Breaking 1-06-21: MAGA terrorist attack on Capitol

He's no fan of Trump, but he clearly sees Dems are far worse lol.

 

What Are Trump Supporters So Afraid Of? - The Atlantic

As more truths about Donald Trump and his attempted coup come out, I fear there will be more irrational anger and threats from people who cannot bear the truth.

Secret Doubt

As the January 6 hearings restarted today after the long weekend, I was thinking about the weird, psychotic fear that has overtaken millions of Americans. I include in those millions people who are near and dear to me, friends I have known for years who now seem to speak a different language, a kind of Fox-infused, Gish Galloping, “what-about” patois that makes no sense even if you slow it down or add punctuation.

Such conversations are just part of life in divided America now. We live in a democracy, and there’s no law (nor should there be) against the willing suffocation of one’s own brain cells with television and the internet. But living in an alternate reality is unhealthy—and dangerous, as I realized yet again while watching the January 6 committee hearings and listening to the stories of Republicans, such as Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and others, describing the threats and harassment they have received for doing their duty to the Constitution.

And the threats don’t stop with political figures; families are now in the crosshairs. Representative Adam Kinzinger, for example, tweeted Monday about a letter he received in which the writer threatened not only to kill him, but to kill his wife and infant son.

There have always been unstable people in America, and they have always done frightening things. But there seem to be a lot more of them now. Some of them are genuinely dangerous, but many more are just rage-drunk nihilists who will threaten any public figures targeted by their preferred television hosts or websites, regardless of party or policy.

The more I think about it—and I spent years researching such problems while writing a book about democracy—the more I think that such people are less angry than they are terrified.

Many of you will respond: Of course they’re terrified. They’re scared of demographic change, of cultural shifts, of being looked down upon for being older and uneducated in an increasingly young and educated world.

All true. But I think there’s more to it.

...

 

Not sure I believe that entirely. There's a large percentage of trumpers that still won't admit it publicly and will claim to be libertarian...even when most of them don't really know what that means. I'm not saying Os is one of them...but I don't believe anyone who has posted nothing for the last couple of years but articles writing negatively about just about anything the Democratic party is doing or has done is entirely anti-trumpybear or didn't actually vote for it.

Totally works both ways.

 

A real leader would denounce the people attempting to hurt and make threats against election officials. Donald Trump instead gave out officials phone numbers. He told the rioters that he loved them. He threatened election officials.

Trump did all of that after being assured there were no secret suitcases, or trunks full of ballots. They were all false. Yet Trump continued to repeat and spread the lie.

 

Trump is a political mobster, gangster. Whatever you want to call it, that is one hole in our election system (if it's not already illegal) that should be made explicitly illegal. No one, including the POTUS, should be allowed to enable threats against election officials.

 

These are honorable people that are being threatened and being pushed out by Trump and his crazies.

 

GOP now only care about liberals trying to intimidate Trump loyalists like Kavanaugh.

 

oh, he's a Republican for sure, but closer to a Never Trumper than anything else

 

Oh.... so is the GOP going to stop spreading election lies?

You can't be this stupid.... or be a moderate democrat.

 

I could see that, but I also can see his strong distaste and bias against Dems. He's bringing up individual actions from house members as "Presidential Impeachment / Removal" plans. Also he fails to mention that Trump's own cabinet was the ones invoking the 25th Amendment. Trump violated many rules, oaths, conventions, and clauses of the constitution. He could have been impeached for many things, and he should have been removed for his abuses of power and blatant corruptions from the emoluments clause to obstruction of justice to inciting people to riot and threaten people from his own party who wouldn't agree with him - all over the country.

I just feel that the Republicans want to blame the Dems from Trump and everything he did, because it's unpopular still to stand up to Trump and admit that the Republican Party is no longer a Ronald Reagan or Bush type party, but has become a nativist party driven by the radical extremes of the party which a lot of the so-called libertarian have to rationalize.

Look, I am a pretty strong supporter of free speech and have a strong distaste for cancel culture and rules that limit speech. I don't have a problem with a 20% capital gains tax. I think there's a lot of value from what Republicans have brought to our country. I've never been the gung ho liberal (well maybe outside of Obama haha) and I never really like Pelosi, Hillary, Chuck, or Harry. I don't like Biden, Harris, or any of the dem's current leadership - I would much rather hang out with George Bush than any of them. But there are a lot of lawmakers in the GOP who are truly morally bankrupt willing to destroy our democracy for short term gain. I think the Republicans are playing a very dangerous and destabilizing game here.

I find many of my fellow liberals to be really hypocritical and annoying. Heck I trolled them on this board the first 6 years I was on here arguing the other side (truly I was an a-hole). But at the end of the day, I'll take annoying and hypocritical over dangerous and destabilizing any day of the week. For me it's a logical choice over an emotional one. My personal short term self interests is best served by Republicans of the past, not today. And long term we are all best served by the party that embraces science and logic, not the one that is attacking it.

I read stuff like this, and it's so misaligned with the truth and the reality of what's going on that it actually saddens me. The reason I respond to you so much over anyone else is that I know I can appeal to your sense of logic vs most of the other posters who lean right. Maybe that's why you have to lean right, because otherwise there'd be no debate, just people yelling at one another here lol.

 

Republicans cry foul because Biden didn't come down hard enough for the assassination "attempt" against Kavanaugh nor condemning the individuals who wanted to protest at his house (as they try to insinuate protests somehow lead to assassination attempts).

Meanwhile Trump has a history of not only failing to condemn any of this kind of behavior, he actually is implicit by handing out information of those who disagree or challenge him. Republicans didn't condemn any of this, and still to this day don't.


Amazing.

 

I'm not sure that there's as many wackadoodle Republicans out there as you might think. The media plays up the extremists, sure, but that's the political equivalent of "if it bleeds it leads." Plus the media from each side have a bias and an interest in continuing to fuel the "culture wars" or whatever you want to call it. I'm not sure how much of it is real, at least for people who aren't political junkies. Which is another potential source of bias--political junkie addiction. Pretty easy to lose a sense of proportion if you're in that group.

 

Pence is the ultimate coward…he should be the main one spilling the beans after Trump threw him to the wolves

 

Perception is reality. I don't know how much either, but it is real for a significant chunk of the GOP base. To what extent, I only have personal observations, and it's worrisome. The most worrisome thing to me is how much I've seen conservative friends shift to the right the past few years. Propaganda is highly effective.

 

I find that really disturbing. It makes me wonder how they could possibly believe such a compulsive liar. I went the opposite direction after Trump became President. It didn't take long at all for me to see right through his narcissistic BS. I can see falling for a lie once or twice, but not 30,000 or more times. It's so cult like, and so Jim Jones like.

 

Oh they don't believe Trump, in fact they despise him. The friends I am speaking of in this context, close friends of mine. But they buy into the propaganda that is being spread. For example about COVID. It's really well done. Like they get information from nurses and doctors that people are lying about what they put into the VAERS database. And can present what appears to be a compelling case on the surface until you dig deeper.

Perhaps this is what Biden means by "truths over facts" @ROXRAN.

 

Great point tbf, however it’s crucial for truths to be factual before it’s greater than the facts so to an extent both terms are equally important as the other I suppose

 

What is a fact but a statement that is true?

Where things fall apart is when someone uses one truth (fact) to build the case for another truth. The issue isn't the information, the issue is the logical fallacies of interpreting the meaning of those facts.

Reality of a situation isn't simply one or a few facts, but a mosaic of many things. Problem is that most people don't want to actually understand something, but instead condense things into a simple argument that they can understand. This is the state of our politics and why there is so much mistrust.

It isn't that scientists and those who understand the issues truly aren't trying, it's just that no one wants to actually listen. And I am not saying the right is only to blame here by the way, but they certainly have been egregious in this area.

 

ah, self-snitching at its finest

guys like Rudy are who these mindless MAGA drones will believe without question