can to get as many Americans as possible killed through COVID, so first, you manage to get yourself elected governor of an entire US state. My question is, please tell me what you would do to complete your mission that republican governors are not already doing.
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Politics
This is a talking point I hear constantly from the right; the idea that “the left”, or “the government” just wants to control our lives.
Is the idea here the democratic politicians pass, say a mask mandate, not because they believe masks will help slow the spread of the virus but because they get a hard-on being able to make people do something they otherwise wouldn’t have done? Do they walk into a grocery store and see everyone with their masks on and boast to their wives saying “see, I did that”?
Is there anyone on this site who can explain the rationale here?
P.S. this isn’t about mask mandates, I’m just using that as an example. Thanks.
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Politics
Rudy to Ukrainian officials...
Are conservatives, on this site anyway, going to finally stop pretending there was no attempted quid pro quo?
3 days later Trump would go on to tell Zelensky "I need you to do is a favor THOUGH".All we need from the President [Zelensky] is to say, I'm gonna put an honest prosecutor in charge, he's gonna investigate and dig up the evidence, that presently exists and is there any other evidence about involvement of the 2016 election, and then the Biden thing has to be run out...That would clear the air really well, and I think it would make it possible for me to come and make it possible, I think, for me to talk to the President (Trump) to see what I can do about making sure that whatever misunderstandings are put aside ... I kinda think that this could be a good thing for having a much better relationship.
Are conservatives, on this site anyway, going to finally stop pretending there was no attempted quid pro quo?
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While definitions of God vary, some of its central tenants are that he is all knowing, all powerful and creator of everything. Let’s imagine the following:
God creates a bubble of reality unconnected to anything else. Within this bubble he creates a being that is all powerful and all knowing with regards to anything inside of this bubble, so this being is free to create anything he wants; Universes, multiverses, heaven, hell, etc. We’ll call this being God 2. But God decides that he will conceal all knowledge of himself or anything outside of this bubble from God 2. As far as God 2 knows, this bubble is reality, nothing outside of it exists.
Question: if you pray, how does the God you pray to know that he is not God 2?
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Philosophy
In a recent thread I took the side of a known woke culture critic being labeled a racist to say that there was no reason to believe he is in fact a racist. In doing so I was myself labeled a 'probable implicit racist'.
The right loves to complain that this is what the left does - when they can't win the argument they just label the opposition a racist, but the right seems to be no different.
In another thread I criticized an obvious example of bigotry. Joe Biden's recent release of migrants included some who had tested positive for COVID19, this has lead to numerous complaints suggesting that this is dangerous and goes to show how little Biden cares about real Americans. These complaints of course come from the same flock who have spent months railing against mask mandates, social distancing measures, and drawing comparisons to the flu implying that COVID is no different. But suddenly, now that brown people from Mexico are carrying it, we're all of a sudden worried about COVID?
When pointing this out did anyone challenge my presumptions? Did anyone ask me to provide evidence that any of the same people took these same two positions? Did anyone make any real effort to defend holding these two positions simultaneously? No. Instead I was, you guessed it... Labeled a racist.
Is this really all we got? Is there a reason why we cannot have a reasonable conversation about what a racist is and what it takes to qualify as one? Is there a reason both sides of this debate seem to think that calling the other side a racist "wins the argument"?
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As if Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss weren’t bad enough, yesterday Jim Jordan and Ken Buck sent a letter to Amazon demanding answers on why certain products were pulled off their website, claiming a pattern of anti conservative bias. Cancel culture has become a right wing obsession as of late, but it’s purely a product of the free market. Do conservatives still believe in it? If so, what exactly is supposed to be done about it and why do republican politicians seem to expect that you will vote for them over this?
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Politics
In a new Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll 73% of Trump voters say they believe the election was stolen. The same poll also found that 58% of those same voters believe January 6th was "mostly an antifa-inspired attack that only involved a few Trump supporters."
Let’s just assume the first question as our premise... the election was stolen and the rightful president whom the people voted to represent them will be kicked out of the Oval Office by hijacker’s of our federal government. Congress by certifying Biden would then be complicit in this. What should the people do? Head to the polls and vote out the same people who are manipulating the vote totals?
If this were true the only means left would be to take power back by force, which is exactly what Jan 6th was about. If Trump voters really believe the election was stolen they wouldn’t need to dissociate themselves with the attacks by absurdly blaming it on antifa.
I think this poll speaks to the logic pretzels many of Trump’s voters are twisting themselves in to hold onto their views. It’s one thing to argue with someone who doesn’t believe widely accepted facts about the world, it’s another to argue with someone who doesn’t even believe facts they themselves profess to believe.
Curious to know what any Trump voters think about this.
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Watching right wing media fawn over Rush Limbaugh yesterday really got me thinking about something...
In one interview Dan Quayle was talking about Rush's ability to speak on conservatism and highlight its virtues, which he summarized about 3 or 4 times as "less taxes, less regulations". In another interview (I did not get the speaker's name) she described conservatism as "not being for handouts, but rather an opportunity to build your own leg up in life".
Regarding the first interview, what I realize is that "less" anything is a relative term. In order for you to be "for" less of something then someone else must first propose an amount of that thing. In other words this cannot be a value, it's merely opposition to someone else's values.
But I found the second interview more bothersome, for if this is how conservatism is defined then it is an entire ideology built on opposing a strawman. To define yourself as being against handouts is to assert by definition that anyone who does not share your ideology is for handouts. Setting aside that this completely misrepresents what liberalism is all about, this is more importantly and once again; not a value but merely opposition to someone else's values.
So I ask, if you are a conservative and you largely agree with what these interviewees had to say... what is your ideology "for"?
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Curious to see where other members stand on various arguments being made in this trial. Here are some of mine:
“This impeachment is unconstitutional”
It seems clear to me that republicans are going to hang their hat on this because they have no defense of the president’s actions. Of course this argument itself doesn’t hold any water. The impeachment took place while Trump was in office, so the argument here is that you cannot *convict* a former president for their final actions in office, which is absurd. And as many have pointed out, this would mean that a president can simply resign just before the final vote and then be free run again.
“The president didn’t incite an insurrection”
Most who make this argument are pointing to the president’s use of the phrase “peacefully make your voices heard” in his infamous Capitol speech. This is classic cherry picking and ignores common sense. The president’s message to his supporters was that their voices have been stolen and that they need to “fight like hell or you’re not going to have a country anymore”. Who in their right mind would walk away from that with making their voices heard peacefully to be the take away? This is clearly said for plausible deniability.
“But look at what the democrats said”
Point me to the insurrection that resulted from any of the falsely equivocated words of anyone else and we can talk about whether they should be impeached as well.
Any others? Agree? Disagree? Why?
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Politics