Twenty years is “quick”? What are you, three hundred and eighty years old?
I don’t think those are really relevant issues?, they seem really just contingent. I’d say being in favor of gay marriage is as valid as being against it, being in favor of the right to own guns is as valid as being against it.
You know, something that made mean lean away from the left was precisely the whole voter ID laws discussion…
The left is against certain rights (if we want to call them that): guns ownership (yeah, they haven’t taken away people’s guns… but not because they wouldn’t like to) and free speech, of the top of my head.
Of course theft has evidence of opposition to gay marriage, there are a lot of people who oppose it. But instead of using arguments, the left usually just shouts “homophobe!”, that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. I for example am in favor of gay rights, marriage, etc., but I don’t see why should it be an invalid opinion to think otherwise. I don’ think the right to marry is a given fact beyond discussion. Plus if I’m right, surely I can find some actual arguments to use?.
This, definitely. Hell, in Germany the pólice and the press tried to hide the mass sexual attacks on New Year’s eve. You (a general you) cannot just manipulate facts to get a desired outcome or avoid one perceived as negative. It’s intelectually dishonest, and people do pick up on this. What ends up happening is that people like Le Pen grow in popularity, because they’re the ones expressing concerns that mainstream politicians refuse to aknowledge.
Many are more open minded, but not most imo. This attitude, this refusal to engage in debate, is wrong because it’s arrogant and anti-democratic… and it’s also wrong from a tactical point of view. Shouting down people who disagree isn’t going to change anyone’s opinión, even if it makes the one doing the shouting feel better about himself.
This is something I saw a lot when I was very involved with animal rights groups some years ago. Anyone who wasn’t a vegetarian (hell, a vegan), was an idiot or an evil person. You know, I’m a vegetarian but I don’t go around calling omnivores murderers.
PS: Sorry if this post was a little disjointed. Have barely slept and it’s late.
I’ve lost track - which is the side that has bad *ideas *and which is the side that has bad people?
By the way, if the OP knows of a non-homophobic reason to oppose gay marriage, please share because I asked a few people on this board and never got one.
Is it arrogant to assume you know more than climate scientists, physicists, evolutionary biologists, geologists, paleontologists, etc. because you read (but probably didn’t read) parts of the Bible?
Nope, this is a straw man getting trotted out a lot right now
There was no complacency among democrat supporters. Trump winning was “unthinkable” in the sense of someone with that temperament and (lack of) experience being president was hard to imagine, but very few people were actually saying Clinton had the election sewn up.
And it’s not ignorance that makes me despise trump and what he stands for. I watch Fox news every day for example…I always like to get both sides of a story. It just happens that the Trump / Giuliani / Hannity side is based on lies, both wilful and of the “people are saying” variety.
But it works. This is what I’ve been saying in other threads: how well you can sell a factoid is now more important than whether it’s true. Ideas are just click-bait.
The election was a massive psy-op or troll job, depending on how you choose to look at it.
For instance, how many on the right, can openly admit that if Trump had “won” the popular but lost the electoral - that they wouldn’t be upset?
Very few. Believe it or not, this data has been quantified & it’s under 0.01%.
Are you sure? In 2008, Obama won 69,456,897 votes. This go-around, Hillary won 60,981,118 (as of the current count) cite. That is one helluva difference. Are you sure Democrats were not complacent, or maybe not inspired, having their rightful nomination of Bernie snatched away from them by a hostile Establishment?
Only “rightful nomination” that got snatched away was Biden’s.
I was saying there is no evidence of complacency and dropping a lot of votes doesn’t in itself prove otherwise, especially in an election with lower turnout overall.
I was mostly railing against the post-hoc “we thought we had it in the bag!” that I’m hearing in so many places. I read a lot of pre-election predictions and I don’t recall anyone putting it like that. It was always at risk and that’s why we were so panicked.
There was a point where Trump’s poll numbers slumped and the chance of Hillary getting it was put as high as 85%, but that’s the nature of probabilities, they can change as circumstances (and our knowledge) changes.
Climate change is likely to cause hundreds of thousands of additional deaths per year in the coming decades. That’s relevant. Our students being taught religious dogma instead of the science they need to understand medicine - that’s relevant. Consistent failures of public perception leading to a great many people voting for an unqualified, dishonest con man - that’s definitely relevant.
Reasons for gay marriage: expanding the institution of marriage, with its myriad social and financial benefits, to include a group of people formerly refused access without good reason
Reasons against gay marriage: …I got nothing. Do you have a good reason? The religious right kept fishing for a decent one in Obergfell and they had nothing.
Reasons for gun laws: personal freedom, potential empirical data regarding self-defense and protection
Reasons against gun laws: potential empirical data regarding gun violence and death
I’m not going to disagree with you on gun laws. I feel like this is an issue the democrats should just drop and give up. It’s not worth losing such a huge chunk of dedicated single-issue voters - even if those voters are essentially nutbags - and it’s never going to happen.
Voter disenfranchisement is considerably more common than in-person impersonation voter fraud, the only kind of voter fraud that voter ID laws cover. The latter almost never happens. The former happens all the time. Voter ID laws are a bad idea that try to fix a fake problem by making it that much harder for people, mostly young, old, minorities, and the very poor, to vote. Hell, in North Carolina we just got a blatant example of how racist these laws can be - but really, the goal is just to depress turnout for the democrats. Even if this malicious intent weren’t obvious from how the laws are designed and the statements of various republican politicians, this is, once again, a case where the republican view is not evidence-based, does not comport to the facts, and does more harm than good. Pointing that out does not count as “elitism” and should not be seen as such.
Trump campaigned on a promise to open up libel laws and make it easier to sue the press, and has himself abused SLAPP lawsuits constantly, to the point where the American Bar Association commisioned an article on it… and demanded it be heavily revised so that Trump wouldn’t try to sue them! Can you name any “leftist” policy of the past decade that’s remotely as anti-free-speech? I wasn’t aware of it.
So what happens if the president is declared a vexatious litigant?
How dare you use those arrogant, elitist, multisyllabic words?
Right now, this lefty would like something to feel arrogant about, rather than continuing to feel poleaxed.
This may be so. But for instance, the available evidence overwhelmingly says that global warming is real. One party accepts that, the other rejects it. One party believes that big tax cuts for the rich will pay for themselves, the other doesn’t. Again, the evidence is all on one side. One party believes that abstinence education is the best way to prevent teen pregnancy; the other believes that sex education and access to birth control works considerably better. Again, the evidence is with the latter side. The Republican Speaker of the House just said Obamacare has made Medicare less sustainable, when the exact opposite is true: the Medicare trust fund’s life has been extended by 11 years since the passage of Obamacare. And so on and so forth.
This isn’t a #bothsidesdoit thing. One side consistently denies reality, the other is trying to address it as it exists.
I also wish I didn’t have to use “president” regarding Trump, but the voters have spoken. 
How is that? He did not even run.
How it based on lies?, what would you say are his campaign main points?, Illegal immigration, Islamic terrorism…?
Seriously? I mean, I tend to support a number of “leftist” positions generally, but this type of attitude is really annoying. You cannot seriously say you can’t understand the “right-wing” on these issue. You may not agree with the positions and in a number of cases, the positions may in fact be rationally bankrupt, but you seriously don’t know the answers to your questions? That’s like saying you don’t understand why Celine Dion is so popular because you think her music sucks.
Trump: Trump’s message resonates and makes people feel good about themselves. Clinton’s message does not resonate and does not make people feel good about themselves. Trump will, likely, achieve nothing that benefits the poorer/working classes with whom his message resonates because his policy positions, if he even really has any, are nonsense. But do you seriously believe that a majority of his supporters are that stupid and don’t know that he’s full of it? Of course they are aware; it’s been documented in newspapers and other media that they are quite aware. But if your choices are between a liar who makes you feel good for a little while, and a (relatively) truthful establishment politician that will do little to help you and doesn’t make you feel good, then the choice makes sense. Michael Moore had it right; you vote Trump because then you get to feel good for one day before you have to go back to your misery.
Climate Change: Climate change will cause temperatures and sea levels to rise to varying degrees, depending on which climate change model turns out to be most accurate. This will gradually cause human suffering, and the suffering will get worse over time. Combating climate change now will cost resources and retard economic growth, which will cause human suffering now. People try to avoid unpleasant things for as long as possible. Outright denial is an extension of this, a way to deceive oneself into avoiding unpleasant realities.
Debt Ceiling: Taking on increasing debt increases risk of future financial instability. So you should not take on increasing debt unless it is strongly justified, to minimize your future risk. And you should discourage taking on additional debt unless strongly justified, by the same token. And yes, the “right-wing” are skillful liars who squawk about controlling debt and don’t mean a damn word of it.
The arrogance, if that’s even the correct word for it, is that human beings should somehow aspire to be highly rational beings who don’t let their emotions get in the way, and that those who hold this view do not allow themselves to try to extend empathy and understanding towards others who don’t share this goal. Because of course, if you don’t share the view that logic and rationality are the greatest of virtues, there must be something wrong with you.
This was Clinton’s arrogance, in a nutshell. Objectively, she was the more qualified, between her and Trump. Why are people so stupid? “Why aren’t I 50 points ahead?” Because she, and I would argue some people here, have a fundamental misunderstanding of how human beings work. And they are too damn arrogant to correct that misunderstanding and modify their behavior in order to influence others in an effective manner. It’s easier just to call them stupid and write them off as hopeless.
Hey Cristii, get out of your bubble and go read the comments of a breitbart article.