Not as comfortable as I used to be. Now that Republikans have gone full Nazi, I give them very short shrift.
Yeah, just after I posted my response upthread, I had to let go of an old internet friend because I’m tired of her Trump apologism. The stakes are too high right now. This isn’t about diagreements of policy but rather her endorsement of a regime trying to destroy my democratic rights.
What do you think the fascists will do then, suddenly realize the error of their ways?
If you really believe that individuals will be able to successfully defend themselves against the military might of the USA, you are so far beyond fantasyland you are in another galaxy. If the government is fascist there is no hope whatsoever if they come for you.
If you believe that you can defend yourself against an armed mob, one which the police either cannot stop or refuse to stop, you are less deluded but really, only marginally.
The core purpose of government is to protect its citizens, mainly from each other. If the government has abdicated that responsibility it is no government at all. Even fascism is a form of government.
This Wild West idea so many white males have in the US that they are going to shoot down their enemies and defend their wimminfolks is a disease. If you think your guns, and your determination to be violent, is a response to a problem instead of the problem itself, all I can offer is my condolences and best wishes for your return to the land of the sane, if indeed that was your original home.
I prefer not to talk politics to anyone, anywhere, other than my wife. No one I work with knows my politics and you wouldn’t detect a single thing from my facebook posts. I wouldn’t say it precludes me to being friendly to most people. In my experience if you give someone nothing when they start talking politics they tend to shut up after a while.
I’m hearing “I’m super tolerant of other people, but those other people are angry. How dare they be angry instead of being civilized like me?”
Yeah, people are angry. People who have been out of power have been taught that they’re not allowed to show their anger, whereas white dudes are pretty well socialized by Rambo, Reagan, or John Wick, depending on their generation. It turns out that when other folks get mad, lots of white dudes get freaked out.
If you think you’re super open to other political beliefs, but you can’t put up with people who are angry at having their rights violated, I’m not convinced that you’re all that open.
Tone policing is a bad habit that you should break.
To be clear, I am not white, and I see what the white terrorists are doing, from the Bundys to Charlottesville to Portland to of course DC. Basically acting in complete impunity with the support of the government, the police. Violence is here whether we want it to be or not. The question is not how to democratically convince them that this isn’t okay. We’re long past that stage. It’s more a question of how to hold out long enough when the death camps start so that hopefully some saner Europeans, Canadians, Mexicans, etc. would join in the fray.
I doubt there is any avoiding civil war at this point. Might not seem that way if you’re white, but I’m not.
Edit: The Right has absolutely no qualms using violence in the name of ethnonationalism. Every other time that has happened in history, the only thing to have stopped it was violence on the other side. We never really won the Civil War, just the battles. Our mercy to the South is coming back to haunt us.
To use everyone’s favorite World War II analogy – Japan! 
If you were a Japanese-American living in America after Pearl Harbor it would be right to feel that people should not be angry at you for what people who share your ethnicity did. The argument that “sure, in an ideal world we wouldn’t be rounding you up into concentration camps, but compared to what the Japanese are doing in China and to our POWs, it’s nothing, and anyway, where are the Japanese-American protests against THAT?” wouldn’t be a sound one back then.
I don’t. The Libertarian party platform includes things like ‘all anti-discrimination laws, all workplace safety laws, all environmental protection laws, and all financial market regulation should be repealed, as should any form of non-market medicine like the ACA.’ If you’re not one of the people who get typically discriminated against then ‘repeal anti-discrimination laws’ is some silly theory, but rings a bit differently if you’re the kind of person who is worried they might be left to bleed out while EMTs laugh at them. Or if you’re one of the people who just might be fired for being black or gay or some other minority. Or if you have a chronic health condition and aren’t one of the top 10% or so most wealthy in the country who can afford treatment out of personal funds. Libertarians also tend to whine a lot about how terribly victimized they are because no one takes seriously the party that had Vermin Supreme as a serious contender for presidential candidate (and has his usual VP as their VP candidate).
“Willing to give you room” is an odd way to describe “want to make it legal to fire you and deny you medical treatment if they don’t like your kind”. Granted most libertarians are just kind of vaguely libertarian and so fall into the ‘not really political’ category, but being actively Libertarian means being actively hostile to anyone who is any kind of minority, whether the Libertarian wants to admit it or not.
I’m not sure that’s actually the thought process going on. I think it’s more like: People tend to think that their grievances are of equal weight, regardless of whether they are or aren’t. So, for instance, a white person following news about black crimes thinks that his outrage over the black crimes is equal to the outrage of a black person who follows news about George Floyd.