The GOP is still morally corrupt, even if Discourse breaks

You want the kids expelled because they wore MAGA hats to a political rally and did some rowdy cheers?

I was wondering when Trump would weigh in on this. How has he managed to NOT tweet constantly about it?

And Covington Catholic HS should be listed as a hate group no doubt.

Not me. Just as I donā€™t appreciate being labelled as un-American or a criminal because Iā€™m a Democrat and a Liberal, I would not want to outlaw the other side. Even if they wanted to label me asā€¦un-American or a criminal. Or wanted to use Liberal as a slur. I believe Conservatives have good points. I donā€™t believe Republicans are Conservatives anymore.

But that doesnā€™t mean I want to outlaw them. I have close friends who say, in essence, that Trump supporters should be despised and shunned. I understand that view. But the simple fact is that I have relationships with people who are Trump supporters and I have to maintain those relationships.

Oh. I forgot. It was a rhetorical question.

-xtien

There are many here who think that makes them insta-Naziā€™s.

Middle school was as bad as it got. High school was a fucking cakewalk by comparison.

Iā€™m there with my brother. Itā€™s not even as simple as ā€œI love him even though his politics are nuts.ā€ Iā€™m constitutionally incapable of viewing any of his opinions as nuts, because my respect for him is primal, so there is a lot of cognitive dissonance that goes around, which makes it very hard to have a level headed conversation with him on that point. I always end up being the one who gets flustered, too, which makes me more likely to avoid such discussions, as I really hate getting flustered.

Hello!

I mean, the GOP is a hate group, and conservative principles are deeply steeped in hate. So, I mean, ideally, we do everything in our power to stop them from being acted upon.

Itā€™s a hate symbol, so that seems fair. I suppose you could give them a warning for the first offense of wearing a hate symbol. Kids are dumb, of course.

I mean, at a certain point in my 20s, I had to come to terms with the fact that my parents actively and aggressively support and push for a lot of evil shit, and that however Leave it to Beaver nice they might seem at first blush, if they had their way, a whole lotta my friends would be dead, in jail, or on the receiving end of some lovely electroshock therapy for their sexual identities.

It sucks realizing your parents/brother/sister-in-law/best friend from high school/etc. are basically psychopaths dressed up in Sunday best church clothing, but realizing itā€™s a pretty essential component of moving forward with life in the post-Trump era.

He did a couple of times this morning because his TV Wormtongueā€™s yelled, red faced in white anger at him this AM.

This is me. I have two brothers who I am damn sure voted for Trump if for no other reason that their dislike of Hillary and the misguided idea that somehow voting for Trump may lead to the end of legal abortions. They are both very religious. We donā€™t have political discussions that last more than a sentence or two because of that. I also have a sister, who thinks that Trump is an idiot. But then she has lived in SF for most her life. :)

You understand why that is, Iā€™m sure. Because of the White Supremacy thing. Because of the ā€œfine people on both sidesā€ thing after Charlottesville, right? You can see, I hope, how somebody would say that supporting Trump, and wearing a MAGA hat, is essentially supporting that view.

I donā€™t like just leaning on the word Nazi because I think itā€™s lazy. And I know people who held their noses and not only voted for, but promoted Trump, because they hated Hillary Clinton more. I despise that. But I cannot append the label of Nazi to them. Because they are my family membersā€“mostlyā€“and my son has to have relationships with them too.

I totally get why somebody would say Trump supporters are horrible people, based on what he stands for and how he got himself elected and how he conducts himself. I mean, just look at his visit to the MLK statue yesterday. Iā€™ve spent more time returning a library book. But my life is too complicated in its relationships for me to shun people who voted for Trump.

-xtien

ā€œNaziā€ is such a loaded term :)

Seriously, the frame through which I view our entire political moment is essentially, ā€œhad I been a German schmoe around 1930-34, how would I have responded to events at the time without the hindsight we now enjoy?ā€ That is my polestar through all of this, and it is why I cannot avoid making comparisons to the Third Reich. It is trivially obvious that comparing anyone to Nazis at any time can be viewed as hyperbolic and opens up the door for people to huffily claim offense. But that doesnā€™t really move forward our understanding of what is actually happening right now and how bad it might get and how to prevent the worst.

The trick is that if you wait for them to start building death camps and declaring war on the rest of the world (i.e. the point at which a Nazi comparison is completely uncontroversial), then you have waited too long. Because at that point the only internal resistance is of the Sophie Scholl kind, which is both a) unrealistically heroic for most people, and b) pragmatically not very useful. And then the appallingly expensive lesson that was taught to the world from 1933-1945 will have been completely useless.

Forget the family part. Donā€™t append a Nazi label to them because they are not actually advocating genocide. This is a key component to the evil of Nazis, a historical permanent black mark that anyone associated with it is evil and outside the realm of decent society to the point where they should not be treated as just some political party.

Now, I also understand and share the concern that the Nazis didnā€™t step through the door and say hey guys, Iā€™ve got an idea, letā€™s kill everyone, vote for me. So yeah, we would want to stop a new Nazis like group long before the attempt to stop the previous group which lead to a horrific war.

I just donā€™t think the bulk of the MAGA or GOP is far enough down that path to treat them like theyā€™re just two steps away from the next Nazis party. There are, however, smaller groups within them that are and those groups should be treated like the terrorist groups they actually are.

The good thing is that America seems to have rejected the shitty Trump agenda as a whole, based on the House elections. I donā€™t really see us following the path of Nazi Germany because the majority of us arenā€™t shit heads. But for a little bit there, I was definitely worried.

Is that part misguided? Iā€™ve certainly been reading a lot of hand-wringing since Kavanaugh was confirmed that we may only be a suitable test case away from Roe being overturned.

The midterms were definitely a much-needed shot of hope.

Ugh. That is awful.

While I admit there was a rush to internet mob justice (including myself) over the initial short video, even when the longer more informative videos are watched, itā€™s clear the CovCath kids and their adult chaperones made poor decisions and behaved less than respectfully, and certainly not up to the standards their school claims to set.

And now they will be rewarded for it with a trip to the White House. Why?
Because the GOP needs their own version of the Parkland kids, young people they can trot out in their MAGA hats whose fucked up, insulated, privileged and bigoted belief system has been further reinforced by the bigot-in-chief. Fantastic.

Believe me, Iā€™ve wrestled with this for so many years. What makes me differ from your view, Armando, is seeing actual change occur when I kept those people close. Because then they met a couple of my best friends who wanted to get married, and both happened to be men. And these men had been together for longer than the people I was arguing withā€¦to say nothing of the divorce that got the people I was arguing with together. Those people had had to deal with church people back in the day telling them they were adulterers for getting married after being divorced from somebody else. It was gutting to them.

When I pointed this outā€“in addition to the low-blow of quoting scripture about how to treat slavesā€“they were all, ā€œOhā€¦Uh.ā€ And then they met my friends. Who are moral. And successful. And loving. And welcoming. And cool. And they were all, ā€œYeah. They should get to be married.ā€

So even though these people went back to supporting fuckers like Trump, I just feel like holding them as close as possible is better than shunning them in the long run.

-xtien

So you would hope if the Dems were in control we would outlaw the GOP as a hate group. Make MAGA hats illegal maybe.

Personally I would make wearing baseball hats backwards illegal (unless you are a catcher) and I would make wearing a logo hat of your favorite team in any color other than an actual team color illegal. Punishable by castration.