As I looked at the issue the reality is that regarding labeling you may had a point if about 90% of the people that (in some polls) are in favor of labeling were all liberal or Democrats.
No, the thing is that I have seen reports from the anti-GMO people being proud that many independents and Republicans support that. So if we should do it I have proposed that any labeling should include also the problems or how much crops have been changed by traditional breeding, and adding a factor about the safety and testing already done, the point should be that the labels should also teach about how silly the fears are.
The point still stands though: claiming that Bernie is against GMOs and therefore causing deaths at Nazi levels by not using the technology was wrong.
A political rally is different to a concert. You do have the right to try to disrupt a political rally, or hold up signs, or shout “TRUMP IS A FASCIST NAZI” or “TRUMP SUPPORTERS ARE NAZIS”. Trump then has a right to throw them out, but his supporters do not have a right to use violence even if they are passively resisting (eg sitting down and having to carried out by several people).
This is the law and part of the political process. Of course Trumps supporters are also free to try to disrupt Bernie’s rallies if they want to.
Oh, OK, then, for this, you will rely on their testimony! But naturally, if they say they were vocal but peaceful, they’re a bunch of lying shits. Surely it must have occurred to you that maybe Trump grabbed a perfect opportunity to play the victim? Or is his record for complete candor and open honesty too good to even consider that?
Do you honestly think that disrupting a rally is enough to call Bernie Sanders supporters Brown Shirts? Its infantile and stupid. Grow up and also go read some history about what the real Brownshirts did. It’s pretty offensive of you to make that comparison.
There are a group of your typical regressive self appointed activists in Chicago that intended to shut down the rally, organized in order to do so, and accomplished what they set out to do. They wrote about shutting down the rally before hand, cheered and gloated about it as it happened, and are bragging about it afterwords.
This is predictable, there is a segment of people that really do think that they should be allowed to shut down, occupy, ban, or silence any event, speaker, or area that they want because their cause is so just and of course their enemies are Hitler. Their certainty in their own righteousness trumps everyone else’s rights. Their enemies have been Hitler since before Jon Lennon heard about Yoga and went New Age.
This is bad for many reasons.
Trump seems to have used the predictability, divisiveness, and general ugliness of this type of behavior to his advantage. That doesn’t excuse the behavior.
There’s only one problem with that sort of argument - it cedes politics to the biggest group, to the strongest or the most able to put up a show of force.
Politics then becomes less about discussion and sharing of ideas, learning and accommodation and seeing a different perspective than it does about the strong team crowding out the weaker team. And, over time, it becomes self perpetuating and self fulfilling.
If (for example) the 15% who are socialist know they are going to face a daunting gauntlet from the more powerful and intimidating 30% “self responsibility” crowd - they are going to sit down and shut-up. Which is bad.
Let’s turn it around slightly - if protesters weren’t curbed in any way and could shut down an abortion clinic purely through dint of numbers - is that a good thing, or would society as a whole have lost something?
When political speech is curtailed we lose something - and disrupting a rally is not right.
That’s an internet meme. It doesn’t carry the weight of fact you seem to think it does. And TRUMP SHUT DOWN HIS OWN RALLY. Just in case you missed that fact.
I think any law banning “disrupting a political rally” would have worse chilling effects than the current situation. Trump’s message is out there for anyone to see its not like people don’t know what his message is because the Chicago rally got shut down or even if a few more do.
Trump’s message is offensive to many many people, its to be expected that there will be opposition to it. There was a lot less protests at Obamas’ or Bush’s rallies because their message was not xenophobic, racist and suggesting that the US commits war crimes (Trump’s “we’ll go after their families”. )
He wasn’t even there! So, anybody wonder where he was?
Because we knew where he wasn’t. So, who told him about the dreadful violence there? Because we have witnesses and tapes say there wasn’t any. A boisterous and uncivil crowd? You mean, the kind that Trump likes to describe as “passionate”?
For a gutsy, ballsy kind of guy, he sure seems to wimp out pretty easy. The cops say they had the situation in hand, “sufficient manpower”. And Elvis wasn’t in the building, never mind leaving.
This shit just doesn’t add up. There is a piece missing.
We have already been through all this. Read the thread. The “sufficient manpower” was referring to getting him in and out of the building, not the inside of the venue. Trump never said that the police told him to shut the event down. He claims to have made the decision himself to avoid injuries, a reasonable enough decision considering the thousands of protesters.
People went there intent on shutting down the event, gloated about it on video as it was happening, and are bragging about it afterwards.
And then we have Bernie and everyone on the internet and in the media justifying it. I am sure you would be just as eager to downplay the situation if thousands of Trump supporters had mobbed in and around a Bernie rally intent on preventing it from occurring, and succeeded.
Exactly, Trump lied about the violence, he was always planning to cancel the rally as a way of dominating yet another media cycle by attacking Bernie’s supporters as crazy dangerous radicals.
This is not evil genius. Sabotaging leftist movements by planting people inside them to urge them to violence and then painting them as dangerous violent radicals is a very old technique. Heard of COINTELPRO? This is not a conspiracy theory, its been admitted that this happened by the US government.
If the content of the message matters, then Frank, who insults Trump, can be removed–but Jane, who doesn’t insult Trump, cannot be removed. Is that what you’re saying?
If not, you’re still misunderstanding. I’m saying nobody has a right to be there at all without being removed. The content of their message is irrelevant to their right to be there.
I think this thread has long since devolved into a repetition of the same points over and over again back and forth and am pretty much checking out but this does deserve a comment.
The vilified “other” being Jewish or not is immaterial.
Trump is not Hitler if for no other reason than that the current United States is not 1920 to '30s Germany but the essence of Hitler was not that the specific target was Jews. No question that Jews have been the identified “other” through much of European history and were the prime one for Hitler, along with the Roma and others. The current identified others used in very similar ways are not Jews. (At least not currently.)
The issue is the recipe: take a critical mass of a majority culture experiencing a major loss of status and anxiety regarding their futures and add an authoritarian demagogue exploiting it by pointing at broad brush “others” identifiable by religion or ethnicity or cultural heritage to blame. Exploit existing stereotypes and prejudices. Encourage some violence along the way. Throw in some anti-intellectualism for extra spice. Bring to boil.