The two ends of the political spectrum are killing us

[Mac1958]

The important point you are missing is that liberals haven’t changed or usurped laws in what you are attacking. You just don’t like that they publicly out people they think are not tolerant of others - rightly in many cases, but yes some overreactions.

The right wing dystopian reaction to being challenged regarding compassion and understanding has been to poison the judicial branch by packing it with political activists, gerrymandered the shit out of states, tried making voting harder and challenged legitimacy of free elections. Almost all on the basis of lies puked out by Fox News and worse. All the left has done is, in a free society and within a free market, and within legal confines, chosen to express their opinions.

Any attempt to equate the two or impeach both extremes equally is incredulous.

The right wing immediately takes simple concepts and corrupts them. Suddenly protesting the beating of a minority means to conservatives that liberals hate cops and white people. Suddenly evaluating immigrants for asylum means the destruction of America. Suddenly Harvard simply wanting a diverse student body is white hate. Give me a break. You can poke at the left but there is no where near a balance of wrong.

I don't disagree. The decay has been uneven since Escalator Day, and that's why it's had my strict attention. Before Escalator Day, I got into a few thousand squabbles with lefties here over PC & Identity Politics, being called every name in the book, and the right wingers thought I was neat.

No, this is a uniquely disturbing and dangerous moment. And while the Left hasn't slowed down on its PC/Identity Politics madness, this orange catastrophe is literally existential. A republic can't continue to exist when a large portion -- say, 30%, 35% -- is literally operating from its own realty ecosystem. The Dunning-Kruger Effect fully realized.

 

[gipper]

You voted for the most radically left-wing administration in American history.

Biden is a right winger. Always has been.

 

[Orangecat]

Believe it or not, 30-40 years ago, I empathized much more with the left than the right. I didn’t like the authoritarian nature of the religious right and was much more supportive of the free-speech, distrust-of-government, pro-personal-liberty views espoused by the left. It seems those aspects have flipped over time. Of course, I also have a bit more money now and realize it doesn’t grow on trees and most people who live paycheck to paycheck do so as a result of their own poor decisions. I’ve always considered government to be a necessary evil, and have thusly supported the viable party that represented the lesser of said evil. That party now is the Republicans. Are they perfect? Far from it. However, the democrat alternative is a train wreck of PC Marxism to me. Don’t tell me what words I can and cannot use. Don’t redistribute wealth via government edict to satisfy your virtue signaling views on a utopian society. Cut the size of fed-gov and get a grip on the insane debt (both parties are guilty here). Stop strangling liberty and prosperity with regulations.
Let people exercise their liberty, with the caveat that you own the consequences of such, both positive and negative.

 

[leftwinger]

I don't disagree. The decay has been uneven since Escalator Day, and that's why it's had my strict attention. Before Escalator Day, I got into a few thousand squabbles with lefties here over PC & Identity Politics, being called every name in the book, and the right wingers thought I was neat.

No, this is a uniquely disturbing and dangerous moment. And while the Left hasn't slowed down on its PC/Identity Politics madness, this orange catastrophe is literally existential. A republic can't continue to exist when a large portion -- say, 30%, 35% -- is literally operating from its own realty ecosystem. The Dunning-Kruger Effect fully realized.

And Bad Evil Devious Mac is back. Attacking honorable decent workng Taxpaying Americans again. I knew it.

Tricky Mac only lasted about 1 hr.

 

[citygator]

Believe it or not, 30-40 years ago, I empathized much more with the left than the right. I didn’t like the authoritarian nature of the religious right and was much more supportive of the free-speech, distrust-of-government, pro-personal-liberty views espoused by the left. It seems those aspects have flipped over time. Of course, I also have a bit more money now and realize it doesn’t grow on trees and most people who live paycheck to paycheck do so as a result of their own poor decisions. I’ve always considered government to be a necessary evil, and have thusly supported the viable party that represented the lesser of said evil. That party now is the Republicans. Are they perfect? Far from it. However, the democrat alternative is a train wreck of PC Marxism to me. Don’t tell me what words I can and cannot use. Don’t redistribute wealth via government edict to satisfy your virtue signaling views on a utopian society. Cut the size of fed-gov and get a grip on the insane debt (both parties are guilty here). Stop strangling liberty and prosperity with regulations.
Let people exercise their liberty, with the caveat that you own the consequences of such, both positive and negative.

Liberals haven’t changed you have. Once you got through the struggles you’ve decided it no longer benefits you to be liberal.

2/3rds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck it’s not all bad choices bud. Right wingers are good at anecdotes and bad at data. The system is set up so that only a few are comfortable. We don’t need socialism but we do need a structure that pushes more wealth and comfort to people who work hard while providing a safety net for the unfortunate. We aren’t a feudalist system but we are trending that way.

 

[Tumblin Tumbleweed]

You (another LW board loon) couldnt mop sweat off BLs' patriotic nutsack.

^^^Another angry magaturd.

 

[leftwinger]

Liberals haven’t changed you have. Once you got through the struggles you’ve decided it no longer benefits you to be liberal.

2/3rds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck it’s not all bad choices bud. Right wingers are good at anecdotes and bad at data. The system is set up so that only a few are comfortable. We don’t need socialism but we do need a structure that pushes more wealth and comfort to people who work hard while providing a safety net for the unfortunate. We aren’t a feudalist system but we are trending that way.

need a structure that pushes more wealth and comfort to people who work hard while providing a safety net for the unfortunate.

There is no more free money. You would have to kill the military to make a dent in your so-called poor. Already awarded trillions....so many do nothing but sit home and breed with different men. No marriage, no family....just use the system. With TV, tattoo, booze, drugs, free food, sect8, yet thats not good enough? Indians dont have 1/100 of that.

If you kill the military who will stop Evil pirates coming to take what they want?

 

[Orangecat]

Liberals haven’t changed you have. Once you got through the struggles you’ve decided it no longer benefits you to be liberal.

Incorrect. The left has become increasingly authoritarian once they realized they can seize government power and force their views upon society.

2/3rds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck it’s not all bad choices bud.

Much of it is, bud.

Right wingers are good at anecdotes and bad at data. The system is set up so that only a few are comfortable. We don’t need socialism but we do need a structure that pushes more wealth and comfort to people who work hard while providing a safety net for the unfortunate. We aren’t a feudalist system but we are trending that way.

That’s a bunch of drivel espoused by losers who think their neighbors owe them a lifestyle they haven’t earned. Fuck off with that Marxist shit, son.

 

[leftwinger]

^^^Another angry magaturd.

Correct. What you and your kind have done to collapse this Country cannot be ignored. You are the enemy. You will be eliminated or greatly reduced going forward. There is no other choice anymore. America cant take anymore BS.

 

[BrokeLoser]

You aren't a patriot just because you declare yourself one. You're just angry because others refuse to see you as such. Too bad.

Jihadis call themselves patriots, too.

How weird…twisted as fuck Hate America Change America leftists don’t see me and those like me as American Patriots…it’s almost as if they have no idea what one is. Who would have guessed?

 

[Doug1943]

real journalists don't spend a lot of time on the offspring of candidates personal lives. Your garbage propaganda goes on forever about Hunter about 6 year old things that have all been discredited multiple times..,

Trump wants to be pals with Putin and the Chinese guy and the north Korean guy and wants to be a Moscow oligarch. he's too mobbed up to be caught, he did all this in public. he told the Russians in a speech to go ahead and hack Hillary and he needed all the help he could get. And then they did LOL in a Big big way... maybe you think that's just great. did you hear about Murdoch saying in court that his pundits did not believe the election steel garbage or even like Trump. Your propaganda machine is a disgrace and so are you for not checking all these ridiculous "facts"... when in the entire free world only one TV station and two newspapers agree with you... hello?!

I don't think you read what I write. Which is fine, join 99.999999999999999% of the rest of Americans, but then .. you shouldn't "answer" it by just repeating your general views. It's not convincing to anyone.

You evidently think mainstream American journalism is just fine. They are the people whom we should get our information from. They never lie, never distort facts, never present things one-sidedly, never suppress facts that would tend to discredit their own liberal political views.

On the one hand we have the terrible liars of Fox News, etc. On the other, the Genuine Journalists of the New York Times, Washington Post, etc., lighting up the room with the glow of their halos, fearlessly investigating those in power, even if they are Democrats.

Okay. You believe that, my side doesn't.

AND ... it's not just my side. Have a look here:



This lady is no rightwinger. Rightwingers who read her columns are warned now: you might get a heart attack!

Actually, I'm sorry to say this, but it's the serious Left who have done the best job investigating the so-called impartiality of the American mainstream media.

If ever there was an academic Devil-figure on the Right -- the professorial equivalent of George Soros -- it's Noam Chomsky. [ Noam Chomsky - Wikipedia ]

People on my side of the barricades have to cross themselves three times if they even hear his name being uttered. And for good reason: he's a genius and he's a leftwinger par excellence. From his Wiki bio:

Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. Chomsky began teaching at the University of Arizona in 2017.

One of the most cited scholars alive, Chomsky has influenced a broad array of academic fields. He is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. In addition to his continued scholarship, he remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary state capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements.

Whoa! Smell the brimstone! (Warning to my fellow Rightists -- extended exposure to this man's writing has been known to cause the equivalent of severe radiation poisoning in good patriots. You have been warned!)

He doesn't agree that the mass media are upright and honest and truthful. In fact, he and a colleague wrote a pretty good book on how the media work, called Manufacturing Consent. Here's a summary: [ Manufacturing Consent - Wikipedia ]

The Amazon summary is more succinct than the Wiki one. (By the way, you can pick up a copy on Amazon for $10 right now.) Here it is. The first quote is by the late Walter LaFeber, whose field was American diplomatic history (and who taught me American history at university).

"[A] compelling indictment of the news media's role in covering up errors and deceptions in American foreign policy of the past quarter century." —Walter LaFeber, The New York Times Book Review

In this pathbreaking work, now with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.

Based on a series of case studies—including the media's dichotomous treatment of "worthy" versus "unworthy" victims, "legitimizing" and "meaningless" Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media's behavior and performance.

Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media's handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media's treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation.

What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.

Anyway, serious people should by no means believe everything they hear on Fox, or Breitbart, or the Epoch Times, etc. etc. But neither should they trust the mainstream media.

 

[BrokeLoser]

My people want both ends of the spectrum to grow up. But we do know that there are people like you, who will not.

What does that even mean?
What more do you want Conservatives to do to preserve, protect and improve America?
Remember, keeping America intact was always the primary bond between the citizenry…we have never in our history had such a large faction of the population so hell-bent on restructuring/redesigning America.

Try harder bud.

 

[Mac1958]

What does that even mean?
What more do you want Conservatives to do to preserve, protect and improve America?
Remember, keeping America intact was always the primary bond between the citizenry…we have never in our history had such a large faction of the population so hell-bent on restructuring/redesigning America.

Try harder bud.

I'll do as I please, Trumpster. You don't intimidate me.

 

[leftwinger]

The IRS now puts out a bulletin to DECLARE STOLEN GOODS on Tax filings.

Board loons waltz on past as if this is a normal good thing to do? What Criminal would own up to possesion or the act?

Utter madness. Lipstick dude stealing luggage to get used panties! In the GOVT employ! Hand-picked by the top levels!

This is the enemy. Tearing down our future.

 

[leftwinger]

Pretend a lazy crazy Financial advisor stole $500K out of a few retirement accounts. Do you think HE or SHE would willingly suddenly let the IRS know "I found $500K but have no paper trail, here's your 40% cut"?

This is now supposed to be accepted logic because some GOVT loon thought it up? Pure insanity.

 

[Tumblin Tumbleweed]

What does that even mean?
What more do you want Conservatives to do to preserve, protect and improve America?
Remember, keeping America intact was always the primary bond between the citizenry…we have never in our history had such a large faction of the population so hell-bent on restructuring/redesigning America.

Try harder bud.

Conservatives don't need to continuously punch down on their 'enemies', using superficial talking points given to them by people who don't even believe in them. That's magaturd behavior. Conservatives don't need a populist ideology to create a consensus. Magaturds do.

What it means, is besides a small percentage of like minded members of your tribes of confirmation bias, no one sees you as a patriot.

You're not even trying, bud.

 

[Doug1943]

Believe it or not, 30-40 years ago, I empathized much more with the left than the right. I didn’t like the authoritarian nature of the religious right and was much more supportive of the free-speech, distrust-of-government, pro-personal-liberty views espoused by the left. It seems those aspects have flipped over time. Of course, I also have a bit more money now and realize it doesn’t grow on trees and most people who live paycheck to paycheck do so as a result of their own poor decisions. I’ve always considered government to be a necessary evil, and have thusly supported the viable party that represented the lesser of said evil. That party now is the Republicans. Are they perfect? Far from it. However, the democrat alternative is a train wreck of PC Marxism to me. Don’t tell me what words I can and cannot use. Don’t redistribute wealth via government edict to satisfy your virtue signaling views on a utopian society. Cut the size of fed-gov and get a grip on the insane debt (both parties are guilty here). Stop strangling liberty and prosperity with regulations.
Let people exercise their liberty, with the caveat that you own the consequences of such, both positive and negative.

Interesting. Although I was coming from further on the Left than you evidently were, the same thing happened to me. Suddenly, it was leftist storm troopers shutting down right wing meetings, it was the Left policing speech, etc. An inversion.

I can recall, as a teenager, going to a meeting, in 1964, of the Houston Socialist Forum -- which had a panel of speakers on the upcoming election, including a fellow from the Communist Party. The John Birch Society infiltrated the meeting, and when the CP guy began to speak, they all stood up, marched to the front of the room, and unfurled a banner saying "Communists Kill Americans in Vietnam". The police were called, and the leader of that group was actually arrested and brought to court. At the trial, his lawyer stood up and said just one sentence: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice". (A famous statement by Goldwater, who was running that year for President.) Acquitted.

Another friend of mine got six months in prison for "impersonating a soldier" because he wore fatigues during a 'guerilla theatre' anti-war play. [The case actually went to the Supreme Court. He won.] Another acquaintance, a Black militant, got thirty years for giving a joint to an undercover policeman. He actually served four before a court let him out.

None of this bothered conservatives at the time. They've changed, I hope. The Rule of Law is absolutely central to a decent society. Back then, it was not always extended to Leftists or Black people. Now the Left, or part of it, would like to turn the tables.

There are other people who are still on the Left, as they see it anyway, who have had the same thing happen to them. I.e. they have realized that the values they associated with the Left, are no longer to be associated with it. They have their own website:
[ Quillette ] They're our allies.

 

[theHawk]

Political overcompensation is the new Great American Pastime.

A few years ago, some of us were warning the Left: You're going too far with Political Correctness and Identity Politics. You're going too far screaming RACIST at every last fucking thing that moves. You're going too far lowering standards and expectations for people based solely on their skin color. You're going too far in normalizing sexual disorders such as gender dysphoria. You're going too far in putting your agenda in schools. You're going too far in disallowing conservative voices on college campuses. And most of all, you're going too far in attacking, intimidating and penalizing people in everyday life for saying things you don't like.

There's going to be pushback, we said. You're overcompensating, we said. This stuff is not right, we said. I only said that a few thousand times here, to be met with attacks from the Left. (By the way, a zillion examples of that available upon request via the search function)

So now we see the pushback, with this Neanderthal, middle school bully-approach to the culture from the Right. This is the pushback we warned about -- although, admittedly, even worse than I imagined. And this sucker has legs, just like your weaponized PC and Identity Politics did. They're making laws and attacking and intimidating. Gee, what a coincidence. What Deja Vu we're seeing, huh? Go figure!

And most amazing of all, this pushback included the election of a petulant child, an obvious con man, an orange buffoon, in 2016, and all the fucking unbelievable madness that has followed.

No doubt there will be pushback to this, too. Back and forth. Back and forth. More and more damage.

Ideological politics poisons everything it touches. Now it's putting this country at risk of falling apart. Great job, gang. You're BOTH so much like those you hate, and you just won't stop.

Young Republicans Are Begging Party Elders To Stop Saying 'Woke'

The next generation of conservatives support their party's culture wars. But they hate the way they describe them

www.rollingstone.com

What’s the matter, Mac? Starting to realize that the side that pushes transgender surgeries for minors is absolutely evil?

 

[Doug1943]

Mac: why don't you spell out, succinctly, your own political beliefs? Here are some key topics that divide Left and Right today:

Free speech.
Introducing young children to, let us say, 'alternative sexualities'.
Teaching American History.

I won't try to summarize the current Left/Right differences on these issues. It would be interesting to hear what you think.

We rightwingers may be evil, but some of us are smart, and know how to seek out allies for single issues where we agree. And of course the same goes in reverse/symmetry for your side.

 

[BrokeLoser]

Conservatives don't need to continuously punch down on their 'enemies', using superficial talking points given to them by people who don't even believe in them.

Hahaha…that’s a lot of personal opinion and projection with no context or examples. Why?
What is “punching down”? Is that when one is retaliatory and protective?
What “superficial talking points“ are you referring to? Are they superficial because you, a leftist says they are?
Who are these “people who don’t believe in them”?

Conservatives don't need a populist ideology to create a consensus.

What does that mean to you? Explain with context.

What it means, is besides a small percentage of like minded members of your tribes of confirmation bias no one sees you as a patriot.

Because you, a leftist says so? Any supporting evidence or should we just trust your projection?
Would you mind giving us your short definition of patriot?
Do you have the sack for that?