Have you been here long? The right wing party line at least here is that dems are responsible for how trump voters felt and they did so at their own peril…and so on and so on…culminating with “Go ahead and insult your voters. How did that go for you?” …and so on…
No rightie here is showing any shame over their ties to trumpism. They are doubling down on hillary derangement, and play acting working class resentment motives to keep on blaming liberals for …everything.
A few points about this discussion:
On simply ignoring posts by some people putting up plainly fact-free party-line dogma, I don’t like the impression that can convey that it’s a viable point of view. One can argue that responding to it gives it power, but I prefer mocking it for the piece of tripe it is. Granted, that can get me in trouble with the board rules at times, but I prefer both dangers to the chance that someone more suggestible might buy into it because it went unchallenged. (I’m not referring to members here generally, but to lurkers who might be reading a thread from a web search or through some other agency.) This is especially important in dealing with the invasion of Trumpies here ever since the election.
As for getting down into the mud, the bottom line is that it’s the only way to effectively fight those who live there. High-road mentality is well and good and satisfying to the conscience, but as mentioned by Buck Godot it’s doomed to failure. (Bill Maher, bombastic and redundant as he can get at times, has said exactly the same thing. In the end, I respect his opinions, and it’s nice to see someone on that level agree with an opinion of mine.)
I’m better suited than many here to this particular tactic (mostly due to my contempt for what I and others have come to describe as ‘alternative facts’…thanks, Kellyanne…and a somewhat, shall we say, combative nature?). Like a number of others on this board, I have a pretty finely-tuned bullshit detector, and I’m not shy about using it. In the end, it’s not about convincing the other side, because in the main it’s just not possible for a number of reasons that have been well-covered in Elections and Great Debates. It’s about the battle for the middle, the undecideds and the swayable, who, if there are any, aren’t the ones posting.
Finally, someone needs to lead. (Something else I’m suited to.) Not saying I’m the only one or that I’m always right or even the best spokesman, but to be frank I sense a certain lack of direction here in the recent past and I’m perfectly willing to try to point the way. I’m pretty sure that that direction is the right one.
If you voted for Trump out of spite and now want to avoid responsibility for him, go commit a minor felony so you lose your vote forever (if applicable) because you’re clearly too stupid to deserve the franchise.
Zero Republicans voted for it. And given how Democrats needed zerovotes from Republicans to pass it, I dunno what your point is.
There were plenty of “we won!” threads and posts here four years ago, with lots of liberal reflection as to why Romney lost and what Republicans should do to win future elections (be Democrat light, essentially). I don’t see why it’s so wrong now?
Trump has been President for six days.
I think it’s more along the lines of multiple speeches. Whether you want to admit it or not, Obama made a living off of being divisive. The man couldn’t not take a swipe at Republicans whenever afforded the chance to do so.
You’re the one claiming I said it’s wrong. I actually said it’s irrelevant.
And well-known for thirty years, especially the last five or so.
Whatever. If that’s the excuse, it doesn’t wash. Nice try, though.
Okay, give an example of a “non bigoted” opinion that’s not “pro-transgender,” addressed directly to the trans people on this board, and they can share their opinion.
Do you agree it’s possible to hold a bigoted opinion and not realize (or not acknowledge) that’s what it is?
You didn’t answer the important question. You’re right - the democrats needed exactly zero votes from Republicans to pass it. They could have shut republicans out of the proceedings entirely if they had wanted to; they had the votes to go it alone, due to the gains they had made due to the absolute clusterfuck that was the Bush administration.
However, republicans put forward amendments to the bill, and they weren’t turned away. A whopping 161 made it into the final project. How, exactly, is this not a good-faith effort at bipartisanship from the side of the democrats? “Hey, we’ve got this landmark legislature we campaigned on, and won 60 seats in the senate, the majority of the house, and the presidency. You guys got anything to say about it?” What, exactly, would qualify as bipartisanship here? Simply not doing the main thing they were elected to do, because the minority opposition didn’t want them to?
This doesn’t invalidate my point at all. I feel that in many cases the movement to Trump from the undecided is unlikely to be a result of a conscious “fuck you” at the point of putting pencil to paper but more of a gradual disenfranchisement, disengagement resulting in a drift away over time. And on your last point, do you think that insulting your potential voters is a good recruiting tactic? You may not want to hear it, you may not like it, but is it actually wrong?
Why would they show shame? there are those who are ideologically wedded to Trump on a pretty visceral level and they are not going to be shifted. This is true of left and right and there is not much short of a Damascene conversion that will shift them.The battle for power is always going to be fought in the middle, over those who can be swayed.
Was that the only reason for Trumps Success? no, but then it doesn’t need to be in order to matter.
Is the left’s demonisation of dissenting opinions a real thing? I think it is, It certainly was here in the UK regarding Brexit.
Did it drive the centre people to the other side? Anecdotally I know of enough who felt torn and who only ever expressed their leaning for Brexit in private, safe circumstances. Hence the reason the polls never reflected reality. They were scared of even voicing their possible support of Brexit for fear of the abuse from the left.
This phenomenon does not have to be the majority experience, it only has to be the experience of a few % of centre voters to be a significant factor in any current political scenario.
I’m left of centre and unfortunately my quiet and reasonable tone is often drowned out by the wailing and shit-slinging from my more radical comrades. If you want to win (some…enough?) people back that tactic does not work, can not work, has never worked. Polarisation is the result and seems only to be getting worse (driven by both political wings). It is all rather depressing and I rather hope my side can set their house in order because I do think we have the more hopeful and constructive message on the whole.
Your post comes across as arrogant and condescending, if this is the tone you use and the mindset you inhabit when speaking to those in the centre then you are actually a pretty good example of why this issue has arisen.
For all your fine intentions you can’t help yourself with “trumpies”, You think fighting dirty is the way to go, You don’t think convincing the other side is important, you seem unsure as to whether the centre ground actually exists. Not promising.
You’ll pardon me if I don’t take you up on your offer to lead, In my experience the best leaders don’t even have to make that offer in the first place.
And if you are black and meet with the president to discuss your thoughts on how to help black peopleyou will get called a “mediocre negro” by a regular CNN contributor because you forgot to bring Cornel West with you. Mediocre negroes seem like just the kind of people who fit perfectly into Hillary’s basket of deplorables.
Jonathan Pie on Trump’s inaugural speech
You might want to take that up with Sally Boynton Brown, the executive director of Idaho’s Democratic Party, who recently said this at a forum for potential DNC chairpersons:
It’s the blue team leftists who are now by far the drunkest on self righteous indignation and the most censorious, that baton was passed some time ago. The same people who insist that a person with a penis can be a woman by choosing to be a woman, and that Monsanto is on the verge of destroying humanity with GMOs, will without any sense of irony turn right around and smugly proclaim that “facts have a left wing bias”.
You don’t get to decide what gender you are. If you are born a man who thinks that he has the brain of a woman, then you are either simply confused or you are a neurologically atypical man. In either case you have every right to take on whatever affectations and behaviors that you wish, and LARP to your hearts desire in the role of whatever gender you want. I will gladly play along, as long as I am respectfully asked to do so. I love role playing, it is harmless fun. But other people have no obligation to use the amended definition.
Of course. It’s also possible to be mistaken about being a victim of bigotry.
The definition of “woman” has shifted considerably, and whether one has a penis or not has little to do with it. Or would you insist that Buck Angel is a woman? Would you want Shawn Stinson sharing a restroom with your daughter? It’s also not a choice. It has to do with brain structure. There are significant differences there.
This is completely accurate. Gender, like sex, like one’s chromosomes, is not a matter of choice.
And this comes down to how you want to define “man” and “woman”. It’s part of why we use terms like “gender” and “sex”, and we don’t use them interchangeably. We’ve learned more about the world around us. Things aren’t that simple. Gender is a distinct part of a person’s persona. So is a person’s sex. They often, but not always, indicate the same thing. So the question is, what should we use to define if someone is a “man” or a “woman” if we insist on using those terms? (And how do intersex folks fit into this paradigm?) We have a variety of criteria we can choose from. The reason I (and many others) think gender identity is the one to go with is because we can’t effectively change it, and because your dick and chest hair don’t care if you’re called a “woman”, but your brain does. So when someone’s gender identity is female, they are a woman. And when their gender identity is male, they are a man. Why should what’s in their pants matter?
Yes.
Yes. Why should I care? A person’s safety when they use the restroom is dependent on the basic human decency of others, not gender. Most people would let my daughter do her business in peace regardless of gender. Why would I have a problem, because Shawn Stinson is attracted to women? So what? So are everyday normal lesbians.
That is a flawed argument because we do not insist that a person with those differences is automatically the gender that their brain scan resembles. The brain activity is not determinative of trans status. What is determinative is the choice, and then the scan is applied after the fact as ad hoc evidence.
I’m not sure I agree with this. That is to say, I’m sure a lot of people did have the impression that Remainers/the left would abuse them if they voiced support for Brexit, but I think there’s a large extent to which that impression was carefully nurtured and propagated by Leavers/the right.
“They won’t let you talk about immigration” they told us as they appeared on flagship political programmes to talk about immigration, month after month, year after year. “Students ban this, students ban that” they reported, as if what a handful of 19 year-olds thought had ever had the slightest impact on real world grown up politics. Every pathetic JCR incident was dragged through the national press as if it actually mattered, with the effect of creating the illusion of a horde of angry leftists silencing the ordinary decent folk of this country. “You can’t say what you think nowadays” they cried, as Katie Hopkins called drowning refugees “cockroaches” and Nigel Farage blamed rush hour traffic on immigrants and the Mail and the Express called asylum seekers terrorists on the front page in 196-point headlines and then apologised in 6-point text on page 2 many months later and David Cameron labelled the Labour candidate for London Mayor a security risk on no firmer grounds than that he was Muslim.
Pro Brexit and pro border-control rhetoric was given a very fair share of the microphone over the past several years and if people have the impression that voicing these sentiments would attract screeching abuse it’s worth asking where that impression came from and why right wing politicians and press felt they had an interest in promoting it.
But by definition, the people you heard talking about it are those who didn’t mind expressing their opinion on it. I personally experienced enough people who weren’t comfortable with the grief that came their way in large group discussions. Their expressed voting intentions changed according to who was asking and who was listening.
Not everyone
I need to stress this
*Not everyone. *
But enough to tip the balance one way or t’other.
The same was true of the UK general election 2015
