I think the very reason for this thread shows otherwise. The OP is pretty much discounting all Republicans because he has decided that they are evil. That’s a nice easy excuse for ignoring anything Republicans have to say.
If I hear some conservative claim that all Democrats are evil then I know they won’t listen to well-reasoned arguments. IMO it’s the same for liberals.
There are a lot of good, loving Republicans that are doing their best to muddle through life doing the best they can. There are plenty in my extended family. I disagree with many of their opinions and at times I think they are misguided but they aren’t evil.
When in the last 50 years has the Republican Party not been the party of evil? Trump is a little more overt than most Republican politicians in his racism, but other than that he’s pretty much standard issue Republican.
The OP isn’t “All Republicans are evil.” It’s about the party. The party supports a lot of evil shit and obstructs a lot of worthwhile shit. It’s evil.
IMO people who support this party are short-sighted, ill-informed and frequently delusional, but not necessarily in all cases evil themselves.
Republicans are like Typhoid Mary. Maybe they’re too ignorant to know that they’re doing evil, but they still need to be marginalized and kept from ignorantly causing harm. I’m sure many of these conservatives are good people, but they’re causing unnecessary suffering because they’re too weak to face reality.
They need to not have outsized electoral power. And voting rights legislation is the first step to that.
The OP might have a different answer than this, but I see it as: all the attempts - on the democrats’ part - to reach out, have all completely coming to naught, leaving no other choice, surely, but to come to the OP’s conclusion. Aren’t the dems the ones who “cave”?
Meh, this liberal is always open to well-reasoned arguments. I still give the GOP a chance like that.
And I can only hope the more reasonable 'pubs (like yours) will eventually prevail over the Trumpists, of whom the more hardcore, unrepentantly trollish ones being, IMO, sure, still evil.
The Republicans are definitely the anti-democracy party though. I suppose that some might not view that as “evil” but as I mentioned in the weeks leading up to January 6th and in the days that followed, there were 147 GOP congressmen that tried to invalidate the votes of tens of millions of people. Taking away someone’s vote is taking away that person’s representation as a citizen - it’s effectively stripping them of citizenship. They may not get deported, but they get debased. So when Democrats complain of Republican evil, it comes from the attempts by Republicans to take away their status.
By contrast, most complaints by Republicans about Democrats - save their concerns about abortion - come from perceptions of being deprived of power. “We used to have more power, and now we have to share it with those people.” Republicans don’t even try to win debates anymore; they just try to win power.
I have literally been saying that the Republican Party is evil for years on this site. It is indisputable.
That is not the same as saying that each person who votes Republican is evil; that’s a reversal so stupid that only a Republican could say it. Republican voters do however, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, enable their politicians to enact policies that are racist, sexist, anti-science, anti-worker, anti-foreigner, pro-rich, pro-theocracy, pro-war, and antithetical to future progress. They also enable a huge babbling metastructure of talking heads who spout both the evil policies and the evil lies that fool the gullible into supporting them.
Simply speaking, no Republican should ever be voted into any office at any level. Make the Party collapse. If that results in two or more smaller splinter parties, so be it. That gives them fewer chances to win office.
The current Party is irredeemable. They have no policies that can be supported. They don’t even try to put forth a set of policies any more, other than increased abortion, voter suppression, and tax cuts. They have no principles other than hypocrisy and denying others rights. They do not have a moderate wing, just shades of extremism.
No argument about both sides are the same, both do it, both are corrupt, both are incompetent, can stand up to a second’s scrutiny. The Democrats have policies, contain factions from moderate to extreme, believe in science and rationality, include minorities of all descriptions, and, most importantly, don’t try to overthrow legitimate elections by guile, force, and lies told by the actual President of the United States.
There is no going back. The right owns Trump and everything he did to destroy the norms and values of our country. He is the logical conclusion of 50 years of the Republican Party since Nixon. Unless and until the Party utterly denounces him and everything he touched they are poison. Since they show no signs of changing their thrall to Trump, they must be cast out of decent society.
If I point at someone robbing a bank and yell “Bank robber!!”, then he points at me and yells “Bank robber!!”, does that prove we are both bank robbers, or that neither of us are bank robbers?
This might be topic drift, but yesterday I read about how the German government has put AfD under surveillance. Predictably, this has led to complaints and grievances from AfD that they’re being unfairly targeted for censorship and I immediately thought that this is exactly the defense that Republicans would use/will use as either the entire party of segments of the party increasingly splinters off into the right wing political blackhole.
Precisely. There are innumerable books, articles, podcasts etc. from liberals, with the goal of trying to understand where conservatives are coming from, how can we reach out to them to address their concerns, and efforts to get liberals and conservatives in room together to talk it out. I have yet to see a single example of such efforts by conservatives to understand where liberals come from and start a dialogue.
I’m sure Fox News runs interviews with hipsters in Brooklyn all the time, trying to understand their point of view. I mean, in the name of fairness and balance, it would only make sense.
Now, let me go read the thousandth op-ed about how we have to listen to “real Americans” in their small town diners.
Nonsense. Both sides are not equal. The Democrats are not trying to overthrow the government. The Democrats are not appealing to racists (black or white). The Democrats are not locking children up in detention centers. The Democrats are not torturing people (remember when Bush was president and we thought torture was the worst thing a Republican would ever do?) The Democrats are not denying science.
We were at the Vet’s yesterday and this guy kept ranting about Biden. As we were leaving he told us he’d say “God bless” but Biden wouldn’t let him say it. I think he made it up on the spot, but I got to thinking people who believe lies more than likely already agree with it in the first place. It’s a mind set that’s hard to change. The GOP, though, I keep seeing parallels here with Germany in the thirties like scapegoats: Hitler, the Jews, GOP, Liberals/Dems. A strong leader who is vindictive but good at oratory: Hitler, Trump. It’s not hard to think of more. Who’s more evil?
The problem is that there are very few of those left. Let’s say the number of voters from left to right is plotted on an axis, with the far left at 0, the far right at 100, and the middle at 50. On the left, the bulk of the Democratic Party voters, maybe around 2/3 of Democrats, would fall somewhere between 25 and 50. On the right, my guess is that something like 5% of Republicans would fall between 50 and 75, with something like 90% of Republicans being between 90 and 100. That’s the impression I get from the current political discourse.
A few radicals on the far left were doing those things, but LBJ didn’t support them. While he had his flaws, mainstream liberal policy at the time, supported by LBJ, included legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (which the current SCOTUS is set to make toothless), and the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. These were great achievements which made and continue to make better the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans. Yes, he screwed up Vietnam, but on balance LBJ is probably in the top 10 of presidents, maybe even in the top 5 after Washington, Lincoln, and FDR.
Sometimes I hate this enlightened centrist position more than I hate the active evil of the Trumpist movement. You think you’re offering some sort of wise outsider perspective that we can’t see, but the reality is that you’re clinging to a dogmatic position that both sides are the same no matter how much it ignores reality because it makes you feel that you’re insightful and above it all and that things are operating within the range of normal.
Let’s use this logic with another example. Let’s say 30% of our society was flat-Earthers. Genuinely believed that the Earth was flat, and everything that contradicts them is this huge conspiracy, and that everyone who believes the Earth is round is either evil and in on the conspiracy or stupid and gullible and fell for their propaganda.
Now, you have news/propaganda stations feeding into this false earth belief, and message boards where flat Earthers all talk about how stupid and gullible the round Earthers are.
Then on a message board - say, just like this one - someone makes a post ranting about how stupid flat Earthers are, and how much allowing them to spread their beliefs is damaging society by making people question the very idea of the truth, of a shared reality we all live in.
Here’s what you’d say in that thread: “Oh come on guys. People who believe the earth are flat aren’t stupid, they just have a different idea about the topic than you do that’s just as valid. You say they’re stupid but if you go over to a flat earther board, they’d have a thread like this saying you’re stupid too! Both sides think the other one is stupid and wrong and you can’t even see that that makes you both the same!”
Here’s the problem with your logic. Reality matters. The Earth IS round. The flat earthers and the round earthers aren’t equally valid, equally smart, equally dedicated to the truth.
And the same thing happens here. Non-Trumpists are far more attached to reality than Trumpists. They’re far more motivated by creating the best outcome for society rather than just trying to spite their enemies. They have a much greater dedication to seeing the truth rather than being sucked into every conspiracy theory and just deciding to reshape reality in however they want to see it. They are far more empathetic to their fellow man and want to create a functional and fair society.
Your position is dogmatic. You essentially are immune to reality. For instance, you would’ve been making this same argument 10 years ago, right? And in the last 10 years, the Republicans have absoutely changed and gone off the deep end. So how has your argument changed in the last 10 years? It hasn’t. You’re still giving us the same “republicans are just as interested in being good-faith improvers of society as you are, they just have a different perspective” logic even after witnessing them devolve into a far more hateful, less empathetic, less sane group right before your eyes. If they can change that much, and yet your position that they are just as good and valid as their opponents remains the same, then your position cannot change. It cannot adapt to, or acknowledge, reality.
If the Trumpists got 10 times worse, and just started murdering every non-Trumpist they saw, you’d still be talking about how both sides are the same and we just can’t see it. And if they created a superweapon that could destroy the entire Earth and they were just about to press the button because they were so motivated by hatred and spite of the other that they were willing to destroy the entire Earth just to kill people they hated, up until the second they pushed the button you’d be telling us how they’re good people who have opinions just as valid as ours and they think about us the same way we think about them and in no way are we superior and we’re all naive because we can’t see that… blam, Earth explodes
