I think their writers have been plagiarizing me.
Many people decry “tone policing,” but tone does make a big difference. It can be the difference between winning millions of votes and losing millions of votes.
Here’s an article that addresses and refutes some of the underlying motivation of trying to control speech and thought. When the left and dictators share a trait perhaps the left, if truly in favor of liberty, ought to rethink some of it’s more odious stances.
Are you fucking serious? What compromise was involved with Republican gridlock and flat-out refusal to act on anything during Obama’s administration? What reasoned debate did McConnell and friends put up for not even holding hearings on the SCOTUS appointment? So let me restate your contention more clearly for others who might not have gotten it. “We deliberately didn’t do anything during the time when a Democrat held office, but now we’ve conveniently forgotten about that and want you to as well, so everyone can get together on doing what we want done.” Uh, in the words of many Philadelphians, fugeddaboutit. You may have selective memory, but we don’t.
Bullshit. You voted for power, regardless of the utter lack of qualification let alone sense of reality or barest speck of humanity or decorum of the person you put up. It had nothing to do with how butthurt you felt over those big, bad liberals calling you names. That was just one of your rationalizations for voting against morality and plain common sense.
No matter how much you want to portray it otherwise, there are more of us than there are of you, and have been for decades. Government isn’t the only forum for ‘national dialogue,’ and the fact that you hold power doesn’t make us go away or lessen the crowds that are making themselves heard even now. But whatever makes you feel better. The minority is enforcing its will on the majority, a state that is anathema to democracy and would have been for the FF’s.
Ladies and gentlemen, Sean Spicer.
Spare me. The only time you’ve been willing to discuss the issue is now, when you have a hammerlock on the eventual resolution. Even if everyone else suddenly up and decided ‘let’s cooperate and compromise,’ you’d pretend to listen, conveniently ignore the substance, and do exactly what you had planned on doing from the very beginning. You’re not fooling anyone, least of all me.
The truth is that the minority has indeed been enforcing its will on the majority (population wise), and you are correct that this is anathema to democracy. Fortunately the majority, spearheaded by a candidate willing to confront political correctness and its concomitant bullshit, has finally had enough.
But if that stat’s two years old, I’ll go with the more recent one about Hillary getting about 2.8 million more popular votes than Donald.
ETA: Or actually three years old, if you look at the top google entry
As a counterargument, I would say it’s just one type of political correctness superseded with another (see: “alternate/alternative facts.”)
And had you substituted the word ‘Democrats’ for ‘liberals’ you’d find the opposite state of affairs. Funny how of all the points I brought up, that’s the one you pick on. The majority voted for Clinton, and the minority won. Twist that into alternative facts for us. It should be entertaining.
Oh, btw, I hope you’re part of the 1% who will benefit from his tax cuts. Otherwise you’re SOL. And hope you’re not one of the poor trying to buy a house.
It should always be about recruitment, debate, discussion and putting forward your case. I suspect many on the democratic left will think it important to understand why people swung to Trump and how to win them back.
I suspect I’m quite far to the left of you, The character in video is probably far to the left of you and I agree pretty much with his rant word for word and despair at my “sides” inability to learn from past errors.
The rest of your post misses the point spectacularly. I can’t respond any better than to direct you back to his video. Go watch it again, go watch his other videos on Brexit. He deals neatly with your points and spells out why your attitude has helped bring the left to the current point.
The claim was that liberals outnumbered us and had for decades. This wasn’t true up to three years ago and it isn’t true now. When you include moderates the liberal contingent is only a quarter to a third of the population overall.
The more popular votes thing is meaningless. No one can say how many would have voted for either candidate had they not been put off by their personalities, and it’s possible many didn’t vote for Trump because they were put off by him when they would have voted for the Republican candidate had he been anyone else. (I would be included in this group as I didn’t vote him either but would have voted for a different Republican candidate.)
Furthermore the number of people voting (for either side) is much less than the number that amongst in the population. This is a country of 350 million people but only 130 million voted. Even discounting minor children it’s still the case that a great many people didn’t vote at all, yet I’d bet that most tend pretty strongly toward one ideology or the other, with my guess going to conservatives as the larger group because liberals tend to get het up more over these issues and are therefore likely to have a larger percentage of their number turn out to vote, especially given that most get out the vote efforts are conducted by liberals and extra efforts are made to transport or otherwise get their voters out to the polls.
So I’m guessing that if every liberal and every conservative and every moderate were polled as to who they’d prefer to be running the country, much more than a 2.8 million vote differential would exist in favor of conservatives.
Complaining is all you’re doing. Conservatives are not actually being suppressed or “shouted down”, and they have plenty of room in the public sphere to say anything they want. They’re just traumatized because some people nowadays are actually challenging and criticizing their speech.
[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
So we’d like to see you knock it off with all the insults and name calling
[/quote]
:dubious: Like “Lying Hillary”, and “Barack the Magic Negro”, and “libtards”, and “shitlibs”, and all the million other examples of insults and name calling that conservatives have been applying to liberal leaders and voters for decades?
Your attempting to claim any kind of moral high ground here is patently absurd.
[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
[…] that is precisely what conservatives did in the last election. We voted in accordance with our principles
[/quote]
Great! Well done! So why are so many conservatives nowadays constantly whining that liberals made conservatives vote Trump by being so “unsympathetic” and “disrespectful” and “shouting them down”?
According to you, conservatives merely voted exactly as they thought they should, disregarding contemptuous insults and invective from their political opponents. Is this some kind of new experience for you guys? I’ve been doing it all my life.
[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
But had your side been less strident and insulting and demanding, it’s likely we’d have been more open to your arguments
[/quote]
:dubious: What? But you just said that you conservatives voted in accordance with your principles! Now you seem to be saying that if liberals had been “nicer” to you, you might have been open to voting differently?!
In other words, you might have fallen to the temptation of sacrificing your principled position if only liberals had kissed up to you more? Wow, then what a good thing we didn’t, huh? Disaster averted!
[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
What they’re saying is that they’d prefer a society in which social and political issues were determined by reasoned debate and discussion
[/quote]
Their supposed concern would be a lot less unconvincing if they’d start with their own side. For decades conservatives have been making celebrities out of anti-liberal nastytalkers like Limbaugh and Beck and Coulter and Hannity, etc., whose ranks have now been swelled by the Breitbarters and other alt-right trolls. First deal with the log in your own eye, folks.
[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
Mock it and call it crybaby shit all you want
[/QUOTE]
On it, thanks.
You assumed the word liberal. I didn’t say it. As a matter of fact, I was referring to the popular vote. The majority may be meaningless to you (and, apparently, to who actually is President), but it is an indicator. Trump is not the ‘will of the people.’ That was Hillary.
And, speaking of ‘alternative facts,’ Republicans historically turn out in higher percentages than Democrats.
And it’s possible many Democrats and independents were put off by Russian interference in the election. That’s just another red herring to deflect the point.
No facts on that polling thing, just a feeling, huh? In the face of evidence to the contrary? Eeyeahrite.
Here’s one I saw that was particularly prescient, and I watched it around when it was released (in early summer of last year.)
There are none so blind as they who will not see. :rolleyes:
Look, as a liberal and in terms of the national dialog you’ve got two choices. Keep on doing what you’ve been doing and pretty much live under Republican and conservative domination for a very, very long time, or moderate your approach, recognize that people have right to their own opinions and behave accordingly, and attempt to bring about the change you want by virtue of reason and discussion rather than through insult and accusations.
I’ve changed my views considerably on certain things as a result of some of the things I’ve read on this board. But this has always come about as the result of an insight that came about because of something someone said in general conversation (usually amongst themselves). It was never, and I repeat: never, because someone accused me of some flaw in my character, intelligence or morals. It should be obvious to you that if even my mind can be changed on some of these things, then the approach that can accomplish it is one worth using.
This approach won’t pay off for you on everything, and you won’t get your way 100% of the time, as you (the general you) currently insist upon, but neither will my side and in a democracy that’s the way it should work.
That could easily be, and got no problem with that, he could have been doing a spot on impersonation. Just like I said, he ripped off a stream of things I’ve seen right here, Hillary’s the awfullest candidate, Liberal latte-drinkers in Volvos, you know the drill.
So, yeah, if he was doing a satire, right on, brother! Gotta admire one that is so on target you can’t tell the difference, fuck yeah! Like Chris Hayes impersonation of a pencil-necked liberal weenie. (Didn’t know that one, did you! You heard it here first! You probably didn’t see Rachel Maddow slam him down at wrist-wrestling! Half-second, flat!)
Ask a republican how they feel about voter ID, when they know you’re against it. See how easy it is for your viewpoint not to get insulted.
See, this whole narrative is wonderfully convincing. Not because it relies on data or hard evidence, but because it relies on a constant string of anecdotes, and people respond better to anecdotes than data. Find a handful of people who found it problematic that one actor referred to another who struggled with not being seen as a sex symbol “beautiful” first and foremost, and act like it’s an “uproar” and grouse about how it’s “no longer okay to call people beautiful”, as though context wasn’t a thing. Find a nut (there’s enough of 'em on every side) complaining about someone’s statement, strip it of a little context for good measure to make them look extra nutty, and boom - instant “PC POLICE ON THE RAMPAGE” anecdote.
Is there actually any truth to this? Is there really this lack of parity? Is it really that much harder to talk to those on the left? I have no idea. My experience has not been the same as yours. I’ve been to forums with a substantial right-wing portion. Bring up Obama? He’s “Obummer”, “Hussein”, etc. Bring up voter ID laws? “Clearly you just want all the immigrants to vote democrat illegally.” The whole “gay wedding cake” issue? “Stop being such an anti-christian bigot”. Obamacare? “Death-panels-supporting commie bastard”. Any shred of nuance on immigration? “So you want mexican drug dealers to roam the streets?” And so on and so forth. And of course, the constant refrain from the right that liberals aren’t “real” Americans, which has gotten worse over the last year and a half, and I don’t think I have to explain why.
Have you literally ever spoken to a Trump supporter?
To be fair.
It’s the conservatives pushing back against equal rights for gay people.
To be fair.
It’s mostly the conservatives who insist on ignoring evidence of actual racism.
To be fair.
Trump is the one proposing a ban on muslim immigration.
To be fair.
The republican party is the party that rejects climate change en masse, and with a substantial wing that rejects evolution.
Hmm… Now what reason could there be for Republicans to get so much shit for being bigoted, hateful, and ignorant?
In the absence of any actual evidence, rather than a handful of nutpicked anecdotes, I will continue to maintain that the correct take on “anti-PC backlash” can be found in this Guardian article - and, more concisely, in this Moviebob video: Essentially the only way “PC” is used these days is as a shield for assholes defending the way they’re being assholes. It’s a phantom threat, used to turn hateful, bigoted jerks into warriors for free speech. Just look at this exchange from the first republican primary debate:
“You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals’,” Kelly pointed out. “You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees …”
“I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct,” Trump answered, to audience applause. “I’ve been challenged by so many people, I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either.”
Translation:
Kelly: “You’ve been kind of a sexist asshole. How do you excuse that?”
Trump: “Stop being so politically correct. God, who gives a shit?”
To answer that question: decent people give a shit. And I don’t think the republican party, after collectively voting for Donald Trump, gets to claim that they are decent people. You complain about liberals calling conservatives mean, hateful, evil people, just because you want to do things like take away gay rights and make it harder to vote… Donald Trump is a mean, hateful, evil person, and you guys voted for him en masse. Either stop complaining and own it, or stop defending Donald Trump.
Well, the thing that baffles me is that throughout the video he states how much of a fuck-up Trump is and how he’d rather vote for Lucifer than Trump. How can anyone think this guy/character is supposed to represent a right argument (whether straightforward or as a parody of the left) when he says that he can’t believe the media considers Hillary Clinton to be left wing? All of that is (by American standards) “far left” argumentation, not right-wing arguments. It’s exactly what I hear from the folks left of me (and showed up on my Facebook feed from the far leftists.)
Funny how facts turn into accusations. Or are you denying the complete logjam perpetrated by Republicans during the Obama administration? Oh, and I have news for you. The last time the Republicans had control of both houses and the Presidency for more than 4 years was during the Reagan administration, and then you have to go back to 1933. So spare us the threatened doom and gloom. That’s already here, and it’s self-defeating. (Of course, it’s mitigated by the utter bullshit the rank and file are fed by Republicans and they devour like it was their last meal.)
Tellya what…when you do anything more than pay lip service to recognizing that people have a right to differing opinions, I’ll consider it. Until then, you know where you can put your revisionist history.
You don’t get it. I’m not trying to convince you of anything. That’s clearly a lost cause. I’m calling you on your bullshit so that maybe with a little luck someone with a mind more malleable to propaganda than mine will get to hear the true story.
The only time we’ll get our way in this state of affairs is when you 100% agree with us, which happens just about…never.
Oh, by the way, that Moviebob video I linked above?
Listen to the part around 5:08 closely. Here, let me transcribe it (roughly):
“It’s high time we call out reflexive anti-PC posturing as being exactly what it is: a cowardly rhetorical defense mechanism used by bullies who lack the courage of their own convictions. You want to be a jerk? Fine! Be a jerk! But don’t pretend you’re storming the gates of Mordor when all you’re doing is spitting off the overpass.”
This was half a decade before the Trump phenomenon. And Trump did exactly that. Whenever he was called out for saying something stupid, hateful, offensive, or otherwise shitty, his response? “Stop being so PC”, or some variant on that refrain. And it worked.
And if you want to talk about nastiness in discourse, and you somehow think the left has anything on the Trump fraction, who literally turned “Lock Her Up” into a mantra, or the alt-right, who are basically just neo-nazis… Yeah, I’m sorry, what?
Or, alternatively, the election is not about deciding who totally rules for the duration. That election is about establishing the ground facts for consensus-building, finding our way to a fair agreement. If the Silly Party gets 60% and the Very Silly Party gets 40%, that gives us a good estimation of relative negotiating strength. The winning side gets some leveraged advantage in negotiation, but doesn’t shoot out the lights and grab everything on the table.
Power sharing and negotiation can negate a lot of potential mayhem. Doesn’t always work, sure, but then, what ever does?
Groovy! Ten examples, just off the top of your head? OK, five. Not nice to stress out senior synapses.