Remember To Vote
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It’s important.
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Wait. Are you endorsing that tweet?
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Because that tweet is absolutely pathetic and exactly why liberals lost the in 2016.
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@Woodrow your use of the words “absolutely”, “pathetic”, and “exactly” seem to be in line with the extreme sentiment of the tweet.
I’d be more convinced that these aren’t extreme times if everyone stopped talking in extremes.
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@approxinfinity yep after these elections if the Democrats don’t win then the nation is deciding it doesn’t want to continue
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My point is that both sides are talking in extremes. Dichotomies are self-perpetuating because of equal and opposite reactions. There needs to be a deliberate return toward the middle from both sides if that’s where we want to go. However, I don’t think that process can begin until we get rid of the walking, talking extreme in the Oval Office.
How can people be blamed for talking in extremes against Trump when he uses deliberately incendiary language and ideas to stoke the extremism?
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We’ve had that rhetoric since the first partisan election in 1800. Yawn. 2018 isn’t hash tag # different. The country made it through a civil war. It’ll make it until the next Congress or next President or whatever next you’re looking for.
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@FarmerJayhawk Making it through the Civil War largely depended on a single man’s decision to keep the Union intact. He had to violate the constitution to do it, but did not do so more than was necessary nor go nearly as far as he was urged. Similarly, another president in the 30’s violated a number of laws to prepare the country and to aid allies so we could face down world-wide fascist threats in WW2. In the 80’s we had a president whose greatest legacy is to have confronted an expansionist Soviet empire, resulting in its disintegration a few years later.
Each of those presidents had bitter opponents, but each of those presidents had a firm grasp of history and a vision of the enhanced democratic future for a greater nation. Now we have a president who, merely to attract more chanting supporters and cheerleaders to his rallies, has lined up in support of those who fondly celebrate the rebellion against the Union, who expresses sympathy for the rabble remnants of our fascist enemies calling them “good people,” and who admires a brutal Russian near-dictator who arose out of the vicious Soviet KGB and who has succeeded in interfering with our democracy while our president attempts to stop even an inquiry into that effort’s effects. This president’s vision is limited to anything that gets him applause regardless of who he disrespects, regardless of the freedoms he threatens, and in apparent ignorance of the cost of discarding long-term allies for short-term political gain.
Democracy is always in peril. It is never self-perpetuating. Losing it only requires one person willing to discard the lessons of history and the teachings of the brilliant minds who have saved us before, coupled with passivity of millions of people who follow that person into oblivion.
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I don’t see Trump as some existential threat to the republic. He’s a clown that’s not competent enough to make money during the freaking housing bubble, let alone take down the US. In short, he’s basically Zenger, but more of an asshole. As an aside, my gods have we put too much faith in the Presidency. Yeeesh. Article 1 my dudes.
And I say this as someone with likely more political and policy experience and expertise than anyone on this board. If Trump was basically Hitler, Congress would assert its will and remove him from office. House Democrats may try next year, we’ll see.
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Hitler had a plan, so he had that going for him over Trump.
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@FarmerJayhawk There’s a lot of runway before you get to “basically Hitler”. That doesn’t mean it’s ok.
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@approxinfinity never said it was. There’s also a lot of runway between incompetent boob and fascist.
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@FarmerJayhawk All that experience and expertise apparently didn’t alert you to the idea that sometimes a guy claiming to admire dictators and fascists for their effectiveness might be tempted to emulate them. I think the political theorists who enacted the First Amendment had a good sense of the dangers posed by Trumpian-style attacks on the press as “enemies of the people,” a phrase parroting Hitler and Stalin.
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Of course they do. They moderate my opinions pretty substantially. My point is as tempted as he may be, he’s not competent enough to get through the guardrails that the Constitution set up and he’s sufficiently unpopular to where Congress will act if necessary. My probably unpopular opinion is Trump is Nixon but less intelligent and more of a loudmouth.
I also have a hard time squaring the arguments that our system is too slow and doesn’t allow majoritarian action (as was the argument under President Obama) but one guy who wasn’t popularly elected and can’t put together two sentences without saying something stupid is a threat to the American republic.
And don’t get me started on the press. I have strong opinions on their failures to do their duty over the last 15+ years. Some of it is their fault, some isn’t, but it’s still an institutional failure to do what they say they do, and that can do as much damage to the republic as Cheeto Jesus.
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Trump may have some severe incompetencies, but he’s brilliant in other categories.
Critics and followers often try to boil him down to something simple; I think he’s actually a pretty complex person.
