I pit over-the-top Anti-Trump hysteria

The BBQ Pit
2488

Thank you for actually discussing about the thread topic.

I don’t feel that the exaggerated claims I mentioned in the OP are common among Democrats. I feel that if you asked a hundred random Democrats if Trump was planning (or actively committing) genocide or slavery or nuclear war, ninety-nine of them would say no.

Trump and the Republicans have committed real crimes; rape, pedophilia, treason, corruption, setting up a secret police force, vandalizing national monuments, purging the armed forces, voter fraud, violating the Constitution, and other crimes that justify impeachment and imprisonment. We have no need to invent crimes to accuse them of.

So why am I worried about a small number of people who are making these exaggerated claims?

Because of the MAGAs.

The Republican party has a long history of telling lies, scaremongering, and cheating in elections. But it used to be a front. It was just something they used to get elected and then they would settle down to normal political corruption. As the cliche goes, they were wrong within normal parameters.

They were okay with the crazies and all their enthusiasm but they kicked them back home after Election Day. The Republicans had no intention of letting the crazy people run the party or the country.

But the Republicans lost their grip and the crazies took over. Now we have Donald Trump and his delusional followers actually running the country.

That’s the danger when you tolerate an element of craziness in your political organization. It can end up infecting the whole organization.

I hate the fact that our country is currently being run by right wing lunatics. But I don’t want to replace them with left wing lunatics.

And I think that’s a real danger. The Republicans didn’t set out to become the party of Donald Trump but it happened.

2489

:wink:

2490

It worked for me. Cool. :slightly_smiling_face:

2491

I agree with your post, except that the occasional exaggeration doesn’t make someone a “lunatic.”
There may very well be some “left-wing lunatics” out there – people that even I would agree are nutso, and potentially dangerous –
– and a few of them might be winning certain elections recently, and one might argue (I wouldn’t) that they are growing in number and power enough to either:
a) take over the Democratic party, contributing to election losses nationally, hleping to ensure continued reign of certifiable right-wing lunatics; or
b) actually win nationally, and impose laws or policies you might construe as “lunatic.”

But that’s a different argument, and belongs in a different thread, where you (or someone) can define and explore “left-wing lunacy.” You AGREE that the premise of THIS thread is about a tiny problem, worthy only of a brief consideration and then we move on: occasional exaggeration by anti-Trumpers of the dangers of Trump and Trumpism. Any plausible definition of “left-wing lunacy” must cite this issue as a tiny, tiny bit of it.

Trumpism is so verifiably, obviously bad (as you described well), it takes a vivid imagination to exaggerate its evils. That’s one reason (among others) that it happens relatively rarely.

(There is one realm that I think some anti-Trumpers do exaggerate: the security and integrity of elections. It’s a small group, though. Going back to 2016, many noted how accepting Democrats were of Hillary Clinton’s defeat – we KNOW that elections are very hard to “rig”*. We were dumbfounded that so many of our fellow Americans were deplorable, but most of us accepted it as a fact.

*Post-election shenanigans are a more serious potential issue, like what Trump tried to do in Georgia in 2020 – and, of course, January 6. But even there, the system held up better than many feared.)