Nesrie
3529
I think this perspective is based on who you were and where you lived at the time.
That sounds like a reference to my being a white guy? Which is a fair point. I am a white guy and I donât know what itâs like to be in a minority. Itâs true that for a lot of people the happy days in America were just a shabby illusion.
But they manifestly did not abide by the rule of law. I donât think they were delusional, they knew they were breaking the law and/or covering it up after the fact.
Nesrie
3532
No itâs more complex than that. Itâs more likeâŚ
Did you live in the city or the suburbs?
How many people did you know who wound up in prison?
Did you get questioned about your qualifications or the right to be at school?
Were you watching people around you die a horrible death from an unknown diseases and the government just didnât care?
Did anyone accuse you of being on food stamps? Heck did you know what those were?
Were you in a horrific adoption system, pushed around by systems more concerned about not giving you condoms than actually keeping you safe and able to grow?
Compton/NWA⌠didnât get born out of nothing.
I mean there were several groups who suffered terribly under the GOP long before 2019, and just because they still do today and now we have cameras and mics everywhere doesnât mean they felt safe in the 80s. People were talking about these problems years ago⌠but it was easier to not belief or not listen. 2019⌠thereâs video. Canât ignore so easily now.
Thatâs all fair. I still perceive a difference between a republic rife with injustices and a republic that seems to be careening toward not being a republic anymore.
(My answers, by the way, are: small town/big city, depending on the year, and then all Nos)
ShivaX
3534
Reagan had plenty wrong with him, but you could also see that he believed what he said on the stump.
His speeches about freedom and opposing despotism are still some of the best out there, even if he didnât live up to his own ideals, at least he proclaimed those ideals. Unlike Trump who just shrugs and says America isnât any better than Russia, China or North Korea while trying to be besties with mass murderers and shitting on our long-term allies at every opportunity.
Nesrie
3535
Nixon, Reagan⌠these guys started this idea of anti-white, reverse racism, gotta protect a culture that isnât even white stuff just so they could get votes in the south. Anything he said about freedom, about opportunity is bullshit when you start race wars that leads to death and decades of struggles all so your party could stay in power to get some tax cuts. That is a man who does not believe in anything but power.
And that doesnât even begin to the cover HIV, sex education, and religious stuff.
Can bad men say good words? Thomas Jefferson is by our standards a horrible person, far worse than Trump who never kept hundreds of people in bondage, yet we continue to be guided by the words he penned in the Declaration.
Nesrie
3537
Nixon and Reagan do not have the excuse of being born into ignorance or during a time when equality remained a question of philosophy. They chose their sacrifices, knowingly, and the current GOP kept going with it. They chose their sacrifices because they did not, even during a time when we know it to be true, when courts said it was true, believe all people to be equal enough where they might lose something, so no⌠they donât get pass. Theyâre the cause of today, the pioneers, not just something before it.
If you mean Iran-Contra and the great Ronald Reaganâs anti-communist international policy agendaâŚthen sure. But that was only a portion of the GOP, and was focused externally, not internally. 1986 GOP was up to a lot of shenanigans certainly, and I am by no means saying that many of them werenât racist or horrible pieces of shit out to serve only their own interests and those of their corporate donorsâŚbutâŚ
âŚif you are trying to say that âThis has always been the way of the GOPâŚthey are no different now than they were in 1986â than I have to say NO. Making that comparison normalizes what is happening now. It says to people ârelax, itâs always been this wayâ, and that is most certainly not the case. At no time in American politics, not even during Nixonâs impeachment, has a country been not only so divided on ideology, but had so many people serving in itâs government who put Party over Country so starkly and blatantly. Hell, they fucking revel in it on national television nightly.
Yes, the GOP has always been the more evil and self-serving of the two parties, but in 2019 it has reached all new levels that threaten the country in ways we could never have imagined in 1986.
Timex
3539
Itâs so weird how we repeatedly degenerate into the insane notion that every Republican has always been just as bad as Trump.
I mean⌠Even if you guys believe such a thing⌠You understand why itâs just an incredibly stupid thing to say, right? How itâs counterproductive to feed a narrative that âDemocrats say this about everyone!â
Do you guys really not see that?
After Trumpâs gone, you can push that narrative all you want. But right now? Itâs dumb as shit.
I mean itâs productive if you aim to see everyone affiliated with the party punished with the same degree of vehemence and absolutism as Trump himself.
Which is obviously pie in the sky thinking. But I can dream of 60million+ people locked away for life.
Iâm talking specifically about establishment GOP responses to Iran-Contra. They treated the congressional investigation as a partisan witch hunt, invented absurd and obviously false theories of defense, and ultimately pardoned all the people involved.
In other words, exactly how they are responding now.
Edit: More recently, they invented defenses for kidnapping and torture and murder, and ridiculed the idea of any consequences for those official acts. Itâs a continuum, not a diversion from the past.
But, why would you dream of 60 million Americans locked away for life. Do you know how much work youâd have to do cloth, and feed them. Much less guard them and provide them medical care. Plus havenât we determined that is injustice to deprive prisoners of the right to vote. You know if you lock up all the Republican,they are going to oppose all the programs you want to do.
Kidding aside, I really donât understand this fantasy.
Donald Trump and his cronies deserve to be lockedup.
One of the reasons that Lincoln is considered our greatest President is he gave speeches like this.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nationâs wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.[
Nesrie
3543
Bullshit.
There are certain communities that have been ignored, belittled and abused for years. The answer, no matter how many times it was given, has never been sit in the back and be quiet. We wouldnât have had Civil Rights at all if we listened to that kind of crap. Itâs âfunâ to see it still be being peddled, generations later.
See thatâs the benefit of confiscating the wealth of the 1%, man. Jeeze, itâs like you donât even read the Radical Leftist Monthly.
Timex
3545
Not even if thatâs your goal.
Reagan got re-elected in 1984, with 59% of the popular vote, and won the electoral college 525 to 13. A ton of people voted for him. They liked him.
If you tell them that he was as bad as Trump, then the result isnât gonna be that they think heâs as bad as you think Trump is. The result is that theyâre gonna think that Trump is as good as they think Reagan was.
And they think he was good, despite what you think.
Thatâs why, right now, trying to say that guys like Reagan were as bad as Trump, is a fucking profoundly stupid thing to do.
Yes, Americans are fucking morons and re-elected Ronald Reagan by a huge margin.
This is not a valid argument against âReagan was a monster and caused immeasurable harm to billions breathing and yet unborn.â
Timex
3547
But itâs a reason not to say heâs the same as Trump.
Because that argument doesnât harm Reaganâs stock. It raises Trumpâs.
You can win some portion of those Reagan supporters over to going against Trump, by pointing out how Trump is DIFFERENT. Not by suggesting they are the same.
Fun fact, confiscating the wealth of the top 1% would pay for imprisoning 60 million Republicans for 4 years. Sadly that would leave zero dollars to pay for Medicare for All, free college or any of the other nice things.
