…and LANGUAGES. The near-disappearance of requiring American kids to really learn another language is distressing. So few of my college students learned much at all of a language, and they’re no longer required to learn one in college. The know nothing ABOUT other languages (e.g., how they’re grouped into families), much less the languages themselves – so, they don’t even know anything about their OWN language! It blows my mind, every day I go to work (no exaggeration).
I think learning another language, even if partially, opens a mind to other worlds – or at least to the reality that there ARE other worlds.
I have been on this board for many, many years (think AOL). I have been aware almost that entire time that the majority here are Democrats/liberals. I have overall, as a conservative Republican not joined in any of the political conversations. Mainly because most of the conversations start with the premise that I’m stupid. I respect others for their beliefs and values and read all their content and move along smartly. The thing that makes this board so attractive to me is the variety of opinions and the great variety of topics.
I’m sorry you feel that way. Many here (as I’m sure you know) would love to have calm, respectful, open-minded conversations with a conservative Republican.
Your party has, overall, for nine years and counting, hitched itself to a man and a movement that is chock-full of hatred, lies, and contempt for law, democracy, empathy, decent behavior and dialogue, and basic facts.
It shouldn’t have to fall on you to demonstrate that you have nothing to do with MAGA in style or substance, but unfortunately, your party has forced this responsibility on you. You can’t blame us for assuming guilt by association, when the association now runs do deeply and broadly.
Hopefully, in five years (but probably more like ten), the likes of you won’t have to go out of your way to demonstrate your sincerity when starting or joining a conversation.
(You may argue that a Democratic and/or liberal-leaning poster should be burdened with the same responsibility, but the two sides are not equivalent in this respect. There has never been a time when the center and bulk of the Democratic party was, say, Communist – and certainly never so anti-facts, nor pro-coup-attempt. The most recent equivalent might be if you were a Southern Democrat before, say, 1965, and you had to prove your anti-Jim-Crow bona fides to be taken seriously in the era’s Straight Dope analogues.)
I’m not a conservative Republican, but I’ve already been called an idiot, a Self-Righteous Asshole, told to shut the fuck up, and not all that bright, simply because I didn’t vote for Harris (and didn’t vote for Trump for that matter). Yet I have not thrown a single insult to anyone in any of the latest pollical threads because they voted for someone I disliked.
If you live in a swing state, you deserve all that opprobium and more, if you failed to vote for Harris. I will leave it at that, and not engage in this conversation any more.
The poster I responded to was asking about engaging in civil dialogue from the perspective of a conservative Republican, not who they voted for in 2024.
I’ve been through the same thing here trying to explain to this board what was going to happen, and more importantly why. I’ve been saying it since Biden picked Harris as VP.
They even went as far as to say that I was lying about being black. I just got called a liar again today, even though I provided a cite that Trump picked up votes from under 45-year-old black voters over Biden.
Perhaps it has, but that was not the basis of my reply just now. I based it only on what you wrote. Notice I said “if you live in a swing state.” I’m guessing, from what you wrote just now, that you have established that clearly one way or the other in some thread, but I don’t know of this. No echo here, just a reasoned, personal response to what you wrote. I’m happy to own this – me, personally. Nothing to do with any chamber.
But, as I said, I’m ending this side conversation, because it’s not what the other poster was asking about, and it’s not what I responded to them about.
I’ve also been trying to explain, with reason, why the Democrats lost and what they can do to improve. But I just get insults thrown at me because I didn’t vote they way they wanted me to vote.
They are not going to improve by trying to appeal to people like you. The Democrats job was to double down on their core beliefs, which people voted for even in this election. Not cozy up to the fucking Cheney’s.
Maga voted for a billionaire that has the world’s richest man as his top advisor. That man is also getting rich because the US taxpayers subsidize Tesla and Space X. Trump was trying to hawk a gold watch and gold shoes. They were literally laughing when Musk said he just fires striking workers.
So Musk and his class including Trump are using taxpayer dollars to enrich themselves and now he is saying we have to suffer pain to remake the economy.
The Democrats did not call that out, even though Trump was saying it the whole time and that is why they lost.
That is what maga voted for but they didn’t. They did not care about the price of eggs or gas, they just said that. It was always about racism and misogyny.
The United States is a clown country now. We are clearly no longer stable and cannot be trusted.
How in the world is your garden-variety demagogue supposed to call some nation a “shithole country” if Americans can travel to that country and fall in love with its citizens???
The Internet has already made it dramatically harder than in the before times!
I pretty much voted straight Republican ticket from 1996 all the way until 2016 when I decided Trump would not make for a good president. While I voted for Hillary, I still voted Republican in other races. During that twenty year period of time, I never threw insults at those who voted for a Democrat because I didn’t view them with derision. I never viewed Democrats as anti-American nor did I view blue states as being somehow less American than red states. i.e. I never threw shade at the other side because I could usually understand where they were coming from even if I happened to disagree.
You speak of “the other side” as if we’re discussing a football game between the Cowboys and Packers. As a Cowboys fan, this pains me to admit this, but Packers fans aren’t bad people. While I would prefer America’s team to win, it really doesn’t matter as my life will not materially be affected one way or the other. Politics isn’t the same way.
I view Trump supporters, and anyone who voted for Trump is a supporter, with derision in a way I never viewed Democrats. A lot of people know Trump is a piece of garbage and they voted for him anyway. They don’t care he used violence in an attempt to retain power in 2020, they don’t care he’s done his best to undermine the democratic process since 2016, they don’t care he’s beholden to a despot in Russia, they don’t care about the women who have died since the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Maybe they’re not the ones who are shouting “Your body, my choice,” but their callous indifference is what’s put us here.
Republican “Never Trumpers” seem to fiercely advocate that Democrats look in the mirror and pillory left-leaning voters who stayed home this time around.
Fine. Fair play.
But Republican “Never Trump” voters who also stayed home, rather than cast a vote against Trump … think pillorying them for the choice that they made is a bridge too far.
I’m a bit puzzled by that. It reminds me of the classic “Not MY job” meme:
You may hold the position that it’s not your job, but – as always – it’s your country. Are you putting party before country … yet again?
IMO some people voted for Trump due to ignorance, while others voted for Trump for more contemptable reasons. Despite what I think of Trump voters, I am not going to vilify them in person or on a message board.
I on the other hand will. Anyone who voted for Trump deserves to be loathed and despised for the rest of their life. Voting for Trump was an act of evil of such a magnitude it doesn’t deserve forgiveness, right up there with some hypothetical time traveler voting for Hitler despite knowing what he’d do.s.
I believe that a significant number of Republican voters aren’t on the internet at all, and never caught enough of trump on TV to realize what a sundowning demented frog he really is. When they did catch a snippet of a press conference they never heard, no matter the outrageous things he said, “cite?”. And nobody ever followed up on anything. It was lie after lie, but they never knew it.
As an aside, if I could make the rest of Kevin McCarthy’s life a hell I’d do it. He flew down to Mara Lardo and resurrected that fucking corpse. Nobody would have gnashed their teeth if the old man had settled into a well deserved* retirement.
*/s
