Why are we so afraid to admit the obvious?

[bendog]

Given the spate of recent violence, the board is understandably abuzz with threads and comments about who is to "blame". And of course, each end is essentially putting 100% of the blame on the other end. Each end is laying out a long list of examples of violence, rhetoric and incitement by the other end.

Guess what? They're both right. Facts are facts.

I have a great deal of respect for the power of ideology. It can make people say and do insane things. It can absolutely blind a person to the obvious. But is it so strong that we'd rather see this country burn down than challenge our own tribe to stop the madness?

When the hate is flowing from both ends like water from a fire hose, does it really matter which end is "worse"?

What is so terrifying about just admitting the obvious?
.

A Trump supporter Sent packages through the mail that contained bombs. Another idiot was so enraged by the hysteria preached by the blob about the migrants heading northward that he shot a dozen people in Pittsburgh.

No dumbass. Both sides aren’t right.

yes, that's the argument against moderation when one side's position is morally and factually unacceptable. Slavery, pedophilia, wife beating, etc.

It's weird. 3 years ago, the right was "no compromise." Which is why we never got deal stabilizing Soc Sec. Now, it's about moderation. At least McConnell is honest enough to admit he can never get a bipartisan deal while Trump is potus. Even if the dems agree to something, you can't trust Trump to change his mind at the last minute to blow up a deal

 

[candycorn]

Yes, both have. And when it's so prevalent, which side is worse is essentially irrelevant. It all feeds into the momentum.
.

If I state that I don't think Affirmative Action is reasonable and you respond with calling me a racist and I laugh, then violence occurs. Tolerance has been lost because the Left has gone insane:

• Guilty until proven innocent -- see Kavanaugh...but NOT Ellison or Clinton
• Open Borders --- see caravan and DACA. Don't care about our veterans.
• Disrespect the Flag --- Palestinian flag flown at the DNC but state flag of Miss is banned.
• Disney movies are bad --- depict males in roles of authority. Sleeping Beauty never gave permission to be kissed. Ariel lost her voice for man.
• 31 different genders --- dismiss those who believe there are only 2.

This is insanity. We will see how voters respond. In fact it is so insane I am about to register as full GOP and lose my Independent tag. My wife, a life long Democrat has switched to GOP. Sad.

Okay, those would be examples of complaints the Right has about the Left.

And?
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Those are facts that are not in dispute. And? And don't you agree all those views are insane?

My point is that you only seem to see the sins of one side.

Which is the point of the thread.
.

Do you or do you not agree that those views are insane? If you say "yes" then we can be on the same page and address the other side.

Did the OP ever tell us how he called out his Tribe?

 

[bendog]

Given the spate of recent violence, the board is understandably abuzz with threads and comments about who is to "blame". And of course, each end is essentially putting 100% of the blame on the other end. Each end is laying out a long list of examples of violence, rhetoric and incitement by the other end.

Guess what? They're both right. Facts are facts.

I have a great deal of respect for the power of ideology. It can make people say and do insane things. It can absolutely blind a person to the obvious. But is it so strong that we'd rather see this country burn down than challenge our own tribe to stop the madness?

When the hate is flowing from both ends like water from a fire hose, does it really matter which end is "worse"?

What is so terrifying about just admitting the obvious?
.

Because one side is practicing violence and only condemns one side.....the other side (mine) condemns violence from anyone and does not promote it. so to fix the problem, you need to stop promoting violence and start condemning anyone who does it.....it's pretty clear who needs to do that (not my side, they already do that)

Both sides promote violence, so you have failed to see the truth.

I don't think Obama ever accepted violence by the more extreme BLM. I think the advent of Trump changed the dems' position.

 

[BlindBoo]

Both sides do some similar things. However, so far, only one side calls the Free Press "the Enemy of the People" and taken to routinely attacking political opponents with a level of vicious vitriolic rhetoric rarely seen in the United States. Only one side calls compromise blasphemous. Only one side has taken lying to ignorant and ludicrous levels. Yes, a Bernie support went crazy and went on a shooting spree at that baseball practice. How many of those Republicans had Bernie been routinely attacking from his "bully pulpit", at all those rallies he was doing at the time?

 

[jc456]

Given the spate of recent violence, the board is understandably abuzz with threads and comments about who is to "blame". And of course, each end is essentially putting 100% of the blame on the other end. Each end is laying out a long list of examples of violence, rhetoric and incitement by the other end.

Guess what? They're both right. Facts are facts.

I have a great deal of respect for the power of ideology. It can make people say and do insane things. It can absolutely blind a person to the obvious. But is it so strong that we'd rather see this country burn down than challenge our own tribe to stop the madness?

When the hate is flowing from both ends like water from a fire hose, does it really matter which end is "worse"?

What is so terrifying about just admitting the obvious?
.

A Trump supporter Sent packages through the mail that contained bombs. Another idiot was so enraged by the hysteria preached by the blob about the migrants heading northward that he shot a dozen people in Pittsburgh.

No dumbass. Both sides aren’t right.

define supporter?

 

[jc456]

shots fired into a republican office and hasn't been reported in MSM. why? hey MAC, when you can equalize the reporting by MSM you have a point. right now you still have nothing.

 

[bendog]

Both sides do some similar things. However, so far, only one side calls the Free Press "the Enemy of the People" and taken to routinely attacking political opponents with a level of vicious vitriolic rhetoric rarely seen in the United States. Only one side calls compromise blasphemous. Only one side has taken lying to ignorant and ludicrous levels. Yes, a Bernie support went crazy and went on a shooting spree at that baseball practice. How many of those Republicans had Bernie been routinely attacking from his "bully pulpit", at all those rallies he was doing at the time?

Well it's now "OK" to heckle republicans in restaurants, and even knock the take out container from McConnell's hands. Imo, the gop brought this on themselves. Not only for supporting Trump's rally cries of violence against protestors, but also for not calling Trump out on birtherism. They cannot acquiesce to calling a president illegitmate, and then find something wrong with the worm turns on them.

And it's not going to end so long as Trump is potus.

 

[Lesh]

Given the spate of recent violence, the board is understandably abuzz with threads and comments about who is to "blame". And of course, each end is essentially putting 100% of the blame on the other end. Each end is laying out a long list of examples of violence, rhetoric and incitement by the other end.

Guess what? They're both right. Facts are facts.

I have a great deal of respect for the power of ideology. It can make people say and do insane things. It can absolutely blind a person to the obvious. But is it so strong that we'd rather see this country burn down than challenge our own tribe to stop the madness?

When the hate is flowing from both ends like water from a fire hose, does it really matter which end is "worse"?

What is so terrifying about just admitting the obvious?
.

A Trump supporter Sent packages through the mail that contained bombs. Another idiot was so enraged by the hysteria preached by the blob about the migrants heading northward that he shot a dozen people in Pittsburgh.

No dumbass. Both sides aren’t right.

Let's not forget the racist killer that gunned down two elderly black folks in a Tennessee Krogers after he couldn't gain access to a black church.

It is clearly NOT coming from both sides and the rhetoric coming from Trump and Trumpers is clearly fueling it

 

[jc456]

Both sides do some similar things. However, so far, only one side calls the Free Press "the Enemy of the People" and taken to routinely attacking political opponents with a level of vicious vitriolic rhetoric rarely seen in the United States. Only one side calls compromise blasphemous. Only one side has taken lying to ignorant and ludicrous levels. Yes, a Bernie support went crazy and went on a shooting spree at that baseball practice. How many of those Republicans had Bernie been routinely attacking from his "bully pulpit", at all those rallies he was doing at the time?

that isn't what he said. he said the fake news is the enemy of the people. You should listen better. but we know who you are, you hate facts.

 

[bendog]

shots fired into a republican office and hasn't been reported in MSM. why? hey MAC, when you can equalize the reporting by MSM you have a point. right now you still have nothing.

Shots fired at Florida Republican Party office - CNNPolitics

 

[bendog]

Both sides do some similar things. However, so far, only one side calls the Free Press "the Enemy of the People" and taken to routinely attacking political opponents with a level of vicious vitriolic rhetoric rarely seen in the United States. Only one side calls compromise blasphemous. Only one side has taken lying to ignorant and ludicrous levels. Yes, a Bernie support went crazy and went on a shooting spree at that baseball practice. How many of those Republicans had Bernie been routinely attacking from his "bully pulpit", at all those rallies he was doing at the time?

that isn't what he said. he said the fake news is the enemy of the people. You should listen better. but we know who you are, you hate facts.

yes, you really should.

 

[candycorn]

Both sides do some similar things. However, so far, only one side calls the Free Press "the Enemy of the People" and taken to routinely attacking political opponents with a level of vicious vitriolic rhetoric rarely seen in the United States. Only one side calls compromise blasphemous. Only one side has taken lying to ignorant and ludicrous levels. Yes, a Bernie support went crazy and went on a shooting spree at that baseball practice. How many of those Republicans had Bernie been routinely attacking from his "bully pulpit", at all those rallies he was doing at the time?

Well it's now "OK" to heckle republicans in restaurants, and even knock the take out container from McConnell's hands. Imo, the gop brought this on themselves. Not only for supporting Trump's rally cries of violence against protestors, but also for not calling Trump out on birtherism. They cannot acquiesce to calling a president illegitmate, and then find something wrong with the worm turns on them.

And it's not going to end so long as Trump is potus.

Actually none of that is okay.

But none of it is remotely close to saying you’ll pay an assauter’s legal bills if he attacks someone either.

 

[BasicHumanUnit]

Both sides do some similar things. However, so far, only one side calls the Free Press "the Enemy of the People" and taken to routinely attacking political opponents with a level of vicious vitriolic rhetoric rarely seen in the United States. Only one side calls compromise blasphemous. Only one side has taken lying to ignorant and ludicrous levels. Yes, a Bernie support went crazy and went on a shooting spree at that baseball practice. How many of those Republicans had Bernie been routinely attacking from his "bully pulpit", at all those rallies he was doing at the time?

You are indeed blind. The Press is horribly lopsided. And Socialists are the worst of the worst. See Venezuela.

Your post is the rantings of a triggered idiot.....and precisely why the right is beginning to fight back against your sides tyranny.

Sadistically, you and yours thought that violence and hatred against Conservatives was justified, acceptable and your domain only.
Conservatives and The Right have taken years and years of abuse in silence and tolerance. it wasn't Republican white boys playing the knock out game against blacks.
(But ONE finally returned the favor after hundreds of Democrats attacking elderly whites)
I agree...if the Left wants to continue harassing Right wingers as Maxine and MANY other Leftists advocate, then the right has absolutely no choice but to eventually begin to strike back.

The Left obviously believes it has the right to violence against those who don't agree with them, and can attack them with impunity. Sick.

 

[Crixus]

Given the spate of recent violence, the board is understandably abuzz with threads and comments about who is to "blame". And of course, each end is essentially putting 100% of the blame on the other end. Each end is laying out a long list of examples of violence, rhetoric and incitement by the other end.

Guess what? They're both right. Facts are facts.

I have a great deal of respect for the power of ideology. It can make people say and do insane things. It can absolutely blind a person to the obvious. But is it so strong that we'd rather see this country burn down than challenge our own tribe to stop the madness?

When the hate is flowing from both ends like water from a fire hose, does it really matter which end is "worse"?

What is so terrifying about just admitting the obvious?
.

Because one side is practicing violence and only condemns one side.....the other side (mine) condemns violence from anyone and does not promote it. so to fix the problem, you need to stop promoting violence and start condemning anyone who does it.....it's pretty clear who needs to do that (not my side, they already do that)

Both sides promote violence, so you have failed to see the truth.

Examples?

 

[well named]

I think it's easy to lose perspective in the modern media climate and the 24 hour news cycle (Hey, remember how important the Kavanaugh hearings were?). Political violence is still very rare in the US compared to other places and times. That's a good thing. The overwhelming majority of people -- regardless of ideology -- are neither committing acts of violence nor condoning them, although I do think the increase in polarization over the last decade has contributed to increasingly vitriolic rhetoric, and there are good social science reasons to be alarmed by that, because dehumanization of perceived enemies is often a step on the road to institutionalized violence against them.

That same process of dehumanization is tied to the tendency to over-generalize about large groups of people, which is also relevant to the loss of perspective about the actual ideologies of most Americans. So for example it's very common here and elsewhere to see a lot of blanket statements. All Republicans are racist deplorables. All liberals are America-hating communist guerillas. I was thinking recently that it would be interesting to do an experiment to count what percentage of daily posts here are some form of over-generalized negative expression about various groups. It's pretty high. I've also seen a rise in that kind of language in other more liberal-dominated spaces.

But I don't think the problem is primarily that we've all become violent extremists. The problem is we do a bad job keeping the messiness of a politics involving hundreds of millions of people in perspective, and we fall into the fallacy of dramatic instance where (for the left) Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, Charleston, and events like that become exemplary of everyone who votes Republican, whereas on the right masked antifa vigilantes become standins for everyone on the left. That might be rhetorically satisfying, but it's quite clearly wrong-headed. And to the extent that these over-generalizations contribute to the demonizing and dehumanization of others, they do contribute in some small way towards the threat of increasing violence.

Note: Someone will point out that the three mass murders I listed are by no means equivalent to the actions of Antifa. And I agree with that. My view is that the available evidence points towards a larger problem of political violence on the right than on the left. But my other point is that -- keeping it in perspective -- that problem is still rather small, and so here I'm only focused on the problem of over-heated over-generalized rhetoric about political opponents, which makes us think that our admittedly large differences in opinion are even larger than they really are.

 

[hunarcy]

In theory, at least, I like pirates.

 

[BlindBoo]

I think it's a symptom of being controlled by an ideology. It makes people terrified to give an inch.

Additionally, I think it's possible that an ideologue really doesn't see most, if not all, the sins of their side. That's another symptom: Myopia. So when they ask for examples of what should be screamingly obvious, it may be that they really don't know what you're talking about.

That's how powerful this stuff is.
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Interesting. And I suppose on a political board, you will find real ideologues. I don't know about the right wingers, but some of the Democrat/lefties here are definitely not "seeing it."

Well, the right wingers will deny that anything has been done or said on their side that has contributed to this.

Anything.

They appear to be serious, sincere. Hence my point.
.

Rhetoric has always been there. Crazy people have always been there. Two are not necessarily equated. The Left has advocated for violence just as much as the GOP if not moreso.

Factually incorrect. I seem to have missed any Dem Presidential Nominee volunteering to pay the legal bills for those committing assault at their rallies.

Your mileage may vary

That was a joke. Obviously Leftists don't have a sense of humor. Did you miss HRC calling half the country a basket of deplorables. LOL. Or Maxine Waters or Eric Holder advocating direct violence and not apoligizing for it?

Half of Donny's supporters not half the country. And she was specific, the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic are the one she called deplorable.

 

[DOTR]

Given the spate of recent violence, the board is understandably abuzz with threads and comments about who is to "blame". And of course, each end is essentially putting 100% of the blame on the other end. Each end is laying out a long list of examples of violence, rhetoric and incitement by the other end.

Guess what? They're both right. Facts are facts.

I have a great deal of respect for the power of ideology. It can make people say and do insane things. It can absolutely blind a person to the obvious. But is it so strong that we'd rather see this country burn down than challenge our own tribe to stop the madness?

When the hate is flowing from both ends like water from a fire hose, does it really matter which end is "worse"?

What is so terrifying about just admitting the obvious?
.

Because one side is practicing violence and only condemns one side.....the other side (mine) condemns violence from anyone and does not promote it. so to fix the problem, you need to stop promoting violence and start condemning anyone who does it.....it's pretty clear who needs to do that (not my side, they already do that)

Both sides promote violence, so you have failed to see the truth.

I don't think Obama ever accepted violence by the more extreme BLM. I think the advent of Trump changed the dems' position.

Losing an election changed their position. But violence takes many forms. Before the election they felt secure in their control of the cultural high ground. They didn't feel the need for overt violence. Censorship, media control, money, ridicule, taxation of workers and handouts to political supporters and control of childrens educations were considered to be enough to keep the people in line. And if none of that worked then their Supreme Court just ordered it.
A groundswell overturned all that in 2016 and scared the bejesus out of them. And now they have even lost the Supreme Court. Violence is their answer to losing the House, Senate, White House, Supreme Court and 34 states in spite of their efforts to block democracy.
Not for Democrats to say "we lost and will try to do better next time". In their minds if they lost it wasnt what they represented that was wrong but rather that the people who voted against them were too stupid/racist/religious/low class/unsophisticated to recognize what they should have voted for. And they have devoted themselves to rectifying that by overturning or blocking the election results. By any means necessary including violence.

 

[DOTR]

And I will tell you something else..this violence is put up with in the states Demcorats run. The liberal states or cities. They arent rioting in Houston are they?

 

[AzogtheDefiler]

Interesting. And I suppose on a political board, you will find real ideologues. I don't know about the right wingers, but some of the Democrat/lefties here are definitely not "seeing it."

Well, the right wingers will deny that anything has been done or said on their side that has contributed to this.

Anything.

They appear to be serious, sincere. Hence my point.
.

Rhetoric has always been there. Crazy people have always been there. Two are not necessarily equated. The Left has advocated for violence just as much as the GOP if not moreso.

Factually incorrect. I seem to have missed any Dem Presidential Nominee volunteering to pay the legal bills for those committing assault at their rallies.

Your mileage may vary

That was a joke. Obviously Leftists don't have a sense of humor. Did you miss HRC calling half the country a basket of deplorables. LOL. Or Maxine Waters or Eric Holder advocating direct violence and not apoligizing for it?

Half of Donny's supporters not half the country. And she was specific, the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic are the one she called deplorable.

Subjective. Who is "racist" who is "sexist". What is Islamaphobia? Some dumbass Leftist definition. Phobia means FEAR. Like what you have with Trump. I am certainly not scared of radical Islam but I dislike it. Would you define me as "Islamaphobic"? Do tell?.