Serious thumbs up!
Two wrongs don’t make a right, and again a house divided falls.
There is definite evil in the GOP, but calling it all evil is absurd. They are not some two dimensional comic villain! A person can be evil, but a group almost always is a mix of good and bad people.
Well said!
I couldn’t agree more. Our political system simply does not work without some degree of bi-partisanship. That requires civility amongst our politicians, which is unlikely if their voters treat this as warfare.
It’s so easy to stoke up hatred of other groups, though. In-group vs out-group conflict has been core to our psychology since we’ve been people. Exploiting it is effective and profitable, all the more so with today’s communication tools. So, I agree with your sentiment, but I am not optimistic.
What good have they done? Who are these good people in the GOP? Can someone be good and still support Trump and what he’s doing to the country?
Yet we’re talking about a man (John McCain) who as a politician was not civil and who treated poltiics as warfare. It’s right there in his record, unless you think the civility we’re aiming for is jokes about Chelsea Clinton’s appearance and the sexual preferences of her mother and the gender of the attorney general; or unless you think the way to avoid treating politics as warfare is to go along with an unprecedented denial of the President’s appointment power against the will of the voters.
Look, you can’t tell us to stop disparaging the man when you keep saying bullshit like this. How many affairs do you get to have and still remain a “family man”? It’s insulting to those of us that are, you know, actually loyal to our spouses/partners and children. I like how you attack Clinton as a womanizer, yet McCain is a “family man.” They’re both scum in that regard.
As another example, you could also call Trump a good family man. I mean, sure, he cheated on his wives like McCain & Clinton, but he’s clearly only interested in helping his family out in any way he can. None of the three are actually good family men, unless the definition is stretched to include all three.
Luckily the good members of the GOP have repudiated Trump. They immediately call him on his lies. They’re getting ready for impeachment hearings as they work hard to repair all of the damage that he’s done.
And then I wake up.
I appreciate the concern for my public image on Qt3/soul, Dave. That’s a genuine statement; it was thoughtful of you to write all that.
Which makes me a little sad that my response is something on the order of. . . this is just where I am in my life. It’s what’s left of me inside. I simply lack the capacity to care if some folks might look down on me for calling McCain and his GOP brethren on their shit 24/7, regardless of timing or a societal expectation of “respect” or bipartisanship or togetherness.
All that’s left in side of me, politically speaking, at least, is this burning pit of hatred and despair for all our futures, and I can try to smother the flames in irony and sarcasm and witty* repartee for the sake of not being a complete fuckstain about it 100%** of the time, at the end of the day, it’s what’s there. Modern politics, and especially the 2016 election, broke my capacity to believe in my fellow man and to have hope for a better future. It tore those emotions right out of me. For a lot of people, I suspect, though I had a shorter trip than most.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think any of that makes me a good person, or even necessarily better than those I rail against. For all we joke about God Emperor Penblade, I sincerely hope someone “like” me never winds up in power, because it’s no way to rule the world. It’s a worldview motivated by despair and hate and doubt and fear and abject sorrow. You can’t build anything with that, and certainly can’t drive things to be better than they are. Someone with motivation and fervor like mine is great if you need a committed and passionate voter and maybe even campaign volunteer, but I’ve no desire to get anywhere near actual political power.
But this is what I’ve got, and I don’t even seem to have the capacity to feel real shame about it or some desire to push toward something brighter. I just see people lauding a person I think is a shitbag for a lot of really fucking good reasons, and I respond how I must.
* For certain values of “witty”
** Though it may be 99.9%
This is the inherent problem of narrative, partisan narrative is particular. Its both true and untrue at the same time, depending on the context and who you are looking at. Human are compulsively drawn to narratives, but narratives are not fact driven, they are how we communicate/bond and see the world. Narratives help us make sense of the world, put thing in a bucket or place we can point to and say…it’s this!
Well up till recently partisan narratives included a glimmer of truth to them, but the President is really redefining that now. He is spinning absolute falsehoods and people are accepting it, because we’ve gotten used to the grey line than that narratives are always partial lies, so why not full lies, if I like the person telling it. The audacity of this is profound, and that its tettering on the edge of acceptable says a lot about our failings as a species, rather than a specific party.
I know that most of the people here are good people, good hearts that don’t wish harm on others, but you are using the same narrative logic that the other side uses to justify its thinking, and good people because of bad methodologies allow evil to happen.
Let me break down the fallacy of a partisan narrative for you. GOP is evil. Anyone who supports the GOP is evil,
Was John McCain evil? Like every human he made mistakes sure, and may have allowed evil to go unanswered, but evil? No. He was GOP, but not evil
What about Jeff Flake is he evil? Sure he’s leaving politics because of Trumpism, He hates Trump but he still believes in what the GOP could be. For all his failing what he did with Heinrich was admirable and should be lauded! Is he evil?
What about Senator Susan Collins, is she evil? She is known to work constantly across the isle for bipartisan solutions, belongs to no labels a group that wants to abolish the naiveté of partisan labels. She also called Trump and idiot, on a open mike. Is she evil?
Joseph Cao a GOP congressman broke ranks and voted for ACA. And worked across the isle a few times, Was he evil?
Are some of my family your voted for Trump, but embarrassed by his antics, but not by some of his agenda… evil? I don’t think so since they are active in the community, care about their community, and the people they know, don’t look at race individually when its in front of them, but use some of the same narratives to say the other side is evil. They are also pinned in when they are attacked as hard working compassionate people by others claiming THEY are evil. Its a closed loop with both sides, when you are attacked and you know you don’t mean evil to anyone, so the attackers are evil! When they are both good and evil and the narrative you accept is the real enemy…
These are examples, and not the complete list. So not all evil.
Soo @ShivaX, was Karl Plagge evil? or Albert Battel? Were they both evil villains? Even in the vilest evilest organization you can find someone good. I agree Nazi is bad, but not everyone that fought against the allies was automatically bad. That’s just fact.
Which politician then is evil?
The fact that you can acknowledge your flaws and limits, and discuss them, @ArmandoPenblade makes you better than most people on this earth.
this guy
Trump qualifies, he is not above hurting others even if he does not believe in the cause, he is manipulating the party, the system, human behaviors and tendencies for his own benefit and has no integrity or greater sense of right or wrong. He seemingly has no remorse, about those he hurts or the ill of his actions. Certainty that is a manifestation of evil. I don’t know if he is actually evil, I cant judge that from a distance/knowing him as person, but the result of his actions and his apparent lack of regret, fit the bill
One more thing about bipartisanship. Despite any failings Obama had integrity in one area, he always tried to reach across the ilse and give everyone a voice. I’m sure that more than anything resulted in his grey hair, considering the political clime at the time.
However, after he left office he made a point of still showing that leadership, becoming best buddies with Bush on all the talk show circuits, he is still trying to show us the way even if most of us are too caught up in our partisan thinking to see or acknowledge it.
McCain had a bit of this in him as well…
Obama bent over backward to reach across the aisle, but in retrospect it kind of makes him look like a sucker, because the GOP didn’t show good faith for one second of his eight year term.
Every Republican i know believes to the core of their heart that Obama told Republicans that he refused to work with them and that he was the most divisive President in living memory.
So the story i’m told by them, ie, the story they believe, is that Mitch McConnell went to Obama after he won his first term and wanted to “reach across the isle”. Obama told him in effect that he lost, so he had to go along with whatever Obama wanted. So McConnell went back in a huff and refused to compromise with Obama after that meeting.
I’ve never ever seen him act that way in 8 years, I wasn’t in the room, but if he did he really shot himself in the foot with all the effort he made after that publicly.
Considering his action during and after his presidency I don’t believe it personally.