George Floyd- the killer has been charged. So, looks like murder. We wont know for a while for sure.
Philandro Castile- the killer was judged “Not Guilty” by a jury. Isnt that how we call things now? You think you know more than the jury? You sat there thru all fives days of deliberation and all the trial? YOU say Murder? Thank god you are not the decider, the jury is- after hearing all the evidence. Which you didnt hear.
Breonna Taylor? No one meant to kill her. Her BF fired first. Terrible tragedy, the cops were fired as they used poor judgement.
Yes, Unlawful. Otherwise not murder. Words have meanings. Let us say a black man started shooting at some cops, killed one, and the rest dropped him- is that "murder’ also? Is it only murder because he was black? Is it only murder because it was cops?
Maybe, but I’m not sure I buy this as a significant explanation for border counties moving so decisively toward Trump. Prior to COVID, unemployment in South Texas was at record lows. I’m sure there’s some economic competition between low-income American Hispanics and undocumented immigrants, but the vast majority of undocumented immigrants arriving via the land border aren’t staying at the border – they’re migrating inland to metropolitan areas.
I’m sure the answer is that there are multiple reasons why Hispanics in South Texas moved toward Trump. While historically Democratic, the region is relatively culturally conservative. I’ve also heard the explanation that law enforcement is a highly valued and respected career among many Hispanic Texans, and that Republican inveighing against “defund the police” may have been effective. Who knows?
That’s good, but what we are seeing is partisanship descending into tribalism. And tribes get judged by the actions of their members. If substantial numbers of Democrats are running around calling Republicans monsters, and Republicans are doing the same, people will just dig in and defend their tribe, and all the logical arguments in the world won’t sway them.
Those are all things that the Democrats are in favor of.
It’s not really either or. And Single payer is not the Democratic platform.
That would be the Democratic platform.
It is taken seriously. Obama deported quite a number of undocumented workers, more than previous administrations, more than the current.
The “kids in cages” bit during Obama was an unfortunate situation of children coming in with as part of human trafficking. They were kidnapped from their families. Every effort was made to reunite these children with their rightful families. Trump made a policy of separating families in order to punish them for seeking asylum.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard any major democrat use the slogan “Defend/Abolish the police.” That has been used by protestors who have been fed up with the police terrorizing their neighborhoods.
The problem with this is that there has not been nearly as much rioting and looting as people see on TV. One broken window, and the media will cover it breathlessly for hours, while people peacefully demonstrate all around the country.
Does that mean not breaking up protests?
Your suggestions pretty much sum up the Democratic platform.
And that is what I usually do. In Ohio, you can switch back and forth at will, so I decide whether I want to support a Democrat, or work towards choosing the best Republican.
It is not something that I see done as much as it should, though, especially in more swing areas.
Unfortunately, that strategy is to give primary support to the least likely to win the general, usually the nuttiest and most radical of the other party. That’s not a good idea, because if they win the general, then you have the nuttiest and most radical of the party. My suggestion is to support the least bad of the opposing party.
It is part of why we ended up with Trump, as there were a non-negligible number of Democratic voters that changed sides to vote for him, in the belief that he would be the weakest against Hillary.
Yes, you are in a world influenced by right wing media.
I’d disagree that it is anything like equal on both sides.
Difference is, is that some Democrat puts out a tweet unkind to Republicans, and that is given the same weight as the President’s words by those who are looking to divide us.
I think you’re missing a “not” in there. But I see what you’re getting at and I’m glad you responded. As fellow Canadians with more than a mere passing interest in American elections, perhaps we can show these people how to achieve comity to become a kinder nation, like Canada.
So the left stops calling the right “garbage”. What advice shall we give the right given this recent instance?:
I’m not using this as gotcha. I’m using this to illustrate that neutral ground is hard to find and the right does not make it easy for the left not to call them “garbage”. I get that the thin veneer of civility is nearly worn through. But why is always the left that needs to make a “good start”?
I agree with k9bfriender, to an extent. I think many liberals are finally understanding that people aren’t motivated solely (or even mostly) by bread-and-butter issues like healthcare, minimum wage, making ends meet, the environment, etc. If that were the case, the American electorate would be 90% Democratic.
Rather, people have feelings and want to feel vindicated and victorious against their enemies. People aren’t robots motivated solely by practical factors; people are driven by emotions, passions, etc. And when they feel that someone like Trump is voicing their grievances and making them feel felt - in other words, speaking to their heart - that has 100x the impact as some liberal who tries to talk to their mind by presenting an impeccable Powerpoint presentation as to how his/her policies would benefit the voters financially or healthcare or retirement wise, but denounces their views on racial, religious or gender matters as ‘bigoted’.
It’s the whole reason you have people saying “I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” If practical considerations were all that mattered, every human would choose life on knees; hey it’s practical.
Democrats have hearts too. Their heart break when they see kids in cages, neo-nazis marching, white supremacist terrorism on the rise, so many other callous acts committed by this administration with the support of right wing activism and GOP members.
Why don’t those things appeal to the hearts (and minds) of Trump supporters in the same way?
My suspicion is that Hispanics are culturally conservative and ultimately have a lot of cultural commonality in that sense with conservative (note the little-c) Americans, even if it’s not immediately evident at first glance.
I wonder if it isn’t simply ‘the price we have to pay’ in order to prevent the infinitely greater harm (that Trump assures us will happen if his plan is interfered with).
The same can be said for discussions of police reform, creating affordable housing, allowing universal health care access, foreign policy, alternative fuel, gun law reform, civil rights, equal rights, etc., etc.
If his Stygian prognostications sound particularly dire … there’s almost nothing he can’t get the more reactive segments of society to swallow.
The problem is, is that they see their enemies as their fellow citizens. They see their enemy as a poor immigrant, or a refugee seeking asylum from the devastation of crime or war.
What are their grievances? Really?
Right, you know, responsible governance.
But, if their views on racial, religious, or gender matters are bigoted, then that is what they have chosen.
Back when I was younger, I was discussing social matters with my father. I mentioned bigotry in passing. He asked (demanded to know) what a bigot was. I said, essentially, someone who refuses to tolerate the way someone else lives their life. He said that he wasn’t tolerant of homosexuals, so does that make him a bigot? I tried to back it up, and say, “Well, I mean, just disapproving of their life doesn’t, but if you actually take steps to prevent them from living their lives, then yeah.” He told me that he spoke in church against allowing gay members join, and actually left his church when they wouldn’t follow his demand. (I hadn’t actually known why he left his previous church at the time.) He told me that he donated money to his congressman with the direction to prevent homosexuality (I think he used a less kind word) from being allowed.
Then demanded to know if that made him a bigot. I shrugged, and said, “Well, I guess so, as you just described exactly what a bigot is.” He did not take this kindly, slapped me, and yelled at me.
I think it was then that I realized that the Republican party may not be the place for me.
People choose to be a bigot, and then they scream and yell that they are called so, even if they are not actually called so in so many words. It’s persecution complex, nothing else.
No one is asking anyone to live on their knees. No one at all. Well, except the religious right, who demand that everyone worship their god, and follow their religious laws. And the racist right, who demand that certain groups of people be held low.
Agreed, that sums up the Republican platform excellently.
“If I can’t drive while intoxicated, that’s TYRANNY !!” “If I can’t smoke on an airplane, then the terrorists have won !!”
You see how absolutely idiotic that sounds ?
I think about the number of laws under which we ALL live, and how we still enjoy more freedoms than almost any other nation in the world. But this is the line ? This is the line between freedom and tyranny ? Is that laid out in some book somewhere ? I’d like to understand it better.
Just as the death knell has sounded for social conservatives every single day – as the arc of the moral universe bent slowly toward justice – since 1776, every single change in American society – to that same group – represents the plunge into tyranny.
And … yeah … if a fish farts in the Indian Ocean, an American Christian conservative claims they’re being persecuted.
It would be interesting to see the demographics of these pro-Trump Hispanic voters. My suspicion is that the overwhelming majority of them are first generation immigrants who feel the economic competitive pressure. Subsequent generations are better educated and more integrated so they have better economic mobility. Religion may play a role as well. Also, I think we’ll see that voting trend nationally, not just on the southern border states.
I was about to say the exact opposite; a lot of third or fourth generation Hispanic-Americans are pretty well assimilated into mainstream white society both socially and economically. So what drives their white peers likely drives them to vote Trump as well.
There’s also the notion that first generation voters like the machismo that Trump tries to portray, versus the relatively non-macho average politician.
It was a lame attempt at sarcasm. But yeah, I meant that it’s not helpful.
For me, the answer is simple: Argue your case as strongly as you can, but don’t attack the person making the opposing argument.
We also need to re-learn a primary lesson of civil society: a zone of privacy for individuals is necessary. We have to stop forcing people to make political stands or suppress their beliefs in order to keep their jobs. We need to allow people to have beliefs we don’t like. Extend employment law to prevent people from being fired or discriminated against due to speech made outside of the workplace.
Democrats used to believe these things. A ‘right to privacy’ was a key platform, as was keeping the government out of the bedrooms of the nation.
When you politicize everything, don’t be surprised when everyone acts like a politician. And politicians aren’t great at following reason and logic as opposed to what their ‘tribe’ wants.
But Canada isn’t far behind the U.S. I don’t know if we are still (or ever were) paragons of virtue in this regard. As we also continue to expand the role of politics into private lives and the workplace, we’re going to become angrier too. Identity politics are toxic to civil society.
Well, when I see anyone on a right-wing board resort to name calling (‘Dhimmicrats’, etc) I always speak up and tell them they are lowing the IQ of the conversation. I’m about as popular in those places as I am here. And I try to always speak out against ad-hominem attacks wherever I see them.
You need to be making this pitch to your fellow conservatives overwhelmingly supporting a President whose one rhetorical tool is attacking the persons making opposing arguments.
If you push for that, you’ll get a lot of conservative employers and customers screeching in indignation about having employees’ views “shoved down their throats” because they no longer get to dictate to the employees what views they may express.
Do you get the impression that k9bfriender’s Trumpster clients want him to have a “zone of privacy” where he doesn’t have to “suppress his beliefs”? Do they hell. They just want to spew their own beliefs everywhere without encountering the appalling outrage of somebody else possibly disagreeing with them.
As usual, conservatives are desperately flogging a double standard where liberals’ calling out or “canceling” the expression of conservative political views is decried as a critical threat to the survival of democracy, while conservatives’ suppressing the expression of liberal political views is viewed as merely a necessary adjunct to conservatives’ own free speech.
I just want to say that this didn’t go unnoticed and appreciated.
To follow on to what @Kimtsu responded, it sounds like you’re not having much luck making this message stick on the right either. Perhaps the prospect of civil discourse is a bridge too far right now. But I keep going back to fundamentals. Democratic Party Policies are inclusive on their face. Trump Republican Party Policies are exclusive, tribal, intolerant to the point of being openly bigoted. If at the end of the day we can’t agree about those fundamentals, what chance for civil dialogue?
A distinction to be noted, however, is that Sam_Stone’s unpopular here on the SDMB because of his recurrent glurging of unsubstantiated right-wing talking points and his reality-denying “bothsidesism” about US political partisanship.
But apparently he’s equally unpopular on right-wing boards merely because of his mild protests against personal insults and hateful bigotry directed at Democrats.
Kind of points up some of the significant differences between the “sides” involved. We get irritated with you because of the substance of your flawed arguments. They get irritated with you because you party-poop their liberal-hatred name-calling.
Keep your politics out of the workplace, period. And your employer in turn should have no right to fire you for your political activities outside of the workplace.
My last employer had the right attitude: Say anything you want on social media as a private citizen and we don’t care what it is, so long as you don’t attempt to do so as a representative of the company. When you come to work, leave your politics at home.
If you attempt to ‘cancel’ people for having the ‘wrong’ beliefs, and therefore people come to believe that their political rivals are not just trying to win an election but to destroy their enemies by any means available, politics will continue to be ugly and civil society will continue to degrade.
Ah, there’s those personal attacks we all kmow and love.
You have no idea what I argue on right-wing boards. other than that I attack stupid name-calljng. As a matter of fact, I argue the substance of some right-wing ideas all the time. And I’m anti-Trump, which doesn’t make me popular on the right these days. But it makes no difference to my arguments here what I say there. But you continue to go after me personally, which you have been doing for over a decade.
The whole essence of civil debate is to attack the ideas and not the poster. If you can’t separate the two, you are part of the problem.
