@hajario , I must quibble with your claim that we are simply trying to discern context.
Plenty of posters have decided that this guy is a Nazi - big, bold, and proud - based on scant evidence.
And I’m pretty sure the retort to my claim of scant evidence is going to be a reference to his “Nazi tattoo” (since there don’t seem to be any statements from Platner that are Nazi-like).
As I’ve argued, that’s hardly decisive.
You don’t like my “addlebrained” false comparisons. Fine. But it seems to me they are replete in this thread.
Planter is coming from the bottom up, Democratic establishment was quite resistant to that. Maine voters don’t like to be told what to do, they like Platner. Democratic party has now embraced Platner it seems.
“Don’t tell us what to do” and resentment against leaders and experts are hallmarks of MAGA.
Looks like the Democratic Party is facing a serious challenge from its left, some of which is so far left it’s become hard to distinguish from the far right.
There are a gazillion podcasts out there, and each and every podcast prolly has had a guest or made a sound bite that someone out there will find offensive. It is not a stretch to think that a volunteer or even a staff member focused on booking the interview, maybe didn’t perform the due diligence they should have. Or didn’t realize that a specific podcast had baggage or something in the woodpile. That doesn’t necessarily give a politician a free pass, but it also isn’t enough for me to think it’s a smoking gun of a Nazi trojan horse. YMMV.
Biden was roundly criticized for being out of touch by not going on the right-wing Joe Rogan podcast during his campaign. One way of reaching the other side, and maybe even peeling off a few votes, is to go on the platforms that the other side uses. Faux News or Breitbart viewers that skew heavily cough cough Nazi cough cough Republican, don’t typically listen to the NY Times “The Daily”. So, do you concede and not go where those voters are, or do go to get a voice yet risk putting someone’s panties in a twist?
If there is a real cite that Platner was kicked out of the Marines for a Nazi tattoo, please share? What is known for a fact, is that the Army enlisted Platner, including his tattoo, despite a policy of “no Nazi tattoo’s.”
Since this came up in the “I’m going to vote for the Nazi tattoo guy” thread, here’s the lore dump about how Platner was rejected from reenlistment in the Marines in 2009 due to his Nazi tattoo that he refused to cover up:
Again, your cite says active duty Marines were exempt from the tattoo sleeve prohibition, and he was seeking to return to active duty—per your same cite.
If he’s lying about why the Marines shut down his reenlistment, I don’t think your cite shows it.
ETA: And as noted above, the Army didn’t take exception with his chest tattoo.
AFAICT the most charitable explanation for the reenlistment tattoo rejection is that Platner was told he couldn’t rejoin with the chest tattoo, was told why, and like a stubborn teenager said something to the effect of “you’re not the boss of me!” and told himself they were just woke scolds.
Truly dumb, but I’ll still take that hope, that he’s just a stubborn idiot, over the certainty that Collins is a MAGA fascist rubber stamp.
MAHA, which has a substantial left wing element, thrives on suspicion of and hostility towards scientists and public health experts.
Highly educated and trained experts have become the enemy, except for a select few “top” scientists and “top” doctors, whose loss of licensure and failed/retracted publications are seen as evidence of martyrdom and ideological purity. They’re the only ones Moms on the March can trust.
There’s nothing new about new age health woo on the left. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest it’s significantly impacting left politics any more today than in the past - Platner isn’t remotely running on a MAHA platform (or an alliance with RFK Jr).
Platner may well represent some new branch of politics rising in the American left, but I’ve seen nothing supporting any assertion that distrust of experts is driving it at all.
What doomed Mills — anti-establishment sentiment, her age, a bad campaign, or all of the above? How did Platner survive what many expected to be a campaign-ending scandal? Were his bold left views an asset or a liability? And can we read big national trends into this outcome, or is it mainly about the particular candidates, and the quirky state, involved?
To answer these questions, I spoke with Alex Seitz-Wald, a longtime national political reporter who moved to Maine and now works as deputy editor for the Midcoast Villager, a local newspaper. Since Maine’s Senate primary captivated national attention, Seitz-Wald has been a sort of Maine politics whisperer — a Maine-splainer — to national reporters. Here’s what he had to say.
Gifted
Demographics have not been emphasized enough. Maine is a small state. 1.3 million residents. It is the oldest state in the country. Politics is more retail and Platner is good at retail politics, while Mills is 78 and ran a very weak campaign. That’s not entirely Schumer’s fault or the fault of the Maine Democratic Party. She looked good on paper.
I also think, if you look at his bio, he was voted Most Likely to Start a Revolution in high school, where he’s holding up signs with Free Palestine and Free Tibet. Through that, and through the Reddit posts, we have something like an unvarnished window into his raw political id. And the Nazi thing just doesn’t really pass the smell test to me.
No, the most charitable explanation, and one yet to be disputed by a cite, is the one he provided: He was shut down for reenlistment because of the new (at the time) prohibition on sleeve tattoos.
The cite provided incoherently argued that this was a lie since active duty Marines were exempt from the prohibition—even though he was looking to return to active duty (and would not have been exempt).
IOW, the cite does not prove his explanation was false. If anything it’s supportive.
That’s good. We NEED a Tea Party to clear out the geronticracy and milquetoast institutionalists who crow about “bipartisanship” and “our friends across the aisle” before they vote to approve Trump nominees and let this country slide further into authoritarianism in the name of preserving “norms”.