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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Ugh. Guys. Seriously. Can we stop conflating "Republican" with "The GOP"? Going "all Republicans are bad" is just causing more problems. The GOP has gone past the point of ridiculousness but claiming anyone who identifies as a Republican is too far gone is not just reductive but also defeatist.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.For the record, I didn't mean "there are no reasonable Republicans" when I said I didn't get what a "moderate" Republican is. I've just always had trouble understanding what a moderate member of a party is, at least politics/policy-wise.
I suppose people can be fanatical about the parties in the terms of "its my team" but those kind of people strike me as much less likely to care about actual policy.
It's true we don't have what exactly was said, or for that matter exactly what age of elementary schooler it was said to. It's entirely possible that if we did I'd agree that it was age-inappropriate and worthy of censure. But based on the information available to me, including the quoted statement from the school, the alleged offenses sound like some pretty weak tea.
It's a political party. By definition, a Republican = "supporter of the GOP". When someone chooses to support a political organization that's racist, misogynist, hostile to the poor, and generally hateful, that decision is a reflection on the type of person they are.
The condemnation is of people who support the Republican Party, not of anyone who's a political conservative. Conservatism is a valid political philosophy. The Republican Party at this point is just evil and nuts.
edited 29th Mar '18 7:42:58 PM by Galadriel
It's true we don't have what exactly was said, or for that matter exactly what age of elementary schooler it was said to. It's entirely possible that if we did I'd agree that it was age-inappropriate and worthy of censure. But based on the information available to me, including the quoted statement from the school, the alleged offenses sound like some pretty weak tea.
My first thought was "how many dick jokes are in Shakespeare" and "how many pieces of nude art become less appropriate if you include romantic relationships".
edited 29th Mar '18 7:42:37 PM by RainehDaze
More evidence that Trump is the pocket of Putin.
Trump tells aides not to talk publicly about Russia policy moves
Yet when the president finally authorized the major policy shift
, he told his aides not to publicly tout his decision
, officials said. Doing so, Trump argued, might agitate Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the officials.
"He doesn't want us to bring it up," one White House official said. "It is not something he wants to talk about."
The White House declined to comment.
Officials said the increasingly puzzling divide between Trump's policy decisions and public posture on Russia stems from his continued hope for warmer relations with Putin and stubborn refusal to be seen as appeasing the media or critics who question his silence or kind words for the Russian leader.
Critics have suggested that Trump's soft approach to Putin has nefarious roots that are somehow entwined with Russia's interference in the 2016 election and the federal investigation into whether the president's campaign colluded in that effort, something the president has repeatedly denied.
Behind the scenes, however, Trump has recently taken a sharper tone on Putin, administration officials said, but the shift seems more a reaction to the Russian leader challenging the president's strength than a new belief that he's an adversary. Putin's claim earlier this month that Russia has new nuclear-capable weapons that could hit the U.S., a threat he underscored with video simulating an attack, "really got under the president's skin," one official said.
So much so that after hearing Putinβs speech, Trump called the leaders of France, Germany and the U.K. to say the Russian leader sounded dangerous, so the four of them needed to stick together, according to a White House official familiar with the calls.
And given that Mueller seems to be zeroing in on Collusion...
edited 29th Mar '18 10:19:58 PM by megaeliz
Describing a 2014 visit to the impoverished city of East St. Louis, Illinois, Williamson compared a black child to a βprimateβ and a βthree-fifths-scale Snoop Doggβ before likening his own trip through Illinois to Marlowβs journey up the Congo River in Heart of Darkness, all within the space of a single paragraph. (He later denied, unconvincingly, that the three-fifths reference was a slavery joke.) In a column that same year about Orange Is the New Black actress Laverne Cox, Williamson compared trans people to voodoo doll worshippers. βRegardless of the question of whether he has had his genitals amputated, Cox is not a woman, but an effigy of a woman,β he wrote. He accused Bernie Sanders, a secular Jew, of leading a βnationalist-socialist movementβ in a too-cute-by-half bid for rage clicks. And perhaps most notoriously, he once opined on Twitter that women who had abortions should be hanged. βI believe abortion should be treated like any other premeditated homicide,β he later clarified, in case anybody doubted his sincerity. βIβm torn on capital punishment generally; but treating abortion as homicide means what it means.β
[...] All of this makes Williamson, with his frequent sneer, dearth of empathy, and dicey treatment of race, a bit of a weird fit for the publication. He reacted to Black Lives Matter with an OβReilly-esque rant about βrace-hustling professionalsβ and black-on-black crime that I have a hard time picturing sharing space with a TNC essay.
So why did the Atlantic hire him? Goldberg and Ideas editor Yoni Appelbaum did not respond to my request for an interview, but it appears Williamson despises Donald Trump, and Never Trump conservatives have a lot of cachet these days among left-leaning media outlets that want to show a commitment to publishing a range of views.
The Atlantic has been a solidly center-right publication for most of its history — this hire seems totally in keeping with that heritage. It's the progressive articles published by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Peter Beinart that are the exception, and honestly, an example of Genre Adultery, since the casual reader will probably be surprised how altogether mainstream conservative the rest of the oeuvre is. Editorially, the magazine is much closer to Caitlin Flanagan's disapproving-conservative-suburban-hausfrau perspective than any liberal one.
edited 30th Mar '18 7:14:50 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"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."We were talking about why Shulkin was booted from the VA? Apparently the Koch brothers demanded he get fired for opposing privatization - despite the fact that the private sector literally can't handle all the care the VA provides. Full article text
Shulkin himself fired back at the "political appointees" that advocated for his removal. Full article text
In news that surprises me a little, Sessions blocked a request from Congress to investigate Mueller's investigative team. Full article text
But the news that surprises me a lot, Oklahoma voted to raise taxes. So much for that Great Republican Experiment, huh? Full article text
And just for amusement: Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, "Father Jesus" arrested in Mississippi after pointing a gun at someone. Full article text
Thatβs the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - SilaswEh, I think it would be fair to call the Atlantic as leaning center-left, at least in the calculus of US political leanings. More center than left, but all US news organizations seem to have a reflexive fear of being seen as too left. (Much like most Democratic politicians of the last 30+ years, I've occasionally half-joked that they're all afraid that Reagan will pop out of his grave and pull another electoral landslide on them should they ever dare to whisper that they intend to do anything with an actual leftist bent.)
Edit: there was a good editorial about this awhile ago, talking about the NYT's op-ed pages, and how they artificially limit their op-ed writers to what they imagine is the appropriate discourse. For the most part anything beyond moderately left is automatically discounted, and they keep pulling on writers from the right because they "want to challenge their audience".
The problem is that the righty writers inevitably fall into two groups: Never Trumpers, who, since Trump has the approval of around 80% of Republicans, thus don't actually represent the mainstream of the other side, or "provocateurs" like this asshole and the friend to Nazis like the Times wanted to hire.
The notion of challenging their audience from the left, however, as I alluded to above is automatically discounted. So these editorials are written within a relatively narrow political range, going between moderate left to how the moderate left wants to imagine the moderate right. Since neither of those actually captures the spirit of what's going on in reality, it makes the op-ed pages in serious danger of being irrelevant and out of touch at best. At worst they miss the point so blatantly you're almost left wondering if they're trying to do just that.
Edit 2: I found the piece I was thinking of.
Most recently, new hire Bari Weiss linked to a fake Twitter account as virtually her only evidence in a column devoted to the supposed epidemic of totalitarianism sweeping US universities. (FYI: There is no such epidemic.)
Before that was the controversy over hiring, and then quickly firing, Quinn Norton, who is friends with a Nazi. There was the controversy over hiring Bret Stephens, a climate denier and Woody Allen apologist. There was the controversy over the op-ed/press release by Erik Prince of the security contractor Blackwater.
And so on. David Uberti at Splinter has a nice rundown of the various fights, along with some trenchant critique.
The newspaperβs defense, articulated repeatedly by Bennet, news editor Dean Baquet, and onetime ombudsman Liz Spayd, is that the paper is pursuing diversity of opinion, attempting to challenge its readers. βDidnβt we learn from this past election that our goal should be to understand different views?β asked Baquet.
That defense doesnβt hold up to much scrutiny. As I said in a column on Stephens last year, βit takes a particular sort of insularity to hire a pro-war, anti-Trump white guy as a contribution to diversity on the NYT editorial page.β
In one of his characteristically scathing columns, Glenn Greenwald notes that the NYT editorial stable currently contains only three women and no Arab-American or Latinx voices; ideologically, it βspans the small gap from establishment centrist Democrats to establishment centrist Republicans.β
It wouldnβt be that hard for the Times to draw from what lies to the left of those narrow confines. For starters, it could hire a columnist to represent the resurgent left, which rose alongside, but is not dependent on, Bernie Sanders. It stands on its own as a reasonably coherent social critique and policy program, involving greater social provision of basic services, and there are tons of writers who could do it credit.
...
The traumatic and unexpected 2016 victory of Donald Trump convinced a great many people in elite political circles that they are hopelessly out of touch, there is a whole parallel country of which they are only dimly aware, and they urgently need to understand the perspectives of the people who rallied behind Trump.
This has led to entire subgenres of news journalism, like βrural white people are very upset,β or βTrump supporters still like Trump,β or βget to know this Nazi; heβs just like you and me.β
But itβs a different dilemma for the opinion page. Bennet clearly believes liberals live in a bubble. He wants to challenge them. It still hasnβt occurred to him to challenge them from the left, so he goes out looking for more conservatives.
But what kind of conservatives are on offer at NYT?
Consider, oh, David Brooks. His conservatism, of Samβs Club affectation, fiscal conservatism, tepid social liberalism, and genial trolling of center-leftists at Davos β whom does it speak for in todayβs politics, beyond Brooks?
Or Ross Douthat. He is sporadically interesting, often infuriating, but above all, pretty idiosyncratic. His socially conservative βreformiconβ thing β whom does it speak for in todayβs politics, beyond Douthat?
Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss are a familiar type of glib contrarian. Their opposition to Trump has given them undue credibility among Washington lefties, whom they relentlessly (and boringly) troll. But whom are they speaking for? What has the Never Trump movement amounted to?
...
The signal feature of the 2016 election is that it settled the question of whether US conservatism β the actual movement, I mean, not the people in Washington think tanks who claim to be its spokespeople β is animated by a set of shared ideals and policies. It is not.
For many years, many people have convinced themselves otherwise. A lot of people believe to this day that the Tea Party uprising and the subsequent eight years of hysterical, unremitting, norm-violating opposition to Barack Obama was about small-government philosophy and a devotion to low taxes and less regulation, and had nothing to do with social backlash against a black, cosmopolitan, urban law professor and his diverse, rising coalition.
But that kind of credulity can only stretch so far, and Donald Trump has stretched it to the snapping point. He abandoned the Very Serious conservative script entirely and the right ate it up. He pledged not to cut Social Security or Medicare, condemned free trade, and insulted the military and intelligence services, and they ate it up. He is a thrice divorced, self-admitted sexual predator wallowing in the kind of material ostentation that gives David Brooks nightmares, and they ate it up.
Before Trump, they thought the economy was terrible and Russia was bad. Now they think the economy is great and Russia is good. Heβs one of their people, he hates who they hate, and he drives the libs crazy; thatβs good enough.
...
There cannot be an intellectual Trumpism β a Trumpist philosophy, a Trumpist argument β because Trump is devoted only to Trump, only to bringing himself glory and defeating his perceived enemies. For now, his interests overlap (mostly) with the interests of the white, suburban and rural conservative base. The only conceivable motivation to support him is tribal; the only argument a tribalist needs to reward himself and punish his enemies is, βWe won.β
That means anyone who is devoted to the conservative intellectual tradition, anyone who thinks of themselves as a conservative through devotion to small government and traditional morality, has had to peel off. There is no way to pretend that Trump represents that tradition; he himself does not even try.
So how many of these βtrueβ conservatives did there turn out to be? Almost none! A few intellectuals and writers have jumped ship (David Frum, Bill Kristol, George Will), but the Wall Street Journal, Fox, Breitbart, and the rest have happily adapted to acting as state media. For all intents and purposes, Trump commands the support and loyalty of the GOP coalition.
...
As I said, the conservatives who care about conservatism as an intellectual tradition and a governing philosophy have mostly jumped ship. If the Times wants to find authentic expressions of the sentiments animating Trump supporters, it will have to look beyond the confines of the elite establishment, to Breitbart, Town Hall, Infowars, or one of the avowedly right-wing outlets where conservatives cluster.
It will have to recruit Sean Hannity or Tomi Lahren or Mark Steyn β someone who thinks of liberals as godless traitors and accepts ludicrous conspiracy theories about Democratic staffer Seth Rich being assassinated or Hillary Clinton colluding with Russia to defeat Donald Trump or Democrats running a child prostitution ring out of a pizza restaurant. It will have to recruit Ben Shapiro to run serial variations on βrap is crapβ or βwhites are the real victims of racism.β
It will have to recruit popular conservative columnist Kurt Schlichter, who mused this week that because βthe central tenet of the Democrat Party platform is now hatred and contempt for Normal Americans,β there is probably going to be a second Civil War, which conservatives will win, because they have more guns and liberals are easy to kill. (Thereβs a long section speculating on how a right-wing militia could invade San Francisco, which is βa hotbed of treason.β)
The people who support Trump have been embedded in a hermetically sealed right-wing media bubble for so long that they only know liberals as horrific caricatures and only experience politics as a war to save white Christian culture from its sworn enemies. They are exposed to endless lies and conspiracy theories designed to keep them in a frenzy, convinced that antifa is around the corner and Sharia law is imminent.
If the New York Times wanted to expose its readers to the motive force of contemporary conservatism, thatβs the kind of stuff it would run.
But letβs be real, James Bennet is not going to run that stuff in the NYT. It can sometimes be difficult to tell, but the Times does have standards of accuracy, even on the opinion page, and most of that stuff I mentioned contains falsehoods. (The Democrats are not running a child prostitution ring.)
The NYT expects a certain civility, and Breitbart types are incapable of discussing opponents as human beings. The Times has decided, like most mainstream US institutions, that overt racism and misogyny are unacceptable β not part of the diversity of viewpoints it seeks to represent. But without them, the picture is incomplete.
Most importantly, the NYT sees the opinion page as a contest of ideas. And fundamentally, what Trumpist conservatives are advocating for are not ideas, but a demographic, a tribe.
Itβs a tribe that has split off from mainstream institutions, rejects mainstream standards of accuracy, and now uses media entirely as a tool, a weapon. Its goal is to defeat the libs; whatβs good is anything libs hate.
...
When the Times opinion page pretends that conservatism is David Brooks or Bret Stephens when it maintains the comforting illusion that American politics is a contest of ideas, it is not exposing its readers to uncomfortable truths β it is sheltering them.
Do NYT readers β who mostly read mainstream sources, mostly live in cities, mostly are not exposed to right-wing media β understand that the most active voices on the American right today are filled with paranoid rage, hopped up on lies and conspiracy theories, unmoved by reason, and devoted to their total destruction? Do they understand that the values and norms they assume safe and sacrosanct are in fact under heavy siege? Do they know that American democracy is in danger of coming apart?
Iβm not sure they do; I think they still imagine Republican moderates gathered in a cave somewhere, ready to swoop in and take charge again at the sight of the David Brooks bat signal.
If the NYT wants to challenge their assumptions, it should challenge those.
edited 30th Mar '18 9:58:43 AM by TheWanderer
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |An analysis on how the "Roseanne" reboot reinforces myths about Trump supporters.
Mostly stuff that's been heard before, but since millions of people watched and will likely continue to watch, it's still relevant.
edited 30th Mar '18 10:49:08 AM by LSBK
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The audience may be more diverse than you think given most people won't refuse to watch a show because of political preference and I'm sure there won't be that heavy of a focus on the issue in a comedy. Hell, I've watched and enjoyed many episodes of Last Man Standing.
I think this quote from the article sums it up:
So basically the same bullshit fatalism you see from shows like South Park.
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... that's Actually Pretty Funny to me.

What were Nixon's policies even like? They don't seem to be as memorable as Watergate, for obvious reasons.