How to be hideous: the right wing tries to discredit the Parkland school shooting survivors

The BBQ Pit
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I don’t have much free time today so this will be the only post I’ll make on the subject for now.

Trump’s election - which to be clear I did not participate in - was a reaction to 50 years of liberal influence on American society. The people who voted for him are so fed up with this that they voted for him despite his numerous faults, any one of which would have been enough to disqualify any other candidate, because they felt he was the only person running who would actually follow through and work to undo some of the damage that’s been done, i.e., to make America great again. Halt illegal immigration, protect the country from terrorist influx via legal immigration, support a stronger military and stronger military action when required, etc., better and stronger trade policies, Supreme and lesser court appointments, (and let’s face it, most liberal ‘progress’ the last 50 years has come about through court rulings issued by activist liberal judges either legislating from the bench or applying pretzel logic to the words of the Constitution), and so on.

Additionally, people have increasing been getting fed up with and pissed off at the never-ending and ever-increasing assholism coming from the left toward anyone not instantly in lockstep with them on every subject, and the aggression, division and hatred that has arisen lately as a result of identity politics and the left’s tactics in pursuing them. So naturally if you piss people off enough they’re going to take pleasure in it if presented with a way to counter your efforts and piss you off back. So to that degree, yeah, people voted for Trump to piss off the left. But only because the left had aggressively and happily been pissing them off first and for a very long time. But pissing off liberals wasn’t the primary motivation, it’s just a happy side benefit for many. The primary reasons are the other ones I listed.

As to my behavior, it’s a direct reflection of the treatment I received the instant I arrived here and revealed even the slightest hint of conservative thinking, and of the way the board talks to and about me and conservatives in general. You get what you give, in other words. This board is the only place in the entire world that knows the SA personna, and it’s a creation entirely your own.

142

Thanks for the words of wisdom. I guess that would be along the same lines as how diversity breeds conflict, and of course your very favorite musical refrain, liberalism breeds crime (and the degeneration of society).

Following both of which brilliant observations you had your ass handed to you. It’s fortunate for the future of the world that you don’t know shit about breeding. Or much of anything else, apparently. Your obsessions with liberals and all those damn blacks being responsible for everything wrong with the world, followed closely by the problem of not enough guns and not enough blacks in jail, have never seemed to pan out very well when the light of non-delusional factual reality is shone on them.

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What happened to all the other Republican primary candidates?

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I’m probably not too far off imagining this pontification being accompanied by spittle and drool and angry cane-waving.

Yet up in Canada, which has been fairly described as “America with health care, and without the guns” voters elected as Prime Minister, at about the same time, a highly progressive young liberal to replace a conservative troglodyte that they were so sick and tired of that he quit politics altogether and slunk off into the night. Said young liberal has subsequently been implementing some of the most progressive policies seen in a generation.

I always enjoy your highly inventive ideology-based delusional “explanations” for how the world works. :smiley:

(It’s true that a lot of things are broken in American politics. The delusional part is blaming precisely those progressive policies that allow things to work so well in other countries. That about the same level of delusion as expecting that Trump is actually going to fix anything.)

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Oh, I’m quite certain I’ve never said a thing about ‘all those damn blacks’ being responsible for anything. What I have said is that diversity breeds conflict, which it clearly does, at least until such time as the diverse cultures meld or find ways to make allowances for each other. And I’ve said that racial discrimination and poverty breed crime. Neither of which is particularly controversial and certainly not untrue. (Coming from someone else those comments would be seen as support for minorities, but of course if you’re a conservative on the SDMB anything you say involving race and half the things you don’t are blatantly racist.) Nor have I ever said most of the nonsensical and inflammatory things you’re so fond of claiming I said. But such things are not atypical around here. And you’re an asshole, also not atypical around here…at least in politically oriented threads, so you get assholism back. See, that’s how it works. Asshole.

They were seen as the same sort of Republican candidates we’ve had all along, who talk a good game (as much as possible while still employing doublespeak in an effort not to appear un-PC) and then once elected don’t follow through. Trump’s scorn for political correctness and his willingness to flout it was a huge mark in his favor. Lefties see political correctness as just wanting people to be polite (:rolleyes:); righties see it as presumptuous, overreaching, often petty, dictatorial, bullying, hateful and divisive. So the other candidates sensitivity to not offending it worked against them. But their lack of action once in office played just as big a role in their having been rejected in favor of Trump, if not moreso.

And now I have to go. I stuck around to answer you, RT, 'cause you have a long history of not being an asshole. Good on ya! :slight_smile:

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So, they voted for him because they were delusional or stupid. Sad state of affairs, but I see not how it is the liberals fault that your fellow partisans are incapable of rational thought or individual agency.

You are saying that, because they are republicans, they are not responsible for their own actions. Aren’t you supposed to be representing the party of personal responsibility, and you can’t even take responsibility for your own vote, you have to blame it on someone else?

So, because your right wing media keeps telling you the same stories over and over, driving your into a frothy frenzy, you lose all ability to perform any logic or thought, your only motivation is to hurt those boogeymen that your media keeps you terrified of.

Your are admitting that your only motivation is to cause your enemies pain, and your enemies are your fellow citizens. You declare half the country to be your enemy to that disgust you and that you hold in contempt and that you wish to see in pain, and then you blame that half of the country for the divisiveness that you are causing.

You don’t think that maybe it was your own behavior that caused people to be turned off by you? You constantly do these broad brush assertions of fact of the evilness of liberals, then seem surprised that people not only don’t just bow down and agree, but have the audacity to fight back against your unsupported assertions.

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It does not. Intolerance breeds conflict, stupid-ass.

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Ah, so you and every other liberal are just footloose and fancy-free about anything and everything any and every other culture does and nothing about any of them ever get under your skin and annoy you or strike you as wrong (‘wrong’ being an attitude that can and often does lead to conflict)?

So how do you feel about people of the sort who, oh, I don’t know, would wear pearls while vacuuming? Read bibles? Wear slacks and ties? Believe premarital sex is wrong? Believe abortion is murdering babies? Keep their eyes on the road and their hands at ten and two on the wheel?

You’re just wonderful and accepting and everything anyone of any culture is just peachy, right? If a group of teenage kids wants to park outside you house and drink beer and blare loud music all night, you’re totally cool with that, no doubt?

There are roughly a million reasons that people of certain groups might not get along, and that’s a, ahem, conservative estimate. Human nature is the term for this, and it’s everywhere and unavoidable. You’re idiotic little snipe about how only ‘intolerance breeds conflict, stupid-ass’ is yet another example of how divorced from reality liberals, in their eagerness to think themselves so wonderfully superior, really are.

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So the entire Republican field, bar Trump, contrived to make themselves appear the same as (or failed to do enough to appear otherwise) to prior office holders who didn’t follow through when they got their big chairs. For everyone minus Trump to fall for that seems like a pretty massive error, considering how widespread and obvious you believe your opinions on lefties are among righties.

And, for what it’s worth, personally I consider Trump to be a big user of political correctness, certainly not someone who flouts it. Could you give an example of a time when you feel he flouted it publically?

Thanks!

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If they are not doing anything that harms me or others, then why should I care?

Odd, but that’s fine if they want to. Personally, I wear shorts and a t-shirt while I am doing house cleaning, as I find it more comfrtable and easier, but if you wanna wear pearly, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

No problem there. As long as they don’t mind that I don’t read them, and would prefer to read about other stuff.

Why would anyone have a problem with that?

Believe, that’s fine. Pass legislation to punish or prevent it, that’s different.

Believe, that’s fine. Pass legislation to punish or prevent it, that’s different.

Good idea, don’t know why you think that anyone would be against that.

If they don’t mind breaking their wrists if the airbag goes off, I suppose, but you do know that you are not supposed to hold a steering wheel like that anymore, right?

That’s a bit of a strawman, but any thing that people decide to do that does not harm others, sure, sounds peachy to me.

How does that relate in any way?

No, there is just one reason, it’s called intolerance.

Intolerance is pervasive, and there are those like yourself that promote it, but it is not universal. That you consider intolerance to be a universal trait informs as to your preferred and chosen social groups, but says nothing about most people that seem to find a way to co-exist just fine.

[quote]

So, if it is not intolerance of the differences of others that makes you hate people that are different, then why do you hate them?

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It was just conventional wisdom. The belief had long ago taken hold that the best way was to talk as good a game as possible while at the same time trying not to rile the forces of political correctness, and then once in power do virtually nothing. Why this came to be I have no idea, but it certainly did. And it’s why nobody for the longest time thought Trump had a chance. He was so far outside the norm that everyone thought it laughable that he could even have a chance.

Once again I find myself confused by one of your posts. To me he flouts it in almost everything he does.

But of course. :slight_smile:

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The Republicans just have their own version of PC. Patriotic Correctness. Say anything contrary to their views and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

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All this is silly. Everyone seeks or favors legislation either to promote their beliefs or to prevent practices and policies they view as harmful from taking effect. It’s called the real world and adults live there.

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Your response is silly as it has nothing to do with my post.

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If it was conventional wisdom, does that mean it was common sense? :stuck_out_tongue:

Seriously though, buying into this conventional wisdom seems to be a pretty big error.

I would say quite the opposite. Take the whole “Lock her up!” bit. He said what was politically popular, got big cheers and chants from his crowd, and then dropped the thing when he won. He said, not what he thought was true, or what he intended to do, but what was politically advantageous.

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Hmm. If conservatives in general are really so welcoming as you claim towards today’s more egalitarian society with improved equality and civil rights for racial minorities, not to mention women’s rights and gay rights, it’s hard to see why so many of them are so convinced that America today is less great than it was back in the 1950s.

After all, the actual direct impact that, say, illegal immigration and even terrorism have had on the lives of most Americans is minuscule compared to the impacts of, say, desegregation and women’s rights.

If conservatives really do believe that the America of 50 years ago was fundamentally more great than the America of today, and they really are “fed up with” the liberal principles that have brought them the more egalitarian society that they now claim to value, then they’ve kind of painted themselves into a rhetorical corner. Either

(1) they come across as petulant cognitive-dissonant snowflakes who capriciously ignore important advances in favor of carping about relatively minor problems, or

(2) they come across as hypocritical bigots who have no qualms about comprehensively shitting on liberal progress precisely because they don’t genuinely consider racial and gender equality to be an important advance.
An interesting thought experiment for conservatives like Starving Artist would be to determine just how far back in time they’d have to go before they’d be willing to regard the America of that era as less great overall than the America of the present. The Depression? Pre-women’s suffrage? Legal slavery? Colonial smallpox epidemics? Famine?

If an atrocity like full-blown de jure racial segregation (not to speak of widespread gender discrimination, homophobia, etc.) isn’t enough to make you regard yesterday’s America as on balance less great than today’s, then just how bad do things have to get, historically speaking, before you do?

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This should offer some insight into their thinking: :slight_smile:
Vice-President Mike Pence is seriously considering running for President in 1820, various sources confirmed over the weekend.

According to several prominent Republican donors, Pence is already laying the groundwork for such a campaign, outlining what he believes are the most serious challenges facing 1820 America.

In a conference call with donors last week, Pence reportedly said that, as President, his No. 1 priority would be to repeal and replace the Bill of Rights.

He offered a sneak preview of a potential 1820 stump speech, in which he unleashed a brutal attack on the Bill of Rights’ author, James Madison, and called for the development of the telegraph key.

On a more serious note, it’s pointless trying to introduce facts and logic into the discussion. We’ve all tried. Generally what happens after a good dose of facts and logic has been administered is that Starving Artist runs away, and of course he rarely or never returns to that same part of the discussion again. We’ve all seen that, too, multiple times.

It’s all very amusing. One might ask, just on SA’s favorite theme that all these terrible things going on today are due to racism and poverty: (1) weren’t racism and poverty worse in prior decades?, (2) how come racism and poverty appear to have been better addressed in more progressive nations?, and most of all (3) if he really believes that, how come he’s also supportive of right-wing policies that seek to scuttle programs that heavily benefit minorities, that advance policies to marginalize and disenfranchise minorities, and that exacerbate poverty by widening even further the large and growing income gap between rich and poor that is so uniquely American and so uniquely associated with right-wing ideology.

You can’t deal with people like SA using facts and logic. The ignorance, hypocrisy, and self-delusion motivated by avaricious self-interest is just astounding. It shouldn’t be surprising that they also feel the solution to gun violence is for everyone to have more guns, and the solution to racism is to throw more blacks in jail. Whatever the issue, just think of the worst possible response to it, and they’ll be all over it. The only possible shred of an excuse they might have is that some of their thinking is due to senility.

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:dubious: You say that like it’s a bad thing. IMHO the effectiveness of facts and logic in scaring away irrational zealots who are averse to facts and logic is one of their chief benefits.

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The problem is that the ones like SA keep coming back, and they continue their tired old refrains as if nothing had ever happened, as if they had never been debunked, as if Trumpism was the Proper and Righteous path to the salvation of society: less health care, more guns in the hands of whites, more blacks in jail, and more cuts to social programs so that poor people get their asses kicked good and proper until they learn to stop being poor.

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Just to play Devil’s Advocate here for a moment…

Why does everyone summarily dismiss this concept out of hand? Let me pose an alternative scenario for consideration.

Suppose these kids, instead of marching against guns, had gone out and marched in favor of the 2nd Amendment and responsible gun ownership. Do you think that they would have been fawned over by the mainstream media and made into “heroes” for doing so? I doubt you would have heard a squeak of coverage about it because that wouldn’t have fit into the liberal anti-gun agenda.