it happens all the time. And worse. Not by you, obviously, but it’s not hard to find. I listen to right wing radio a bit, and the things said about people like me and what we want to do to “destroy America” would curl your hair.
You make the gish gallop, then object to each claim being rebutted? 
If you have multiple untrue claims in a paragraph, then how else is one to respond to them?
I could write a paragraph to rebut each of your sentences that makes an untrue claim, I could write a whole essay on how very wrong you are. But those points have already been made, and that would be a waste of my time, which is, of course, the entire point of that “debate” tactic.
In the end, I am not pointing out the wrongness of your claims for your benefit, you obviously have no interest in being corrected in them. I am doing so for the benefit of others. You are welcome to leave my rebuttals unanswered, and you can use as your claim that you are unable to understand simple sentences as your excuse.
Yeah, you’ve kind of missed the point. Several people from this message board disagreed with being labelled as “leftist” and went so far as to personally object to it and discuss it in a thread on derogatory political labels. I’m pretty sure if I tried to argue them into accepting a piece of conservative wisdom while calling them leftists, they’d reject my argument without any consideration, presuming that someone who called them a leftist wasn’t worth listening to. When a “leftist” labels a conservative or a Trump supporter as a “fascist”, do you really expect them to continue listening to the issue being discussed once they’ve received the negative label?
Actually, I wouldn’t. I don’t mind being a leftist. However in Holland it’s not as pejorative as it might be in the US. If you were to call me a fascist you’d have to elaborate. I’d be interested in your reasoning.
So just personalise what you’re saying. If someone told you that your political opinions were based on you being “frightened or too callous or too stupid or too powerless or all of the above to do decent things”, would you accept that as objective criticism and change your opinion? Or would it provoke an emotional response against the people who were giving you such a harsh criticism? Would you switch sides to the person giving such a belittling assessment of your beliefs based on the merits of their ideas, or would your entirely human response be to react to the insult first? My argument is that liberals who are denigrating Trump supporters as you have done are increasing the partisan divide in America, and are a reason for Trump supporters holding to their support. I’m open to alternate theories, but the idea that Trump supporters are simply despicable and telling them that they’re despicable should change their minds doesn’t seem like a well-crafted argument meant to convince someone who disagrees with you.
You’re omitting the most important part:
And that’s my point. I’m talking about the fact that everybody gets swept up in the forces you seem to have on your hands right now. No one is immune to that. Like I said in my post, we Dutch are still dealing with the fallout of that. Not to mention our colonial history, which is still an issue with us as well. I don’t think calling anyone a fascist would help, but perhaps pointing out the similarities between what has happened on Jan 6th to other actions by other totalitarian groups might. Not to mention the similarities in thought processes.
Tone is not always the most important thing. They don’t seem to be responding to appeasing either.
A lot of the counter arguments here are basically that everyone else does it (insulting the other side), so I’m gonna. There’s nothing more illogical than mob thinking. That goes for the rioters also. If they thought breaking into the legislature and disrupting Congress was going to get the country on their side…think again. They’ll spend the next few years trying to whip up support among their fellow inmates.
I’ve been debating whether or not to post this, but here goes.
Yes, I’m a liberal. I admit that I don’t have a large number of conservative friends, but of those, several of them, while still identifying as conservative, have been appalled by Trump throughout his presidency, and no longer identify as Republicans.
No, I don’t think that Republicans/conservatives are necessarily stupid – I have no doubt that some are, but then, there are stupid liberals, too. What I do think is true is that many conservatives now suffer from a reduced ability to think critically. What I see (please note that none of the below are blanket statements about all Republicans or all conservatives):
- A belief that the Democrats are all actually socialists, and that their ultimate goal is the destruction of the United States as we know it today, into an immoral, mind-controlled state (and maybe a puppet state of China)
- A belief that Democrats hate Christians, and want to ban religion in the U.S. entirely
- A belief that Democrats want to destroy the Second Amendment, and “grab your guns”
- A belief that Democrats want to not only keep abortion legal, but to make it acceptable for women to freely have late-term abortions (even up until the moment of birth) because they “feel like it”
- A belief that Democrats want to completely take away any choice in healthcare, and nationalize the healthcare system
- A belief that Blacks are overreacting about issues with the police, and that, if a Black person runs into an issue with the police, it’s because said Black person wasn’t behaving correctly
- A belief that public assistance is fundamentally bad, because all it does is pay people for being lazy
- A belief that COVID-19 is either completely a hoax, or isn’t really all that bad; that the death totals are lies, and that mitigation strategies, like wearing masks and closing restaurants and bars, are nothing more than excuses to limit their freedom
- A belief that climate change is either a hoax entirely, or that it is a “natural cycle” that our planet goes through (and, thus, not caused by human activity), and that measures to limit climate change are a conspiracy against our economy
- A belief that equality for all Americans, especially for those with whom they don’t identify (Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, gays, etc.) is, de facto, a lessening of their own rights as white, straight, and nominally Christian
- A belief that any reports of Trump’s lies, untruths, and potentially criminal behavior, are all fabrications, made up by the “lamestream media” to discredit him, tear him down, and stop him from preserving “their” America
- And, now, a belief that the election was rigged, that Trump actually not only won, but won in a landslide, and that this was done via a massive amount of vote fraud
The reason for all of these beliefs is that many of them have become convinced that they can only trust certain sources of information (Trump himself, Fox News, OANN, etc.), that all other news sources are “fake news,” and any evidence to the contrary about any of the points above is a lie, and can be outright rejected without examination.
As I said at the start, I don’t think that conservatives are necessarily stupid. But, as their information about America, and issues, has been coming primarily, if not solely, from their own echo chamber for decades, it’s taken them down a dark path, and made many of them susceptible to conspiracy theories, and led them to dehumanize many of their fellow Americans, whom they’ve become convinced are “the enemy.”
Too late to edit – that should have read, “And, now, a belief that the election was rigged, that Trump actually not only won, but won in a landslide, and that Biden’s victory was only possible via a massive amount of vote fraud”
Well put – though I’d add another bullet point before your current last two:
- A belief, no matter how often the Republicans may have held power, that even the mainstream conservative movement “establishment” leaders are not doing enough to undo any of this.
I think it’s more that until Trump, there hadn’t been an actual, honest-to-God declaration that normal, conventional news sources were “Fake News”. Biased left, definitely. But not actually false. The general narrative was that they were taking a leftward bias on the same set of facts and events that say… Fox was taking a rightward bias.
But Trump came out and literally said that anything but the approved right-wing sites- Fox, OANN, Newsmax, et al. were broadcasting/printing falsehoods for political reasons. That’s the point when we went from a collective set of events and facts with different interpretations and opinions about them, to having literally two competing sets of “facts” and events based on where on the political spectrum you sit.
And a lot of people seem to have swallowed the hook on that- you see one side saying there’s no credible evidence of any meaningful amount of election fraud, and you have the other trumpeting that election fraud was going to happen months before the actual election, and then after the elections, claiming (without evidence) that it did happen, and that it’s being suppressed by the big media.
Thing is, even the right-wing sites can’t produce any evidence. It’s just all trumpeting what Trump and his cronies are saying, and relying on the idea that if you say something enough times, people will start to believe it.
The big problem is that if someone has drunk that Flavor-aid, then you can’t really change their mind- they think you’re deluded by the left-wing media, or that your getting your facts from sketchy sources.
Well put. I think there are very few leftists/liberals, if any, who would argue that most conservatives are inherently stupid or evil by their very nature. What liberals are calling out as stupid and evil in the mindset of so many conservatives is the delusional and fearful worldview they have absorbed by being continually fed a torrent of outright massive lies by conservative media and politicians.
Yes, if you constantly listen to fellow conservatives repeating utter bullshit—not only grossly misrepresenting liberal ideology but flat-out denying demonstrable facts (“the election was stolen”, “COVID is a hoax”, “climate change is a hoax”, “COVID will just go away in the summertime”, “mask wearing is a government plot to take away our freedom”, “COVID vaccines are a government plot to inject people with mind-controlling nanochips”, etc., etc., etc.)—and end up believing it, that doesn’t necessarily make you a stupid or evil person at heart. But it will tend to make your political actions and opinions effectively indistinguishable from those of a stupid or evil person.
In the long run, liberals would not be doing conservatives any favors by trying to pretend that’s not true in order to protect conservatives’ self-esteem. If you adopt a political mindset that is ultimately based on lies appealing to irrational fears, your opinions and behavior are going to come across as stupid.
Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but remember, facts don’t care about your feelings.
Apropos of nothing, I observe that you ignored my rational, logical argument in direct response to your own post — to wit, if a group of people is sufficiently angry at having been mistreated, then what they do in reaction to that mistreatment is, quote, “what you get” — asking whether the centuries of abuse and oppression suffered by Black Americans would justify their violent revolution en masse and you would cheerfully defend it as “what white people get.”
It’s funny. Obama talked about Republicans “clinging to their guns and Bibles” and lots of Republican voters lost their collective shit about it…but he was right.
Hillary Clinton said that a significant percentage of Trump supporters were racist, sexist, homophobic etc, and lots of Trump supporters lost their collective shit about it…but she was right.
So apparently the problem is that the right get upset at anyone telling them uncomfortable truths instead of comforting lies. They still call Obama “divisive on race” for calling out very real racism, but never seem to blame the actual racists for anything. When Hillary Clinton told coal miners that their jobs weren’t coming back and Trump told them that all he needed to do to bring back jobs was block immigrants and cut regulations, they chose Trump (who then cut safety and environmental regulations and blocked immigrants, which didn’t bring back any jobs but did increase the number of miners killed in industrial accidents and the amount of mining runoff in the water supply).
In short, blaming liberals for “being mean” is just another in a long list of examples of the right blaming the left for the right’s failings. But the willingness to embrace comforting lies over uncomfortable truths is one of the big reasons Trump is so popular.
Modnote: In the future, you might want to make it a little clearer that you’re calling those gullible enough to believe trump “shit for brains” and not another poster.
99% of people don’t like being told unpleasant truths about themselves. If you walked up to one of the arsonists in the rioting in Minneapolis last year and said, “You’re an arsonist,” you’d probably get punched in the face, even though your statement would be totally correct.
Obama assumed all Republicans love guns and bibles. Hillary assumed that ‘half’ of Trump supporters were racist, sexist, etc. You assume that coal miners chose Trump. Lots of assumptions, all wrong. They were talking about fringe elements and you are assuming you know how coal miners voted. The people who broke into the capitol building were fringe radicals. If you believe the bulk of republicans all wanted to see that happen, you’re delusional. The liberal fringe have been rioting in Portland for months. Should we assume that all liberals approve? Lumping people into categories because of the actions of a few is ridiculous. Almost nobody I know approves of Trump disputing the election results, and I think you’d find that most republicans also do not.
I don’t believe this has been shown to be true. In fact the opposite has: Poll: Only Quarter Of Republicans Accept 2020 Election Results : NPR.
We’ve all seen how inaccurate the polls were regarding the presidential election (Biden will win a landslide by double digits). NPR has been a liberal tool for a number of years now. Need I say more?
Do you need to say more? Not really, but keep on trucking.