I’m not sure I believe @Peaceoftheaction666’s claim to be female; that kind of violent spew is more often emitted by substance abusers with a Y chromosome, in my experience.
Agreed. Though I know a few, rather Christian fundamentalist, females for whom that projectile vomitting of abuse comes quite naturally when talk of teh libruls comes up.
I’m not sure I believe @Peaceoftheaction666’s claim to be female; that kind of violent spew is more often emitted by substance abusers with a Y chromosome, in my experience.
Agreed. Though I know a few, rather Christian fundamentalist, females for whom that projectile vomitting of abuse comes quite naturally when talk of teh libruls comes up.
Funnily enough, I found myself wondering that, too. And it did occur to me that the rants sounded a little more like the kind of thing I'd heard from men, with various problems or issues with anger etc. But the 'gentle' sex are, or course, occasionally given to super-aggressive verbal violence! And are as bad offenders in misogyny, when they get going.
For that matter, the writer sounds confused anyway. They clearly despise women in clerical authority for their alleged failure to uphold the Christian faith; but the writer's own behaviour on this thread is not particularly in the authentic scriptural tradition of how good and godly women should behave!
The writer just sounds like a wind-up merchant. And not a particularly skilful one either.
A wind-up merchant, indeed - which may, I guess, be one of the reasons for his/her planking.
As I may have said before, being classed as pro-Wimmin, some sort of Left-wing Loonie/Librul, Teh-Gayz-loving Pinko etc. etc., simply convinces me that I'm Wright (if Wromantic), rather than Repulsive (and Rong*).
And My Old Ma would be proud of me...
(*apologies to Messrs. Sellars and Yeatman for inverting their definition...)
Then again, Trump is hardly a Republican. I believe he was a Democrat until he got presidential ambitions, whereupon it was pointed out that the Democrat vote wouldn't turn out for him, but the Republicans just might.
Donald Trump is a racist, sexist greedmonster. In what way isn't he a Republican?
Gay marriage only became a campaign issue for gay people due to the HIV/AIDS crisis and people not being able to see their dying partners in hospital. Prior to that, it wasn't a priority for gay people at all and gay people weren't interested in getting married.
You do realize absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, right?
Then again, Trump is hardly a Republican. I believe he was a Democrat until he got presidential ambitions, whereupon it was pointed out that the Democrat vote wouldn't turn out for him, but the Republicans just might.
Donald Trump is a racist, sexist greedmonster. In what way isn't he a Republican?
Oh fuck this.
It's bad enough I have to watch my lifelong party behaving like assholes; must you act as if there never was anything good about it at all, and never could possibly be any fucking redemption for it at all, regardless of what anybody does?
I'll tell you, it's not the way to win people to your side.
Or do you abandon your own personal lifelong associations without a fight, the minute they make flaming assholes of themselves?
Because IMHO that is the act of a rat. One that leaves a sinking ship without attempting to do anything to help.
It's also pretty ratty to kick the minority of a party who are actually trying to de-asshole the place.
As long as I've been paying attention to US politics (Reagan onwards) it seems to me that the achievements of Republican presidents have been: ending the Cold War, starting a whole lot of other ones, building up massive debts, tax cuts for the rich, blunt refusal to rein in racism and sexism in the public sphere, and environmental degradation. Perhaps I've just missed all of the good stuff.
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
edited May 2019
Lamb Chopped
From my perspective, the marriage between the GOP and the white evangelical right in the US has actually damaged both. I hope both can be repaired, certainly in the area of social justice (and away from the poisons of privatised and prosperity gospels) and I know there are many honourable exceptions, but it looks like a long job to me.
You may have already read it, but in case your haven't I recommend "God's Politics" by Jim Wallis. 'Why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn't get it'. Jim is a social radical who is also quite conservative on issues of personal morality. Not all the good nor all the bad is to found in one box. It seems wise to me to see the real enemy, which is indifference in practice to the poor and marginalised (Matt 25).
There certainly are honest and righteous republicans. I know a few. But the direction of travel has been clear for some time now and whilst Trump and his acolytes have clearly captured the party, the GOP has been cultivating something like Trumpism for 3 decades at least.
It's bad enough I have to watch my lifelong party behaving like assholes; must you act as if there never was anything good about it at all, and never could possibly be any fucking redemption for it at all, regardless of what anybody does?
In addition to what Barnabas62 and Doc Tor posted above; the thing Republicans of your type have to face is that Trump has managed to have relatively high approval ratings among Republican voters.
Clearly a large number of them were either happy with Trumps policies overall, or were willing to compromise on the things they didn't like for the things they did (which via opinion polls seem to come down to things like tax cuts).
FWIW I agree with Barnabas62, in that the alliance between Republicans and evangelicals has ultimately damaged both (and to my mind being able to frame issues politically has also allowed evangelicals to avoid having to confront things like structural racism in their midst).
It's bad enough I have to watch my lifelong party behaving like assholes; must you act as if there never was anything good about it at all, and never could possibly be any fucking redemption for it at all, regardless of what anybody does?
Why don't you make a fucking case for it then? What's your best talking point for the past good in the Republican party?
I'll tell you, it's not the way to win people to your side.
Or do you abandon your own personal lifelong associations without a fight, the minute they make flaming assholes of themselves?
I would have thought two years (at least) would be more than enough to decide to stop supporting the party of flaming assholes.
Because IMHO that is the act of a rat. One that leaves a sinking ship without attempting to do anything to help.
But your sinking ship is now largely composed of flaming assholes. Perhaps it's time to seriously consider a new ship, rodent-based metaphors notwithstanding.
And I think we need to restrict any claims for "good" Republicans to after the "southern strategy" aka "let's pander to white racists who are pissed off about school integration". Lincoln doesn't count.
Barnabas62, of course you're right. DaveW, I have said previously that my main reason for remaining in the party at this point is to help fuck up the primary for Trump. Or do you want him to sail to an uncontested renomination? Yes, I know, the efforts of people like me are probably doomed. But we're going to try. Because the alternative is smoother sailing for Trump, and I will do my possible to avoid that shit.
There's also this: Do you really WANT a one-party system in the U.S.? Because if the Republican Party destroys itself (and it's damned close to having done so, if not over the line already), that's effectively what we'll have. None of the smaller parties are big enough to step up yet. And a de facto one-party system here would be a disaster.
You talk as if the Democrats are somehow insulated from the moral disaster that has overtaken the Republicans. That's bullshit. Twenty years ago it was the Democrats who were behaving disgracefully. Not because they are intrinsically evil, but because they are intrinsically human, and humans are very often assholes.
That the Democrats are temporarily in a position to gloat, morally speaking, does not mean they would be wise to do so. The wheel turns quickly enough, and sometimes unexpectedly. Better to truly deserve and maintain the high ground by supporting people of good will, even among the Republicans, as together we try to do what is right and fair for the country and the world.
Or you can go on doing your little gloaty victory dance instead of behaving like a mature adult. Your choice.
You had the opportunity to defend the Republican record. You couldn't because you can't. I have no doubt that you're a lovely person in real life, but in this, you've been backing the wrong horse.
There's also this: Do you really WANT a one-party system in the U.S.? Because if the Republican Party destroys itself (and it's damned close to having done so, if not over the line already)
Despite the hyperbole from a few Republican never-trumpers, I don't see the path by which the Republican Party 'destroys itself' -- afaict the Party is in rude health, that some people either stay or leave is neither here nor there.
You had an argument until you said that 20 years ago the Dems were arseholes. That's just palpable nonsense. In 1999, Clinton had issues but it was the same people attacking him who are defending Trump...
Post civil war, I'll give you but I'm not sure that's relevant.
As I said, my sympathy for the GOP is very much limited by the fact that they have danced with the devil for decades.
I'd be interested to see a list of the good things championed by the Republican party in the last 60 years.
Diplomatic relations with China?
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
edited May 2019
Many Republicans behaved responsibly in the Watergate investigations. If I remember right, Bob Woodward was a Republican.
But I think the penchant for adversarial politics makes it difficult to concede that your political opponents might have a point. I often wonder about behind closed doors conversations between GOP and Democrats. Cross party friendships used to be quite common. Perhaps there still are some?
It is only recently that conservative parties have championed change, and that is part of the reason that in many WEIRD countries conservative parties have done a huge amount of damage. Liberal and labour parties have been complicit in this, as they too have promulgated economic policies that have significantly widened the economic gap between those who have a shitload, and those who have comparatively less.
I'm not sure if the use of WEIRD to mean Western Educated Industrialised Rich and Democratic is widespread. I've only noticed Martin use it. It's brilliant.
So its difficult to come up with specific Republican achievements prior to its adoption of bastard economics under Reagan if the policy programme was 'steady as she goes'. They have one achievement: It was steady and it went.
That said, I think Jon Stewart once told me through the television that the Nixon Administration introduced Affirmative Action into the Federal Public Service.
Donald Trump is a racist, sexist greedmonster. In what way isn't he a Republican?
Oh fuck this.
It's bad enough I have to watch my lifelong party behaving like assholes; must you act as if there never was anything good about it at all, and never could possibly be any fucking redemption for it at all, regardless of what anybody does?
So turn back the clock the halcyon days of respectable statesmen like Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, and Jesse Helms? Those simpler times when the intellectual giants of the conservative movement were Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly? One of the reasons that the American conservative movement (and the Republican party which is its primary political vehicle) is such a wretched hive of scum and villainy is that no one is ever held accountable for past wrongs. There's just the pretense that there was some bright, glorious Republican past and inevitable progress towards an even more bright and glorious conservative future, most of which serves as a screen to obscure the sordid and corrupt present.
I'll tell you, it's not the way to win people to your side.
Or do you abandon your own personal lifelong associations without a fight, the minute they make flaming assholes of themselves?
Because IMHO that is the act of a rat. One that leaves a sinking ship without attempting to do anything to help.
It's also pretty ratty to kick the minority of a party who are actually trying to de-asshole the place.
If child stealing, massive corruption, and a large tolerance for racism isn't enough for you to waver in your support of the Republican party I'm not sure there's anything they could do to lose you. I'm also not convinced that ignoring those things or pretending that they're okay is a very effective way to "win people to your side" either.
There's also this: Do you really WANT a one-party system in the U.S.? Because if the Republican Party destroys itself (and it's damned close to having done so, if not over the line already), that's effectively what we'll have. None of the smaller parties are big enough to step up yet. And a de facto one-party system here would be a disaster.
Unlikely in the long run. A winner-take-all electoral system like the United States has naturally tends towards exactly to major political parties, no more and no less. A historical example would be the Whig Party (American edition). In 1852 it was one of the two major American political parties of the second party system. By the 1856 presidential election they had essentially collapsed. By 1860 the northern wing of what had been the Whig Party (American edition) reformulated itself into what we now know as the Republican Party and managed to win the presidency.
In short, any collapse of the Republican Party as it exists now would likely lead to the reformulation of some kind of conservative political party after a couple of election cycles. It might even be an opportunity to purge some of the serial bad actors from the movement, something the GOP seems to have particular difficulties with.
That the Democrats are temporarily in a position to gloat, morally speaking, does not mean they would be wise to do so. The wheel turns quickly enough, and sometimes unexpectedly. Better to truly deserve and maintain the high ground by supporting people of good will, even among the Republicans, as together we try to do what is right and fair for the country and the world.
I'm not sure where the line is between "gloating" and "pointing out significant wrongs and injustices, ascribing blame, and suggesting remedies".
You had the opportunity to defend the Republican record. You couldn't because you can't. I have no doubt that you're a lovely person in real life, but in this, you've been backing the wrong horse.
What in the hell is "but her emails" in this context? My point was that humans are humans. I voted for Clinton, don't give me this crap.
I'd be interested to see a list of the good things championed by the Republican party in the last 60 years.
Diplomatic relations with China?
I'm not sure this counts, given that Republican red-baiting was one of the main reasons the U.S. didn't have diplomatic relations with mainland China before the 1970s. In other words American presidents prior to Nixon were unwilling to normalize relations with China for fear of being red-baited by people like . . . Richard Nixon.
Drat. The Ship just logged me out the way it does every two weeks RIGHT in the middle of a long post. I'm summarizing then, because I have to get back to work.
1. I do not support the current evil policies of the Republican Party. (There are non-evil policies, though Trump has done an incredible job of completely u-turning them to the point where you'd think we never believed in fiscal responsibility, for example.) I am not going to defend them to you either, because I feel as you do. Can you not understand a strategic choice to remain for now?
2. I neither send money, nor campaign for, nor vote for Republican candidates who support Trump or his evil policies, or who put forward evil policies of their own. I voted Democrat in the last couple of elections.
3. I DO my damndest to change the minds of my representatives and my fellow voters, urging them to act ethically and morally.
4. I believe the only chance I have of being heard at all (and it's a slim one) is because I'm still registered Republican and my voice is therefore a Republican voice telling them to stop being evil. The minute I de-register, do you think they'll give a crap?
5. I believe that it would very, very helpful of you all if you'd stop jumping all over the people like me, who are your close kin ethically, and making our lives that much harder as we try to effect change from the inside. We do exist. Truly. And I'm damned tired of catching shit from you, and then catching it from my Trumpista relatives. It's like being in no man's land between two armies. And I'm not the only one.
There are non-evil policies, though Trump has done an incredible job of completely u-turning them to the point where you'd think we never believed in fiscal responsibility, for example.
The Republican Party never did believe in fiscal responsibility, at least not during the last four or so decades. What they believed in was fiscal austerity during Democratic presidencies and spending like drunken sailors during Republican administrations. The pattern is so obvious, and also independent of whatever was going on in the American economy at the time. Still, the amazing durability of this piece of political propaganda is very impressive.
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
I'd be interested to see a list of the good things championed by the Republican party in the last 60 years.
Diplomatic relations with China?
I'm not sure this counts, given that Republican red-baiting was one of the main reasons the U.S. didn't have diplomatic relations with mainland China before the 1970s. In other words American presidents prior to Nixon were unwilling to normalize relations with China for fear of being red-baited by people like . . . Richard Nixon.
The rapprochement was part of the strategy for exiting Vietnam and did involve Kissinger and Nixon playing "good guy mad guy" tactics. Kissinger was able to present the case; deal with me or God knows what Nixon will do. I think it worked. And from accounts at the time, Nixon was both conscious of and approved of the tactic.
@Lamb Chopped - that's the second chance you've had to defend actual Republican policies and their record in government. And all you've come back with is "I am a registered Republican who doesn't support the evil things, don't dogpile me".
But what good Republican policies were there to support in the first place?
There's also this: Do you really WANT a one-party system in the U.S.? Because if the Republican Party destroys itself (and it's damned close to having done so, if not over the line already), that's effectively what we'll have. None of the smaller parties are big enough to step up yet. And a de facto one-party system here would be a disaster.
In my wildest dreams, the Republicans will implode, allowing the Socialists and the Greens to break off from the Democrat machine and have a multiple-party system, with the Dems anchoring the conservative right. I'm up in MN, and the ONLY reason we don't vote for the leftists is that they will split the Dem vote and give it to the more evil party.
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
Croesos is spot on about fiscal responsibility BTW. And what chance fiscal responsibility with Trump at the helm anyway?
If growing an economy is an achievement, perhaps some Republican administrations might be able to claim that? Trouble is, they are so hands-off nowadays.
I recognise the enormity of the question. Perhaps one for Purg?
I am more in the middle of the ,road politically. Republicans have gone far right and Democrats gravitate further left. This leaves people like me with few choices. I will vote for the Democratic candidate in 2020 as I don’t want 4 more years of Trump. As both parties play to their extreme bases there is room for a moderate 3rd party one can dream...
Isn't it cute how 'mericans think The Democratic party is left wing...
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
Croesos
Sure. Trump just makes an already bad fiscal track record even worse. You don't have to look all that closely to see the kow tow to powerful special interests. The national interest comes a bad second at best.
Lamb Chopped, you have my sympathies. My father, departed this life 35 years ago, was a life-long Republican who cast his final Presidential vote for Ronald Reagan. I remembered Dad often during the election campaign of 2016. In March of 2016, Dad’s usually benign mien would have frozen while watching the infamous debate in which size came to matter. He’d have switched the TV off after the first 10 minutes and avoided further debates.
Dad lived and died an old-school gentleman. Tall and dignified, he treated everyone courteously. He honored his promises, even at personal cost; a gentleman keeps his word. If Dad suffered pain or misfortune, you’d never hear that from him. When faced with these, a gentleman may opt for a stiff upper lip or a stiff drink, but he never complains. Dad held his tongue if someone treated him badly; a gentleman speaks no ill of others. Dad’s personal and professional successes also went unremarked; a gentleman does not crow, gloat or boast.
A gentleman recognizes that advantages of birth and family, if any, arrive unearned and are therefore nothing to take pride in. Health, family wealth and status, innate abilities – these are matters of chance; a gentleman may honorably enjoy these, but never use them to take advantage of others. Adversity like ill health, poverty, or disrespect from others requires a gentleman to hold up his head and make the best of his situation.
Of course, even gentlemen make mistakes. A gentleman promptly acknowledges his errors and endeavors to correct them or make amends.
With values like these, what would Dad have done on Election Day of 2016? I only know he would never have voted for Donald Trump.
Were there drawbacks to Dad’s code? Absolutely: it was exclusive, elitist, sexist, and racist. He genuinely believed that women should be protected and sheltered; he genuinely believed that "Negroes" (the terminology of the 50s and 60s) were somehow "not ready" for full citizenhood, and nothing I could say would sway him. Perhaps that’s why I became a life-long Democrat. Nevertheless, I respected and admired my father, the more so as, after his death, I became aware of sufferings he’d endured in silence and unacknowledged accomplishments achieved in silence.
Today, the party which once claimed my father’s political allegiance lies in ruins. I believe in and support a two-party system – or at least I used to. A two-party system, however, needs two fully-operational parties to work. We currently have none.
The Democrats are hobbled by more than the loss of the 2016 election, stunning as that defeat was. They played dirty tricks on one of their own candidates during that campaign. They've dragged their feet responding to the Demander-in-Chief. They're fragmenting at an alarming rate: twenty candidates and counting, with stances all over the map. And to me, most of them sound like cut-and-paste clips from the Ghost of Campaigns Past.
Democrats running for president this time around have embraced the socialist label. This would have been the kiss of death not so long ago. So for the U.S. it is a definite move left.
Isn't it cute how 'mericans think The Democratic party is left wing...
Well, one party is represented by the aforementioned corrupt authoritarian racist and sexist greedmonster, Donald Trump, while the other is the party of notorious radical firebrands like . . . [ checks notes ] . . . Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. You can see why such extremism on both sides is offputting to so many. [ This is where the eyerolling emoji is truly missed ]
I used to think that reflexively dismissing both sides as always and eternally equally extreme and yourself therefore as morally superior to everyone else who sullied themselves by caring about things was just a harmless bit of intellectually incurious wankery, but I've come to see it as a key part of conservative dominance in American political media. American conservatives seem to have realized that if both sides are always axiomatically equally bad, then they would never be held accountable for any of their actions.
And very often the "sensible centrist" policies allegedly advocated by those decrying "both sides" for being too extreme to embrace were actually fully endorsed by Democrats. David Brooks is probably the apotheosis of this genre, as illustrated in this Jonathan Chait article from mid-November 2016:
But even if you accept this very strange notion of the political alignment in Trump’s Washington, it raises a question Brooks is not prepared to answer. If his objection on the left lies with the “Sanders socialism,” then isn’t there an appealing centrist lying to the right of that? A moderate who favors market-oriented solutions that bring together business and labor, who welcomes empiricism, and is willing to compromise? A politician who has led the Democratic Party for the last eight years and, in fact, is still the sitting president of the United States right now?
One might think so. But Brooks spent the last eight years defining the center as something Obama was not. It didn’t matter that Obama supported a health-care plan first devised by Mitt Romney, or a cap-and-trade plan endorsed by John McCain. Brooks nestled himself into the territory between Obama and the angry, no-compromise Republicans who were shutting down government and boycotting all negotiations with the president. If Obama endorsed the policies Brooks preferred, he would simply pretend that Obama had not proposed them. Indeed, one of the most common genres of David Brooks column was a sad lament that neither party would endorse policies that in fact Obama had explicitly and publicly called for.
If Obama offered a deal to raise taxes through tax reform while reducing entitlements, Brooks would write a sad column about how nobody was willing to raise taxes through tax reform while reducing entitlements. If Obama favored education reform, an infrastructure bank, and more high-skill immigration, Brooks would write a sad column about how nobody favored those things. When Obama supported market-oriented health-care reform, Brooks opposed it as an extravagant government takeover. Then later he wrote a sad column about how “we’d have had a very different debate if we knew the law was going to be a discrete government effort to subsidize health care for more poor people” rather than “an extravagant government grab to take over the nation’s health-care system.”
The effect of all this commentary was not to empower the moderate ideas Brooks favored, but to disempower them. Brooks was emblematic of the way the entire bipartisan centrist industry conducted itself throughout the Obama years. It was neither possible for Obama to co-opt the center, nor for Republicans to abandon it, because official centrists would simply relocate themselves to the midpoint of wherever the parties happened to stand. The well-documented reality that the parties were undergoing asymmetric polarization was one they refused to accept, because their jobs was to be bipartisan, and it is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon not understanding it.
Brooks' most recent act of chutzpah was to pen a column about how much he missed Barack Obama.
You talk as if the Democrats are somehow insulated from the moral disaster that has overtaken the Republicans. That's bullshit. Twenty years ago it was the Democrats who were behaving disgracefully. Not because they are intrinsically evil, but because they are intrinsically human, and humans are very often assholes.
Don't be ridiculous. Do you honestly think that Clinton's scandal was even remotely comparable to the multi-dimensional garbage fire the Republican party has visited upon us? That the problem with Trump is that he's been unfaithful to Melania? That if he only had the personal affect of Mike Pence, everything would be fine?
This moral disaster didn't overtake the Republicans, they gleefully voted it into office, and practically all of their leaders fell right into line - and those who didn't retired when they saw the writing on the wall. (Yes, of course, #NotAllRepublicans - but really, nearly all Republicans.)
That the Democrats are temporarily in a position to gloat, morally speaking, does not mean they would be wise to do so. The wheel turns quickly enough, and sometimes unexpectedly. Better to truly deserve and maintain the high ground by supporting people of good will, even among the Republicans, as together we try to do what is right and fair for the country and the world.
If you've been reasonably satisfied with the Republican party just up to the point where they chose Donald Trump, I strongly suspect we have very different opinions on what is right and fair for the country and the world.
Or you can go on doing your little gloaty victory dance instead of behaving like a mature adult. Your choice.
Jesus Christ, "gloaty victory dance"? Are you somehow under the impression that people criticizing the Republican party are happy they chose Trump? What is this, some kind of puerile accusation of bad faith?
And you're talking to me about behaving like a mature adult!
You know, fuck it all. Go ahead and believe I’m an idiot liar acting in bad faith like every other Republican in recorded history. And hold me personally responsible for Trump, too, and every one of his evil policies. I’m fucking done with trying to explain anything to you.
Looks like a big problem to me. "The dwarfs are for the dwarfs."
In terms of policies, is there a position Christians might take? A problem I see is economic practices allow corporations with billions to pay nothing back to an economy which allows then to make their billions, and which allows rich people who make millions to buy privately everything- health care, education, policing/security, even private armies fighting wars, and even can have governments give then welfare payment bailouts when they really make bad decisions on how to make even more money. And the proportion of people without adequate income, without stready work, without health care, without any of the things which make for an okay life who are then convinced by political manipulation that it's immigrants and people in other countries like China who are the cause, and who've also been convinced that abortion is the only issue that matters.
@Crœsos is spot on about the 'centerist commentators' responsibilities here. The myth of both sides being equal is so dangerous. As the American right became more right wing, the left has become more centerist, even centre-right such that this mythical centre-ground of bipartisanship is to the right of where Reagan would have been.
The Labour party made the same mistake in the early part of this decade and the media reporting even more so, such that austerity became 'economic wisdom' when in fact it's the very opposite of what economists were saying.
For what it's worth, @Lamb Chopped I don't doubt you or your motivations. However the GOP has a long track record leading up to Trump and you picked a time point 20 years ago which - as others have said in more detail - was a time that in many ways sowed the seeds of today's catastrophe.
You know, fuck it all. Go ahead and believe I’m an idiot liar acting in bad faith like every other Republican in recorded history. And hold me personally responsible for Trump, too, and every one of his evil policies. I’m fucking done with trying to explain anything to you.
Still not one damn thing the Republican party has done that you can point to as a reason for being a registered Republican. So sure, go ahead and throw a tantrum and leave the thread. Because you've got exactly nothing to justify your position.
Comments
Funnily enough, I found myself wondering that, too. And it did occur to me that the rants sounded a little more like the kind of thing I'd heard from men, with various problems or issues with anger etc. But the 'gentle' sex are, or course, occasionally given to super-aggressive verbal violence! And are as bad offenders in misogyny, when they get going.
For that matter, the writer sounds confused anyway. They clearly despise women in clerical authority for their alleged failure to uphold the Christian faith; but the writer's own behaviour on this thread is not particularly in the authentic scriptural tradition of how good and godly women should behave!
The writer just sounds like a wind-up merchant. And not a particularly skilful one either.
As I may have said before, being classed as pro-Wimmin, some sort of Left-wing Loonie/Librul, Teh-Gayz-loving Pinko etc. etc., simply convinces me that I'm Wright (if Wromantic), rather than Repulsive (and Rong*).
And My Old Ma would be proud of me...
(*apologies to Messrs. Sellars and Yeatman for inverting their definition...)
Donald Trump is a racist, sexist greedmonster. In what way isn't he a Republican?
You do realize absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, right?
Oh fuck this.
It's bad enough I have to watch my lifelong party behaving like assholes; must you act as if there never was anything good about it at all, and never could possibly be any fucking redemption for it at all, regardless of what anybody does?
I'll tell you, it's not the way to win people to your side.
Or do you abandon your own personal lifelong associations without a fight, the minute they make flaming assholes of themselves?
Because IMHO that is the act of a rat. One that leaves a sinking ship without attempting to do anything to help.
It's also pretty ratty to kick the minority of a party who are actually trying to de-asshole the place.
From my perspective, the marriage between the GOP and the white evangelical right in the US has actually damaged both. I hope both can be repaired, certainly in the area of social justice (and away from the poisons of privatised and prosperity gospels) and I know there are many honourable exceptions, but it looks like a long job to me.
You may have already read it, but in case your haven't I recommend "God's Politics" by Jim Wallis. 'Why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn't get it'. Jim is a social radical who is also quite conservative on issues of personal morality. Not all the good nor all the bad is to found in one box. It seems wise to me to see the real enemy, which is indifference in practice to the poor and marginalised (Matt 25).
There certainly are honest and righteous republicans. I know a few. But the direction of travel has been clear for some time now and whilst Trump and his acolytes have clearly captured the party, the GOP has been cultivating something like Trumpism for 3 decades at least.
They have very-much reaped what they have sowed.
AFZ
In addition to what Barnabas62 and Doc Tor posted above; the thing Republicans of your type have to face is that Trump has managed to have relatively high approval ratings among Republican voters.
Clearly a large number of them were either happy with Trumps policies overall, or were willing to compromise on the things they didn't like for the things they did (which via opinion polls seem to come down to things like tax cuts).
FWIW I agree with Barnabas62, in that the alliance between Republicans and evangelicals has ultimately damaged both (and to my mind being able to frame issues politically has also allowed evangelicals to avoid having to confront things like structural racism in their midst).
There's also this: Do you really WANT a one-party system in the U.S.? Because if the Republican Party destroys itself (and it's damned close to having done so, if not over the line already), that's effectively what we'll have. None of the smaller parties are big enough to step up yet. And a de facto one-party system here would be a disaster.
You talk as if the Democrats are somehow insulated from the moral disaster that has overtaken the Republicans. That's bullshit. Twenty years ago it was the Democrats who were behaving disgracefully. Not because they are intrinsically evil, but because they are intrinsically human, and humans are very often assholes.
That the Democrats are temporarily in a position to gloat, morally speaking, does not mean they would be wise to do so. The wheel turns quickly enough, and sometimes unexpectedly. Better to truly deserve and maintain the high ground by supporting people of good will, even among the Republicans, as together we try to do what is right and fair for the country and the world.
Or you can go on doing your little gloaty victory dance instead of behaving like a mature adult. Your choice.
You had the opportunity to defend the Republican record. You couldn't because you can't. I have no doubt that you're a lovely person in real life, but in this, you've been backing the wrong horse.
Despite the hyperbole from a few Republican never-trumpers, I don't see the path by which the Republican Party 'destroys itself' -- afaict the Party is in rude health, that some people either stay or leave is neither here nor there.
You had an argument until you said that 20 years ago the Dems were arseholes. That's just palpable nonsense. In 1999, Clinton had issues but it was the same people attacking him who are defending Trump...
Post civil war, I'll give you but I'm not sure that's relevant.
As I said, my sympathy for the GOP is very much limited by the fact that they have danced with the devil for decades.
Diplomatic relations with China?
But I think the penchant for adversarial politics makes it difficult to concede that your political opponents might have a point. I often wonder about behind closed doors conversations between GOP and Democrats. Cross party friendships used to be quite common. Perhaps there still are some?
I'm not sure if the use of WEIRD to mean Western Educated Industrialised Rich and Democratic is widespread. I've only noticed Martin use it. It's brilliant.
So its difficult to come up with specific Republican achievements prior to its adoption of bastard economics under Reagan if the policy programme was 'steady as she goes'. They have one achievement: It was steady and it went.
That said, I think Jon Stewart once told me through the television that the Nixon Administration introduced Affirmative Action into the Federal Public Service.
So turn back the clock the halcyon days of respectable statesmen like Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, and Jesse Helms? Those simpler times when the intellectual giants of the conservative movement were Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly? One of the reasons that the American conservative movement (and the Republican party which is its primary political vehicle) is such a wretched hive of scum and villainy is that no one is ever held accountable for past wrongs. There's just the pretense that there was some bright, glorious Republican past and inevitable progress towards an even more bright and glorious conservative future, most of which serves as a screen to obscure the sordid and corrupt present.
If child stealing, massive corruption, and a large tolerance for racism isn't enough for you to waver in your support of the Republican party I'm not sure there's anything they could do to lose you. I'm also not convinced that ignoring those things or pretending that they're okay is a very effective way to "win people to your side" either.
Unlikely in the long run. A winner-take-all electoral system like the United States has naturally tends towards exactly to major political parties, no more and no less. A historical example would be the Whig Party (American edition). In 1852 it was one of the two major American political parties of the second party system. By the 1856 presidential election they had essentially collapsed. By 1860 the northern wing of what had been the Whig Party (American edition) reformulated itself into what we now know as the Republican Party and managed to win the presidency.
In short, any collapse of the Republican Party as it exists now would likely lead to the reformulation of some kind of conservative political party after a couple of election cycles. It might even be an opportunity to purge some of the serial bad actors from the movement, something the GOP seems to have particular difficulties with.
I'm not sure where the line is between "gloating" and "pointing out significant wrongs and injustices, ascribing blame, and suggesting remedies".
What in the hell is "but her emails" in this context? My point was that humans are humans. I voted for Clinton, don't give me this crap.
I'm not sure this counts, given that Republican red-baiting was one of the main reasons the U.S. didn't have diplomatic relations with mainland China before the 1970s. In other words American presidents prior to Nixon were unwilling to normalize relations with China for fear of being red-baited by people like . . . Richard Nixon.
1. I do not support the current evil policies of the Republican Party. (There are non-evil policies, though Trump has done an incredible job of completely u-turning them to the point where you'd think we never believed in fiscal responsibility, for example.) I am not going to defend them to you either, because I feel as you do. Can you not understand a strategic choice to remain for now?
2. I neither send money, nor campaign for, nor vote for Republican candidates who support Trump or his evil policies, or who put forward evil policies of their own. I voted Democrat in the last couple of elections.
3. I DO my damndest to change the minds of my representatives and my fellow voters, urging them to act ethically and morally.
4. I believe the only chance I have of being heard at all (and it's a slim one) is because I'm still registered Republican and my voice is therefore a Republican voice telling them to stop being evil. The minute I de-register, do you think they'll give a crap?
5. I believe that it would very, very helpful of you all if you'd stop jumping all over the people like me, who are your close kin ethically, and making our lives that much harder as we try to effect change from the inside. We do exist. Truly. And I'm damned tired of catching shit from you, and then catching it from my Trumpista relatives. It's like being in no man's land between two armies. And I'm not the only one.
The Republican Party never did believe in fiscal responsibility, at least not during the last four or so decades. What they believed in was fiscal austerity during Democratic presidencies and spending like drunken sailors during Republican administrations. The pattern is so obvious, and also independent of whatever was going on in the American economy at the time. Still, the amazing durability of this piece of political propaganda is very impressive.
The rapprochement was part of the strategy for exiting Vietnam and did involve Kissinger and Nixon playing "good guy mad guy" tactics. Kissinger was able to present the case; deal with me or God knows what Nixon will do. I think it worked. And from accounts at the time, Nixon was both conscious of and approved of the tactic.
But what good Republican policies were there to support in the first place?
In my wildest dreams, the Republicans will implode, allowing the Socialists and the Greens to break off from the Democrat machine and have a multiple-party system, with the Dems anchoring the conservative right. I'm up in MN, and the ONLY reason we don't vote for the leftists is that they will split the Dem vote and give it to the more evil party.
The rot goes deeper than that. For example, if you can fool yourself that Paul Ryan has a plan to lower deficits but never bother to check his math then you're cultivating a level of credulity that makes someone like Donald Trump an inevitability.
I recognise the enormity of the question. Perhaps one for Purg?
I don't see that as much of a choice, tbh.
Sure. Trump just makes an already bad fiscal track record even worse. You don't have to look all that closely to see the kow tow to powerful special interests. The national interest comes a bad second at best.
Dad lived and died an old-school gentleman. Tall and dignified, he treated everyone courteously. He honored his promises, even at personal cost; a gentleman keeps his word. If Dad suffered pain or misfortune, you’d never hear that from him. When faced with these, a gentleman may opt for a stiff upper lip or a stiff drink, but he never complains. Dad held his tongue if someone treated him badly; a gentleman speaks no ill of others. Dad’s personal and professional successes also went unremarked; a gentleman does not crow, gloat or boast.
A gentleman recognizes that advantages of birth and family, if any, arrive unearned and are therefore nothing to take pride in. Health, family wealth and status, innate abilities – these are matters of chance; a gentleman may honorably enjoy these, but never use them to take advantage of others. Adversity like ill health, poverty, or disrespect from others requires a gentleman to hold up his head and make the best of his situation.
Of course, even gentlemen make mistakes. A gentleman promptly acknowledges his errors and endeavors to correct them or make amends.
With values like these, what would Dad have done on Election Day of 2016? I only know he would never have voted for Donald Trump.
Were there drawbacks to Dad’s code? Absolutely: it was exclusive, elitist, sexist, and racist. He genuinely believed that women should be protected and sheltered; he genuinely believed that "Negroes" (the terminology of the 50s and 60s) were somehow "not ready" for full citizenhood, and nothing I could say would sway him. Perhaps that’s why I became a life-long Democrat. Nevertheless, I respected and admired my father, the more so as, after his death, I became aware of sufferings he’d endured in silence and unacknowledged accomplishments achieved in silence.
Today, the party which once claimed my father’s political allegiance lies in ruins. I believe in and support a two-party system – or at least I used to. A two-party system, however, needs two fully-operational parties to work. We currently have none.
The Democrats are hobbled by more than the loss of the 2016 election, stunning as that defeat was. They played dirty tricks on one of their own candidates during that campaign. They've dragged their feet responding to the Demander-in-Chief. They're fragmenting at an alarming rate: twenty candidates and counting, with stances all over the map. And to me, most of them sound like cut-and-paste clips from the Ghost of Campaigns Past.
I know people who call the Democrats socialist.
Well, one party is represented by the aforementioned corrupt authoritarian racist and sexist greedmonster, Donald Trump, while the other is the party of notorious radical firebrands like . . . [ checks notes ] . . . Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. You can see why such extremism on both sides is offputting to so many. [ This is where the eyerolling emoji is truly missed ]
I used to think that reflexively dismissing both sides as always and eternally equally extreme and yourself therefore as morally superior to everyone else who sullied themselves by caring about things was just a harmless bit of intellectually incurious wankery, but I've come to see it as a key part of conservative dominance in American political media. American conservatives seem to have realized that if both sides are always axiomatically equally bad, then they would never be held accountable for any of their actions.
And very often the "sensible centrist" policies allegedly advocated by those decrying "both sides" for being too extreme to embrace were actually fully endorsed by Democrats. David Brooks is probably the apotheosis of this genre, as illustrated in this Jonathan Chait article from mid-November 2016:
Brooks' most recent act of chutzpah was to pen a column about how much he missed Barack Obama.
This moral disaster didn't overtake the Republicans, they gleefully voted it into office, and practically all of their leaders fell right into line - and those who didn't retired when they saw the writing on the wall. (Yes, of course, #NotAllRepublicans - but really, nearly all Republicans.) If you've been reasonably satisfied with the Republican party just up to the point where they chose Donald Trump, I strongly suspect we have very different opinions on what is right and fair for the country and the world. Jesus Christ, "gloaty victory dance"? Are you somehow under the impression that people criticizing the Republican party are happy they chose Trump? What is this, some kind of puerile accusation of bad faith?
And you're talking to me about behaving like a mature adult!
With all due respect, they're ignorami who know nothing of what "socialism" means.
Then you have been asleep for 2 years.
Looks like a big problem to me. "The dwarfs are for the dwarfs."
In terms of policies, is there a position Christians might take? A problem I see is economic practices allow corporations with billions to pay nothing back to an economy which allows then to make their billions, and which allows rich people who make millions to buy privately everything- health care, education, policing/security, even private armies fighting wars, and even can have governments give then welfare payment bailouts when they really make bad decisions on how to make even more money. And the proportion of people without adequate income, without stready work, without health care, without any of the things which make for an okay life who are then convinced by political manipulation that it's immigrants and people in other countries like China who are the cause, and who've also been convinced that abortion is the only issue that matters.
The Labour party made the same mistake in the early part of this decade and the media reporting even more so, such that austerity became 'economic wisdom' when in fact it's the very opposite of what economists were saying.
For what it's worth, @Lamb Chopped I don't doubt you or your motivations. However the GOP has a long track record leading up to Trump and you picked a time point 20 years ago which - as others have said in more detail - was a time that in many ways sowed the seeds of today's catastrophe.
AFZ
Still not one damn thing the Republican party has done that you can point to as a reason for being a registered Republican. So sure, go ahead and throw a tantrum and leave the thread. Because you've got exactly nothing to justify your position.