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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
It is indisputable that, while Trump is vile, McConnell has acted as his enabler, giving him a compliant Senate that refuses to take the slightest action to impede or countermand him. This man has been in government a long time; he is not an incompetent buffoon. He knows exactly what he is doing and why.
McConnell is the face of the modern Republican Party: utterly indifferent to morality and ethics as long as it can stay in power.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 7th 2019 at 3:40:53 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!">Well what do you propose we do then? Because this is not a conflict where both sides are on the same moral or factual ground here.
I don't have all of the answers. What I do know is that love is more powerful then hate, that empathy and compassion can melt the stony heart, that grace and forgiveness are necessary for reconciliation.
Ask yourself why would a good, well informed, ect person do that or vote that way? What points of view do they have that I don't? How do they order their values? When you ask these questions of large swaths of people and find yourself concluding 'because they are bad or evil' then you are almost always off track.
If I had to summarize in two words, love and forgiveness. Love because it works and forgiveness because they are wrong.
Love doesn't mean agreeing with someone or doing what they want you to. How to apply it in these hard times and hard discussions isn't easy, but it's worth it. In a way, we don't love for them, we love for who we become in the process.
There is much more ink that could be split here but won't be in this post.
Edited by Soban on Mar 7th 2019 at 3:53:09 PM
>Well, that’s great. Good thing your very own article showed that Democrats are less likely to hate the opposing party than Republicans, right?
By within the magin of error? Yhea, huge improvement there.
>Let’s hope you’re not suggesting we should start tolerating bigots though.
I guess that depends on what you mean by tolerate and what you mean by bigot.
Edited by Soban on Mar 7th 2019 at 3:56:14 PM
As I pointed out last page, you're uselessly preaching to the choir here. 21% of Democrats think Republicans are evil while 61% of Democrats think Republicans are bigoted. To me, that says that most Democrats already have open minds to the possibility of Republicans changing their ways and getting better, and they're not automatically evil just because they're bigoted.
One thing to consider is that Trump voters won't magically disappear into thin air and wishing for it to happen anyway is a dick move. So a bit of arrangement will be needed anyway.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanRemember when I said this shit?
We're seeing that in action right now.
i'm tired, my friendLove doesn't mean agreeing with someone or doing what they want you to. How to apply it in these hard times and hard discussions isn't easy, but it's worth it. In a way, we don't love for them, we love for who we become in the process.
Yeah no offense, but that sounds like a platitude.
There are plenty of reasons that make it possible to understand why people support the republican party in a way that makes them understandable as people who have a life story and a whole trajectory before they became the people they are. The thing is, that doesn't necessarily make them more sympathetic, that their "values" are good, or means that "love and forgiveness" are the solution. Yes, it is more nuanced than "they're the spawn of satan who want to destroy the world", but not in the sense that their beliefs are valid or should be given consideration.
This is also a naked double standard in that centrists or moderates are almost always asking the left to do this, but such requests are rarely ever made to the right. This is a two-way street.
Edited by Draghinazzo on Mar 7th 2019 at 5:07:47 AM
>This is also a naked double standard in that centrists or moderates are almost always asking the left to do this, but such requests are rarely ever made to the right. This is a two-way street.
Excuse me while I'm amused by getting very similar responses when I post similar things on more right leaning forums.
Nothing shakes people out of apathy like conflict. Imagine if we just gave up and made nice with the Trumpists. People who are always asking "why can't we be friends?" have given up the intellectual labor of understanding why we cannot. The Right doesn't just have a different opinion on policy — they have such a diametrically opposed view of what it means to be an American, a man or a woman, a worker, or a member of a global community that they may as well be speaking a different language and living in a different country.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Mar 7th 2019 at 4:26:10 AM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."I'm not asking "Why can't we be friends", I'm asking "Can we stop shouting at each other from the top of ours lungs and listen to each other again". To be honest, the answer from both sides seems to be 'no'.
The cognitive dissonance required to honestly believe that everything would be better if marginalized people just loved their oppressors more is unbelievable.
you should be directing that at republicans, not democrats, as per your own sources. Your “both of you” rhetoric is quite frankly bullshit.
Edited by archonspeaks on Mar 7th 2019 at 1:30:56 AM
They should have sent a poet.Soban, you're buried in the golden mean fallacy. You can shout all you want about how everyone should just get along, but it's not Democrats creating the problem. It's never been.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Because if anything they've been getting less and less subtle with each passing day.
Unless you mean, "why can't we just agree to disagree and stop getting so worked up about all this?" In which case, there's already plenty of responses.
Edited by Eschaton on Mar 7th 2019 at 1:33:12 AM

There's really nothing McConnell can do at this point that would shock me, up to and including removing his face to reveal he was the Grinch all along.
I mean, the man starts with, "deliberately refuse to nominate any Supreme Court Justice Obama would like."
Almost everyone believes he'll lose the next election, though, which is insane in Kentucky. It is the reddest state in the union and the loathing of the man is extreme.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 7th 2019 at 12:35:04 PM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.