Is everything always black and white? Maybe the tattoo is a potential red flag (maybe he’s a Nazi, maybe a dumbass), but not as severe a red flag as a credible rape accusation.
Smapti supports genocide and the rape of prisoners and civilians by military occupiers. Of course he supports a rapist with a Nazi tattoo.
I guess i don’t think that getting a mean-looking tattoo with your war buddies to commentate a mean war is knuckleheaded or makes one an edge lord. The thing is, i believe that he didn’t know it was a Nazi symbol when he got that tattoo. If he did, yeah, that’s knuckleheaded. It’s relevant that i am an American Jew who grew up hearing about the Holocaust and the evils of the Nazis who had never seen (actually, never noticed) that symbol before his tattoo hit the news. But it looks mean and kick-ass.
Why did he keep it? Yeah, the odds that he enjoyed “getting away with it” increased when i learned about his mistreatment of women.
I do think that a few posters here believe he’s a secret Nazi. I disagree with them a lot more than with you. Honestly, i think you and i are in a mostly similar place, just a few steps apart on the continuum. I’ve said from the start that he was a poor choice. I just thought he was less bad than Collins, who is facilitating real evil that has already had a meaningful impact on the lives of my friends. He may still be less bad than Collins, as a senator. (I’d prefer Collins to Platner as a neighbor or in-law, honestly.)
I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on the tattoo- drunken servicemen on leave often make stupid decisions and despite the claim of being a WW II buff, I can see his not knowing about every Nazi symbol. But I am not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt about being a rapist. Republicans have no qualms about electing convicted rapists, but Democrats should hold a higher standard just as was done with Al Franken.
Do I want Collins to win? Fuck no. Do I think Platner has a chance to win right now? Fuck no. Best we can do is find a good substitute candidate and do the best to win. To me, another term of Collins is preferable to electing a rapist.
The reason we want our side to win is because we’re the side without the scumbags. The little (R) or (D) after a person’s name isn’t what matters. What matters is that they’re decent people. We want to get the Republicans out of power because they’re bad people. If we replace the Republicans with other bad people who happen to have a different letter after their name, we’re not winning anything, we’re just losing with a different label.
Thats my take one it as well. I was a supporter, now I am not. Let’s hope a strong replacement candidate emerges.
Sounds like you’d rather have Ted Bundy* than Susan Collins.
*he was a Republican though.
This was a defensible position maybe 6 months ago, though I stand by the insistence that if you’re in a tattoo shop that will do a totenkopf, it will visibly be a Nazi tattoo shop, because legit tattoo shops won’t do Nazi stuff and are well-informed about it. I think he knowingly got a Nazi tattoo because it looked tough and a little dangerous and he probably assumed most people wouldn’t know what it was. And he’s the type of guy who absolutely would pull the “oh you recognize a Totenkopf, maybe you’re the real Nazi, yuk yuk.”
But setting aside the speculative mind-reading, he’s on record as lying about some pretty consequential stuff, so I can’t see how it makes sense to cling to “he didn’t know.” That position sat on thin ice before, and it’s now sitting at the bottom of the pond. The fact is that you cannot believe anything this man says or does. You cannot know how he’d perform as a US Senator, unless you want to let yourself be informed by the pattern of guys accused of sexual misconduct running to the right for cover. He’s just another grifter; anyone who thinks they know how he’d legislate is dreaming. You don’t know what a liar will do when the stakes are high enough.
I’m arguing that it’s not black and white, it’s a pattern of behavior. Honestly, recognizing the abuser pattern didn’t even require him to have evidence tattooed on his body. The tattoo isn’t the big red flag, it’s a big bow wrapping up a bundle of other red flags.
You notice AOC, a progressive/leftist from Bernie’s orbit never endorsed him? She knew what he was. Bartender’s instincts. It was never just “the establishment”, that’s a conspiracy-minded excuse parroted by the weak-minded.
You notice all the smart, savvy politicians and writers and voters who did endorse him?
Your theory seems to be that they are all stupid, delusional, or corrupt. My theory is that they looked at the same facts that you looked at and came up with a different reasonable interpretation of those facts.
If you are unable to conceive that people can come to different conclusions than you, that speaks more about your state of mind than anyone else’s.
What’s your point? “Pattern of behavior” is the same as red flags. Yes, there was a potential pattern of behavior. He might have just been an incredible dumbass. Now we know he’s probably a rapist.
I never liked him, but up until the rape allegation I thought he was still probably better than Collins. Now I know he’s probably not. I don’t understand how being certain from the beginning is better than changing one’s opinions as the known facts change.
I may be missing the part where you explained your personal experience with tattoo shops in eastern Europe two decades ago, the personal experience that gives you the confidence with which to make this assertion. It certainly flies in the face of what other folks with personal experience have said.
Thank you for that trite observation. Duh, they came to different conclusions.
Think what you want about my state of mind. It prevented me from endorsing a rapist or having to backpedal from endorsing a rapist. I’m good with that.
You’ve never been wrong about a politician before? It sure seems like your accusation is that some people were wrong about a politician.
Because you snipped the previous paragraph, you missed the implied word “reasonable.” What I’m saying isn’t a truism.
I think this inference is at least as valid as “the guy who lied about his rape victim and history of domestic violence was most likely telling the truth about why he had a Nazi tattoo on his body, since that kind of stuff tends to be a one-off”.
There are a LOT of Democrats winning elections lately on strongly anti-oligarchy and pro-Palestine platforms. Yet you never seem to hear these sorts of stories about Bernie or AOC or Zohran or El-Sayed or Talarico or…
It’s not the centrist establishment’s fault that Platner flamed out. On the other hand, it remains the case that a very progressive candidate won over 70% of the primary vote, so if the Maine Democratic Party tries to take this opportunity to replace him with some Janet Mills clone, then there will be legitimate cause for outrage.
First: no, it’s not. You made a confident statement about tattoo shops in Eastern Europe in the 2000s, which is a specific statement of fact. The proposed statement you made is about odds and internals states of mind and heuristics. They’re really different.
Second, the proposed statement isn’t one I’d agree with, either. As more evidence piles up–e.g., his lying about rape–I’m changing my mind about the likelihood that he lied about the tattoo.
Being willing to change one’s mind when there’s new evidence is what smart folks do. Gloating about making a good guess? Not so much.
Apart from posting your exact unmodified words, I did snip the part where you falsely suggested that I was categorically calling them all stupid, delusional, or corrupt simply because I pointed out that AOC caught it. After that kind of bullshit dissembling, your notions of “reasonable” don’t swing much weight.
So help me out, then. Do you think that reasonable people could look at Platner’s behavior, as of last week, and come to different reasonable conclusions from the one you came to?
If so, I’ve really misunderstood whatever point you’ve been trying to make in the last 24 hours.
If not, what do you think was going on with all the people who endorsed Platner prior to these latest revelations?