Does that matter? Hunter was saying that his dad is connected. He and his friends will make trouble. He wouldn’t have to be in office to do that.
Also, the FBI transcripts with Rob Walker have Walker admitting that Biden was meeting with Hunter’s associates while VP.
Fighting ignorance? This all started with a straightforward cite refuting factual statements being made.
People keep accusing me of being some MAGA right winger, to the right of even Alberta conservatives. They know this isn’t true, and I keep pointing out my actual positions that are nowhere close to what they claim. A week or two later, they start saying it again. I guess it’s important to believe that everyone who might disagree from the right is a MAGA lunatic.
My flaw is that I’m a contrarian, and I have a hard time fitting in with groups because I don’t have a very good filer sometimes and I’ll pop up to correct something when I should have kept my mouth shut. So if I’m on Twitter and some idiot says, “Trump would NEVER have allowed the VAX!” guess who steps up to tell him otherwise, then gets shit on by a bunch of people who will brook no criticism of Trump?
I actually agree with a lot more of what you all say than you think, but you don’t see it much because I don’t tend to post affirmations. It’s when I disagree that I speak up - like a lot of people.
That’s also why, even though I’m a fan of a lot o what Musk has done, I had no problem mocking him mercilessly over Hyperloop. I don’t pick sides, I go where I think the truth is. And the reality is, no political party has a monopoly on the truth, and both sides try to gaslight each other constantly. Assuming your side is always truthful and the other side is a pack of liars is childish thinking.
Today, it seems like people pick a side, then assume that their job is to defend that side against all comers and all arguments, no matter what. I try to guard against that kind of thinking. Which is one of the reasons I’m on the SDMB in the first place. Safe spaces and purity protectors are for suckers. That’s where I’m coming from.
For the record, since I got called an ‘extreme right winger’ again, my basic positions are reproductive choice for women, support for LGBTQ rights, support for harm reduction interventions instead of jail for drug addicts, a belief in anthropogenic global warming that will be a problem, etc.
Where I am not on the side of the left is in my belief in free speech, free assembly, free markets, and smaller government. I don’t believe in ‘hate’ speech as an exception to free speech. In fact, the only speech that needs protecting is speech you hate, because you don’t try to stop speech you agree with or like.
I don’t believe in government control of ‘disinformation’, because governments guaranteeing that you will only see what’s true is a sure way to infantilize the population, ensure they do not engage critically with your material, and get the government to lie to you. The way to deal with misinformation and disinformation is to develop critical appraisal skills in people, and controlling their information is not the way to do that.
The only way free countries and free economies can work is if everyone has access to the same information. Informatiojnal gatekeepers are one step from totalitarianism. The left used to understand that. I wish they would again.
I believe that decisions made locally are better than decisions imposed from central authorities, which is the most Republican part of me in the literal sense. Mostly my economic positions are classic liberal modified by my understanding of complexity theory.
In any other era I’d be considered a cllassical enlightenment liberal, with a few heterodox beliefs.