This is about Walz, not Trump. I made one joke about Trump, but my focus is on calling out Walz. Everyone has their favorite candidates, but be honest. It’s surprising you'd rather label me a Trumper than just admit Walz messed up and the absolute defense of Walz above all else. I didn’t claim “stolen valor,” necessarily but was pointing out his dishonesty. On to the next issue
it's really pretty simple. Walz' service is admirable. His embellishments of that service are disqualifying. Folks pointing out his actual statements are not pushing rumors.
Since you seem to know so much about it why don’t you tell us what the different issues are between PA and Mn?
difference between farmers and miners, essentially. one of them the Democratic Party is trying to put out of business.
So you really think he stole valor. That’s pretty much my point about exaggeration and things that play well in Rightwing circles but not elsewhere.
isn't that illegal? Trump is proud at knowing how to game the system - he ought to take Walz to court...
Please. Trump got BIden's son indicted. He has a lot of clout in the congress and elsewhere in government these days.
Yes that video was brought up before in Minnesota and again Walz still won multiple elections since. It went nowhere because the MN national guard never considered that Walz had “stolen” anyone’s valor and confirmed that he did deploy in a support role of Operation Enduring Freedom. It wasn’t a combat deployment but it was a a deployment.
excerpting a substantial portion of Jonah's latest Dispatch. I know some of you won't read it since he's jewish, but it's an apt distillation of what's at stake in November. do you want to control your life, or do you want the government to? Socialism is not neighborliness. Tim Walz is catching grief for saying—on a “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom call—that “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” He deserves some grief, though perhaps not all of it. It’s silly to leap to the conclusion that Walz thinks the hanging of Kulaks or the Cultural Revolution were examples of “neighborliness.” But if one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness, then the second person is an idiot—or maybe someone trying to pass off sh-t as Shinola. Neighborliness is purely a thing of civil society. Neighborliness is not enforced by the state. It can be coerced to some extent, but the coercion takes the form of social norms and expectations of right behavior, not government diktats. Ultimately, the decision to bring a casserole to the folks who moved in next door or to help the Johnsons across the street move a couch to the curb is voluntary. Socialism is coerced. Socialism—whether Scandinavian social democracy or Bolshevik collectivization—is imposed and volunteering has nothing to do with it. There have been experiments (kibbutzim, communes, co-ops, etc.) that have attempted to create a kind of voluntary reciprocal socialism. Results have been at best mixed. But that’s not what Walz is talking about. Walz is tapping into a very old tradition of trying to sell coercion as mere cooperation, statism as nothing more than civility (as I wrote about at book length in my underrated second book). FDR loved to say, “Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.” But dues are voluntary. In It Takes a Village, Hillary Clinton wrote that “civil society” is simply the “term social scientists use to describe the way we work together for common purposes.” But that’s not how social scientists describe civil society: Civil society is the place where different groups of people voluntarily work for different purposes. It’s the realm of social life where Americans find meaning and purpose outside of top-down government programs. Barack Obama was fond of waxing poetic about neighborliness. “If I am sitting pretty and you’ve got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can’t, what’s the big deal for me to say, I’m going to pay a little bit more? That’s neighborliness.” His favorite way of framing tax hikes on the rich was to say we need to “ask” them to pay a little more. “Ask” is to “demand” what neighborliness is to socialism. Democrats used to love the phrase, “government is simply the word for those things we choose to do together.” No, it’s really not. Very few public policies have 100 percent, or even 60 percent, popular support. The people who oppose those policies—and voted for politicians to oppose the policies—didn’t magically choose to do them together just because they were outnumbered at the polls. Now, we live in a democracy, and in democracies the majority gets its way, or at least is supposed to on most things. Sometimes it stays that way. And, sometimes, the failure of policies or politicians creates a new majority that reverses course. But I despise claims that suggest America works as some kind of unified, organic, whole. This is my problem with all rhetoric that tries to turn the country into a family or some other thing that isn’t government. Socialists and nationalists alike buy into this formulation all the time. But not just socialists and nationalists. Mainstream politicians of all types traffic in this kind of thing all the time, because to describe what they want to do accurately would make it harder to sell. They loot the shelves of civic life for popular items, tear off the labels, and slap them on state action. Obama loves to say that his political philosophy stemmed from his view that we are our “brother’s” and “sister’s” keeper. But the only place “brother’s keeper” comes up in the Bible is when Cain is sarcastically trying to dodge a murder rap. Even if you think there’s an idea somewhere else in the Bible that justifies being our fellow citizens’ “keepers,” it’s worth keeping in mind that “keepers” hold livestock captive for the keepers’ purposes, not the cattle’s. But hey, it sounds good. I think Walz’s policy of providing meals at schools is entirely defensible—as is opposition to it, depending on the costs and benefits. But that’s not neighborliness. Good neighbors don’t walk into the house across the street, raid the fridge and pantry, and then say, “Back off man, I am stealing from you to feed the kids of strangers halfway across the state of Minnesota.” A is A and government is government. It’s not a church, a tribe, a father, or a mother. It’s not a country club or the Rotary. We do need government. We don’t need as much as we have, but we do need one. But we should not be seduced into thinking it’s something other than what it is. Indeed, you have to wonder why the people who think government really is the answer to all of our problems are constantly trying to cover it in rhetorical camouflage to make it seem like it’s something other than what it is. Right before Walz said that thing about neighborliness being just some people’s word for socialism, he admonished them to go out and “make the case” and “don’t ever shy away from our progressive values.” He’s right. People who believe in the stuff progressives believe in should “make the case” for their progressive values. What they shouldn’t do is lie about what they’re trying to do. Calling it “neighborliness” is a lie.
highlighting Stolen Valor is not swiftboating. Spoiler I still have the McCain/Palin hat I wore to Fairway in 2008. I still have the hat
No one is above making mistakes. When you are in the public eye long enough as someone seeking or in public office, there will be plenty of words one can pick at and say “you were not being entirely straight there.” And it is fine to do that. One needs to also have the sense to put things in proper perspective. You made a remark that this was an offense of such magnitude that it was grounds for him to be replaced on the ticket. You mischaracterized what he said to make it a blatant falsehood rather than words that could be misleading. That is what I’m arguing with, not you simply pointing out that he should have been more straight about his current rank and his lack of combat experience.
Minnesota is not an accurate representation of America. Will this go over well in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, etc.? Those places have 3x the servicemen than Minnesota (and NC has 5x the amount). Just saying
Claiming something is stolen valor when it clearly isn't, is Swiftboating. You are falling for it again. Chris LaCivitia really knows how to sucker you.
