Senate The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election has begun

Or it's evidence of his willingness to ignore the FBI when their conclusions don't match up with politically correct ideology.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/us-republican...l?soc_src=mediacontentsharebuttons&soc_trk=fb

 

I think this has been brewing for awhile, actually.

 

Let's hope we see results soon.

 

That might just make the base revolt against the establishment even more, and have even more of them side with Trump.

Trump has recently said he'd still consider running as an Independent if he's treated unfairly.

 

I never said it was *my* opinion, I said it was *an* opinion, and one held by a lot of Americans. There was no value judgement whatsoever in my initial remarks. It's painfully clear you missed not only the gist of what I was saying, but also chose to take it out of context. I'm sorry you made that decision, but I am not at fault for it.

Your statement that my post held a "stupid comparison", however, was offensive (not to mention personal), and added nothing to the discussion. I am not responsible for the fact that you chose to a) misread my comments and b) be offended by them. That's your issue, not mine.

Is that clear enough for you, or I am being...obtuse?

By the way, I was initially addressing Wocky, not you.

 

The comparison worked, within the scope of the comparison. It's just riddled with controversial elements, so you'll get flak for it.

 

Apologies for my confusion, but a couple questions come to mind:

1. How are you personally offended by Even's comment, when the only remarks he made were about the comparison, and you supposedly don't espouse said comparison?

2. You offered the comparison as part of a discussion of the appropriateness of Hillary Clinton's comments. How doesn't the validity of said comparison become an important issue in the discussion? It is quite understandable that politicians shape their comments to address voter concerns. Donald Trump does the same thing in discussing how Mexican immigrants are all rapists. But, as that last instance shows, unless we examine the validity of the concerns they are purporting to address, there's not really a way to distinguish demagogues from people who are making honest, worthwhile points.

3. What does the fact that "lots of people feel that way" have to do with anything? Lots of people feel that vaccines cause autism. Lots of people feel the Holocaust never happened. Lots of people feel Donald Trump should be the next President of the United States.

4. To Superwatto, how did the comparison "work?" No one has painted all police officers with the same brush. Not myself, nor Sanders, nor even BLM holds the position that all police officers are bad. Instead, tall have argued that there are systemic problems with the police force that merit reform. It was an argument against nothing at all.

 

Wocky, you're missing the point.

What I was trying to say was that underlying the issue is the temptation to lump the bad apples together with the rest of the bushel. It's happening to police officers due to these shootings, and it's happening to Muslims because of terrorism.

Look at the GOP presidential candidates. Yes, Trump has been the biggest loudmouth, but nobody else in the field is rushing to demand he drop out of the race. Denounce his remarks, yes, but their comments have all been carefully scripted as to not attack the message, only the messenger.

Why? Because if he does drop out, those voters are going to go somewhere else, and nobody wants to be the one who turns them completely off. It's what KW likes to call fear of the "other." It can be applied to institutions as well as racial, ethnic or religious groups.

Yes, there are systemic problems with many law enforcement departments in this country, but I think what Hillary was trying to say was we should keep an open mind, and resist the temptation to start from a place of automatic suspicion and mistrust, even though for the African-American community, such mistrust would be wholly justified when it comes to the police.

Take-home point: Sanders' message feels better (at least on a visceral level, but I think Hillary's approach is more likely to accomplish meaningful change. And by that, I'm talking about more than just a conversation about the police that leads to law enforcement leadership getting defensive and digging in.

And Watto--I agree with you, I should take flak for my comment, but my issue wasn't so much with the criticism itself than how it was rendered by the other poster. It was just put across in a rude way, which I felt was unnecessary.

Regardless, it's easy to misinterpret context on the internet .

Peace,

V-03

 

CNN is turning itself into an altar of worship for Donald Trump...

 

Wocky, you were slagging Hilary's defense of police officers. Masterfully. V-03 then came to her rescue, with an analogy that was fitting for that rescue. Sure, you didn't make the point, Bernie didn't, BLM didn't - but Hilary apparantly did, which was what this was about. Now, I probably wouldn't support what Hilary said, nor how she said it, but I do think that how V-03 translated it didn't deserve a "what a stupid comparison". So that's why I said that.

 

Trump = ratings so of course they would.


But really, his latest episode of mocking a NYT journalists disability is really, really awful? I don't know what to say really. Can't properly describe it accurately with words. Reprehensible? Contemptuous? He shows a great contempt for people overall, even supporters or would-be ones. The Iowa voters are "stupid".

Really, I don't like Rubio as his foreign policy is WBush2.0. But, Hillary would likely be a continuation of Obama, which could be described as WBush-lite.

Come on Bern!

 

Wocky didn't call it a stupid comparison.

 

On a completely different note, an active shooter situation is currently taking place at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. Several police officers have been wounded, and a siege is now underway.

I'm sorry, but this is a perfect example of why what politicians say matter. The GOP has managed to stir the pot on Planned Parenthood with disinformation, lies, and inflammatory rhetoric, and while I don't believe they are directly to blame, they are indirectly encouraging these types of actions.

Maybe this will take the wind out of the sails of the GOP's effort to defund Planned Parenthood. Maybe.

Peace,

V-03

 

Josh Marshall said it all well today at TPM. I've been posting for years now about authoritarianism and the GOP, and other issues at work in the base. People are angry and getting angrier, and Trump is the perfect vehicle to lash out with.

I used the Frankenstein analogy in a comment to my dad last weekend, and I think it's pretty apt. Even if Trump fails for one reason or another (i.e. being outvoted by someone else or something else happening to his campaign), the sentiments powering his campaign are going nowhere. There are millions of white people (many of them poor, but plenty of them very well off) who are incredibly angry and also scared, a bad combination. There's little to no help coming for them, partly because of policies and people they keep voting for, and also because things that were once acceptable and possible in this country are no longer either one. People who were once marginalized are beginning to speak up more and demand what's fair for them. The amount of resentment (and lack of self-awareness) is staggeringly high, and I don't see it getting any better anytime soon. Worse, but definitely not better.

We're seeing the latest and maybe final product of the Southern Strategy.

 

Yes I think our politics will get worse before they get better. Trump is like a vehicle for people's anger right now. That's the reason people really don't care what he says. It's really less about him than it is about them and their own misery and anger at the "establishment" etc.

That's what the scary part is I referenced a few posts back: he's merely riding a wave of resentment that exists. He's not creating the wave. It's there regardless. And like you said, it isn't going to go away when he does.

It's like so many of our past struggles between protestants and catholics, italians and jews,african americans and just about everybody, Japanese citizens, and now mexican immigrants and nativists.
The real question is: how bad does it get? War? Short of war but a amicable divorce? Nothing of the sort and this is all about nothing?

 

I can't see war or an amicable divorce, even with all the anger floating around. I think some combination of riots, or a governor refusing to carry out a federal law, leading to a military deployment, as what will finally bring things to a head. After that, the temperature will start to cool down.

America has seen these types of upheavals before, over Vietnam, during the economic crises of the '70s, and we're still here. It's a dangerous and uncertain time, but I just don't believe the republic is going to fall apart. We're more resilient than people realize, just slow to learn and very, very stubborn.

Peace,

V-03

 

Uhh, if things really do get bad enough to where we're deploying the military to subdue a rogue governor, what makes you think it'll end there? Maybe you're a whole lot more optimistic than I am, but the way I see it, that scenario will lead to calls for secession. I read an article a while ago which stated that "American politics are not just a civil war minus the shooting" and I disagreed, thinking that's exactly what American politics is like. With federal troops taking control of a state, it just might turn into a civil war with the shooting.

 

A lot of the people supporting Trump and who might consider secession think of themselves as being the "real" America.

Just something to keep in mind.

 

This secession talk is really bizarre and paranoid. There's no danger of it happening. Our system of government (ultimate and complete Federal control of the armed forces; much more powerful central government), no singular issue anywhere near like slavery, the way people think of themselves (citizens of the U.S. rather than "citizens" of their states), lack of clear regional distinctions, lack of pressing economic factors, guarantee that rebels would not receive foreign support, etc.-- these all work against a civil war anything like the 1861-1865 conflict.

 

Really, you don't think the right-wing propaganda machine is capable of whipping people up into supporting secession? Because it's either the GOP gives up its narrative, or the logical endpoint will be secession. I don't really see the first of those happening anytime soon.

 

Sigh.

 

Well we don't have the sectionalism like we did in the 1840-50s leading up to the Civil War. Secession was first floated in the Northeast due to disgust over the political slave power of the south before and during the war with Mexico. And we don't have an entire economic base dependent upon slavery which led to many of those sectional differences.

 

Well, something of this sort already did happen in the early 1960's. In 1963 at the Uni of Alabama-Tuscaloosa, Governor Wallace stood in the doorway refusing to let black students enter and register for classes. The NG was called in and well:





In spite of a rogue governor and an incredibly deep and historical issue like race in the deepest of deep southern states, there was no secession and no war. Was there turmoil? Yes. Riots? Yes. Assasinations even. But it never came to all out war. That was a century earlier.

As bad as things are now, we don't have near the problems today as we even did in the 60's. We don't have a war(currently) that is as unpopular as Vietnam and cultural and economic strife on top. We also don't have a Cold War and threat of global nuclear annihilation on top of all of that. Remember in the late 60s the Soviets were moving into Eastern Europe and throwing their weight around(crushing Czechoslovakian uprisings). Incredibly tumultuous.

 

Is it, though? Where is this phantom hatred and mistrust of police? Because I don't see where it's arisen as part of the national conversation at all. I do see many examples where those who like the status quo have raised its specter in order to pummel reformers. For instance, Rudy Giuliani has accused Obama and others of stoking "anti-police hatred" for merely bringing up the topic. Relatively, Clinton gives short shrift to what has actually happened, ample space to combating something that doesn't really exist, and makes proposals for change so vague that they could mean virtually anything (ie What is "justice" and "progress?" Could it be the sort of reforms Sanders mentions or that are being debated in Congress? Sure. Could it just mean solving this one case and changing nothing else? Absolutely. Could it mean proposals to subsidize more paid vacation for police officers, on the notion that this only happened because they were working to hard? No reason it couldn't.).

How are you concluding this? Specific to this issue, I mean. We're not talking about expanding the Medicare program into some equivalent of the British NIH, or making college free for everyone, or even re-instating Glass-Steagall. On the particulars of criminal justice reform, how does your logic apply? I have laid out in great detail why and how Sanders approach could help here. To hand wave the issue with the most rote response from Clinton supporters is deeply disappointing. It is, frankly, the sort of thing that makes people think she's not actually sincere about anything. You keep telling us how you support her because she's results-oriented, so I'd really like to hear where the flaws in the approach I laid out are, and how her approach is going to lead to a better outcome.

This is absolutely not about feelings. It's about willingness to spend political capital or endure criticisms. There aren't a huge number of issues where this is the big barrier to progress, I'll admit. But this is one of them.