politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Hell no, and I already said it's not the most important factor. But in a sane world where both candidates are decent people, age could very well be a deciding factor for me.
The partisan divide is predicated on assuming your rivals aren't good people. That's why everyone loves calling each other Tankies and Communists/Fascists and foreign shills.
If you can't see that Trump is the opposite of a good person, then I don't know what to tell you.
You assume Trump people aren't good people, either. And they assume the same of you.
Let's not pretend that Trump is a normal politician with whom we merely have policy disagreements. That was the case for most major party candidates prior to 2015, but since then it has only been the case for one major party's candidates. The previous rules of friendly competition and debate were thrown out then. By him.
He's a celebrity-turned-politician. But he's running on a platform that's been baked into the GOP since the Eisenhower Administration launched Operation Wetback.
That's completely ahistorical.
I'm not saying the past hasn't led us to this. I'm saying that the current GOP is corrupt and rotten to a level that it never was before, and their supporters' opinion matters less than it ever did before. So
doesn't mean what it used to.
More corrupt than when Bush used the phoney threat of nuclear terrorism to commit a Holocaust in Iraq?
More corrupt than when Reagan's CIA was running cocaine through Latin America to fund death squads on behalf of the United Fruit Company and Coca Cola?
More corrupt than the multiple democracies overthrown by the Eisenhower Administration - from Brazil to Egypt to Iran?
More corrupt than Rutherford B Hayes ending Reconstruction for the House votes he needed to take the presidency?
I'm not feeling it.
Yes, because now they're not bothering to hide it. They're trying to normalize it. Worse still, they're trying to paint people who don't want their fascism as the strange ones. They're so corrupt and rotten they aren't even bothering with the thin veneer of respectability, and they're succeeding in changing the character of the entire country.
Previous GOP regimes did evil things and made Americans complicit. Now they're actively trying to make America evil.
They're absolutely worse now.
They're not coordinated and sophisticated enough to hide it.
The ones at the top of the ticket, sure. But the ones who are actually behind all of this—the Mitch McConnells and the other various GOP strategists—they're pretty devious. Smart in an evil way. They got right-wing media on their side, and then they got the mainstream media to cover them as if what they were doing was normal, and only then did they start trying to make it seem like their brand of fascism was the norm and not something antithetical to American values. At which point they could run a candidate like Trump and not be completely ruining their image.
Though it does seem like Trump was worse even than they thought; much less coordinated and completely unsophisticated.
Are increasingly being forced into the Democratic Party by the baser reactionaries in the GOP. Guys like Micheal Bloomberg and Bill Kristol and "The Lincoln Project" have largely decamped from the Republican organization and started clustering around guys like Joe Manchin.
He didn't toe the ideological line. He committed blasphemy after blasphemy - shaking hands with our nation's enemies, not offering enough lip service to The Troops, failing to keep a polite distance from Christian fundamentalists, ostrasizing too many domestic business interests and their media flaks.
He hurt the GOP coalition as much as the country overall. They're no longer even pretending to be a Big Tent, like they claimed under Bush and Reagan.
Rats sinking a leaving ship.
Here's hoping even more. They thought they could use him and found out they couldn't control him.
It's almost like you have to look at more than just what people say about each other to determine who's right.
Anyway, I was talking about Trump himself, not his supporters. I don't know how it could possibly be more clear that he's a bad person. If you can't acknowledge that fact then I can't take anything you say seriously.
Trump can't exist without an enormous base of zealous donors, canvasers, and loyal electoral disciples. Neither can any politician, particularly at the national level. At some level, Trump is a manifestation of his support. Otherwise, he'd have lost to Christie or Hailey or Pence.
You don't need to go far in the American suburbs to find people who spout all the same rhetoric and engage in a host of the same behaviors as the Cheeto Mussolini. I'm in Texas and I'm surrounded by these people. I go visit family up in Staten Island and they're all over the place. Step out to Arizona, Florida, Ohio... guys who admire and seek to emulate Trump, both in his politics and mannerisms, are all over this country.