Who did it happen to?
People fear what they don’t understand.
Skepticism?! I’ve seen plenty of outright rootin’ for Putin on Twitter. If I had a dime for every chucklehead who posts that the Ukrainian flag in a Twitter profile is the universal symbol for idiot, I’d have supper every day paid for. If I had a quarter for every fool reciting the Kremlin line about an unwritten agreement to not expand NATO, and conveniently ignoring the actual written treaty where Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for Russia’s pledge not to invade, I’d pay my internet bill.
Skepticism I can understand, not agree with, but understand and even respect a little. MAGAs carrying water for Putin and rooting against Ukraine I cannot fathom or respect.
OK, I get your point. I should’ve maybe laid out in more detail the views I’ve seen on right-wing boards. I’ve seen the following:
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There are a non-negligible # of conservatives that fully support Ukraine. That % is dwindling, but it’s there.
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The people I call the skeptics maybe fall into two camps: (Camp A) - Those that are echoing Kremling talking points and/or or pro-Putin, whether or not they realize it…(Camp B) - Those that might be OK with funding Ukraine’s war, but only up to a point, and don’t want to give anything other than basic military aid.
I would venture a guess that #1 is about 40% on the right. I think 2A is maybe 35%, and 2B is maybe 25%. The 2A crowd is the loudest and the most dangerous, IMO.
Maybe I shouldn’t call them skeptics. Maybe 2B are the skeptics, and 2A are the Putinists.
You may have just inadvertently coined a verb that describes not only right-wing support for Russia vs Ukraine, but much of the Trump-aligned, Putin-favoring bashing of US intelligence and diplomacy.
“Those GOP idiots are too busy Kremling to see how badly they’re endangering our own interests.”
Cool. I didn’t even notice the error on my part with spelling. I’ll leave it alone, as a verb.
Kremling - Verb; The act of supporting Putin or Russian Government interests, either intentionally or inadvertently.
There’s also this:
So, not Democrats’ humility but their obliviousness.
Or maybe, well-intentioned naivete? In assuming that bad men weren’t bad, but just spirited opponents.
Or that their humility leads to indecisiveness, which leading to inaction. “Should we really do this? after all we could be wrong.”
Well, all those (humility, indecisiveness, naivete etc.) could be true, but the main emotion I hear personally is disbelief. Over and over and over: how stupid can people be? Surely not this stupid!
And yet, every bit of evidence proclaims that indeed, people are this stupid. This deluded, this unable to distinguish between lies and truth, this willing to trade reason and patient work for the joy of mindless rage. That disbelief, that inability to fully accept the irrational hatreds of the Ugly Right, and mobilize effectively against them, is why we are here.
This is why it’s pointless to engage with conservatives. If your definition of “corrupt” includes everybody, then you have no serviceable definition of corruption. And, consciously or unconsciously, this is strategic. The reality is that they do not care about corruption, and never have.
Corruption was a good talking point for conservatives before 2016. But you can only pound the table about the opponent’s corruption while as your own faction isn’t blatantly, openly, comically corrupt. The Trump era utterly destroyed that fantasy.
And it’s very telling that conservatives’ response has not been “we need to fix all the corruption, wherever it exists, on my side if necessary.” The line now is “it’s hopeless to tackle it when everyone’s doing it, but if we’re going to fix it, you go first.” Utterly insincere, utterly unserious.
We need to fix all the corruption, wherever it exists, on my side if necessary.
The OP described a straightforward case of visiting a side to argue with the opposition. We have numerous conservatives who state outright that they’re here principally to antagonize liberals. They don’t get banned because they know mods mainly police bright-line violations, and this can be gamed outrageously. The only get banned because they get bored with the game and get sloppy, but only after plying their trade for over a decade in some cases. Of boards that permit liberal viewpoints, I can think of none but the SDMB that is so back-bendingly tolerant of conservative bad-faith nonsense.
I realize your post was likely a drive-by intended only to stir the pot, but fantasies like this need to be called out whenever they’re presented as fact.
Who would you propose starting with, and what should their punishment be?
Warning for @HMS_Irruncible
This is a straight out attack on @Sam_Stone. This is not allowed. As you just got done explaining moderation on the SDMB, I can’t take this as anything but a deliberate violation of our rules.
I’ve always phrased it as this - "“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
I talked with some poli sci majors six months ago who were trying to address corruption across all parties in state governments in the US. They were somewhat organized but had few interested people. They were talking about decreasing ‘monied interests’ in state legislatures in the US. They were mostly volunteering to cold-call voters and write letters to their own representatives. The spokesperson was a really young college graduate who thought there were more interested people than there actually were.
I’m much more curious about the “on my side if necessary” part.
It was me quoting word-for-word, and not disagreeing with, the by HMS_Irruncible. (Which is also why I see little point in answering the who-would-you-propose question: if I say X, and Irruncible says no, that’s not a good enough response, and I reply well, would you think Y is good enough, and Irruncible says no, and I ask what would be, and Irruncible says Z, and I was perfectly willing all along to agree to Y, then — what? Why not just let Irruncible put something else out there for me to again quote and not disagree with?