Aridas
I appreciate the objective nature of your reply and I'll do my best to reply to the points you hit:
(I apologize but the editing features are primitive -- I hope you see this. I used italics to quote you.)
A little primitive, perhaps. I tend to copy and paste the tags, myself, after using the quote button found just below a person's post, or just type in the more generic quote tags.
Did you believe that Putin was controlling Trump..?
Mmm. "Controlling" is not really the word that I would use, generally, if I'm being serious. Rather, let me point out a couple things of relevance to start. Trump has a rather long history of trying to suck up to Putin - and a much longer history trying to insert himself into
Russia. Trump was engaging in business negotiations for a Trump Tower Moscow during his campaign - negotiations that would pretty much require Putin's approval to go forward. Trump wanted Hillary's e-mails and thought that Putin had them - and was instructing his advisors to get them for him. Need I mention the financial angle of how Trump's benefited from Russian corruption? There's plenty more, but... really, signs point pretty strongly at Trump acting to curry Putin's favor for personal gain, to the point where he was giving them outright blackmail on himself while he was running for President. It's to the point where one of his priorities for Day One was to try to underhandedly get rid of sanctions on Russia that were put into place because of Russia's crimes. Congress nearly unanimously shot that down shortly after they became aware of it, but that doesn't change that it was a priority of his.
Or that the 3-year investigation wasn't motivated by animus and partisanship..?
No, it wasn't. To be clear, given the actual circumstances at hand at the beginning, it would have been beyond utterly irresponsible not to investigate thoroughly. As more was learned over time, the case for the need to investigate thoroughly just continued to get stronger. Even when we get to Mueller and the Mueller report itself, Mueller was effectively using kid gloves. For reference, campaign finance violations (including felonies) are where much of the actual crime that Trump's campaign committed was at and Mueller decided to employ a definition for that that had been
explicitly deemed to be invalid by Congress and ruled against in McConnell vs FEC, meaning that Mueller pretty much did nothing on the campaign finance side of things. As a side note, McConnell lost that and that's probably got something to do with the way that he's worked to sabotage the FEC for as long as he's had power. Either way, partisanship and animus against Trump is not even remotely in actual evidence in reality, despite the right-wing deceit.
Do we agree that presently, he's criticized for virtually anything he does irrespective whether it's actually wrong / bad, etc...?
We don't. Not in the sense that it seems like you want to push, at least. The bar for praising Trump is actually remarkably low, by my observation. Trump getting up and actually delivering a half-assed pre-prepared speech from a teleprompter without devolving into off-script bad behavior is enough to get him praise and called Presidential, for example. Provided that it isn't filled with BS, of course.
Don't people see how distorting what he says (for instance the implication that he was saying the racists were 'very fine people' in Charlottesville..) would make someone believe that it doesn't really matter whether the criticism is legitimate, the first priority is to criticize, regardless.
Mmm. The white supremacists sure seem to have heard that as Trump defending them and calling them very fine people, as I recall. With that said, though, I, personally, didn't hold that particular quote against Trump, though I do think that I'm being intentionally kinder than he actually deserved with that. People are multi-faceted, after all, and few people are pure "good" or "bad." Racism is bad, yes, but a racist can also be a loving, hard-working parent who goes out of their way to help their neighbors and contribute to their community in many ways. Praising or condemning people as a whole for one aspect of themselves has ever been a bit uncomfortable for me, though I have far less reserve when it comes to judging particular actions.
Example: people here immediately attacked me, even though I made claims, this 'supposed' intellectual forum started off with ad hominem... They're probably assuming political beliefs -- other than those explicitly stated and would likely be wrong.
Stormfront, for example? Forgive me, but a number of the things that you stated seem like they would fit in well with the propaganda found there.
I'd bet the exodus of "Liberals" to the Right (the values of the parties are changing, also) in the U.S. is greater in the past 4 years than in any for the last 30 years.
And I think that you're misleading yourself with that thought. Rather significantly, really. Not least because much of the right-wing media has been working hard to demonize "liberals" for so long. To poke at another relevant thing to that, though... studies seem to have consistently found that self-identified "liberals" fairly consistently rate pretty highly with things like "Empathy," "Honesty," and "Fairness." The Right has been increasingly clearly against all those things, unfortunately, as the values have done their shifting over the years, and with a very dramatic lurch further against them during the Trump Presidency. We could go into a more in depth analysis of why, easily enough - political pressures caused by changing demographics, authoritarians asserting more power on the right as party realignments and pressures have continued, and some very rich bad actors, for example, have contributed quite a lot to that, to poke at a few examples of the things that have been happening.
Given the idiotic (QED: reactions to my post) attacks against people vs. their claims/beliefs/ideas from OTHER people (not you) ... you can't blame them; they're trying to avoid the vitriolic waste of time, as very little discussion actually occurs. They CERTAINLY don't bother trying to see things from the perspective of others.
I think that you're right that they probably shouldn't be judged too harshly. You seem new here, though, so I think that it might be worth directly pointing out that a few too many of the people who have espoused similar sentiments to what you've espoused have made it perfectly clear that they are not interested in actual discussion, after numerous attempts to engage them in reasonable discussion. That does tend to affect later interaction with people who are pushing similar ideas, of course, given the way that people work.
I 100% agree and thought so at the time. Does anyone think that people who're more Right-leaning these days DOESN'T find a considerable amount of his antics to be pathetic and embarrassing..? AND UNNECESSARY..?
Another person who pointed out his pathetic, ego based idiotic **** re: the hurricane's path.
That also was humiliating and PATHETIC for him to do. For anyone who hadn't previously realized, Trump reiterated how frail his ego was.
I've always known him to be a relatively unintelligent person (certainly relative to Obama, whom, though I absolutely disagree with many beliefs he held, was much smarter, and a MUCH better communicator ... and I have ALWAYS known Trump to be prone to pettiness, self aggrandizement, etc.
Indeed.
Re: the fraudulent **** (Trump university..? PURE fraud) was ALL previous to his presidency.
Mmm. The contempt for law and constantly acting like he's above it never actually stopped, though. As for fraud, well... it gets a bit murky what counts as "fraud" when you're President. If we go by
wikipedia, for example, though...
In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right.
A bunch of the things that Trump has said and done seem to be pretty close to that, at the very least.
And irrespective whether I thought he should be viable or even legally ABLE to become the choice of the American people, they chose him. My judgement's now, begin from there.
Understandable. I'll skip the quibbles that I could offer there, either way.
RIGHT now, with ALL of the crises there are ... and since he IS who the president is ... I don't care about his previous pathetic moral failings. I'm talking about the decisions he implements, however that sausage is made.
Sure.
Forget the tu quoque retorts of Hillary's worse conduct (Uranium One) which should illustrate, to the extent they deemed her "qualified" ... should expose the "flexible" moral-criteria of the Left. And in the same manner the Left justified the details of the Uranium One scandal redounding to the financial benefit of an elected official, I'd assume so also did people on the Right ... justify the **** Trump did.
Honestly, it quite sounds like you're working with a
very skewed and unreasonable version of what the happenings and responsibilities surrounding the Uranium One scandal actually were, with that. Hillary's role in it has been incredibly overhyped by right-wing propagandists for political gain, either way. Still, for a comparison, it might be worth taking a peek at how Flynn, for example, was leading a push to get uranium going out of the US (unlike Uranium One) and going to the Middle East where it would then be under Russian guard and how that push has continued even after he was gone in the Trump Administration. Do I blame that on Trump? Not directly, honestly, though these are the people and kind of people he picks, even when warned that they absolutely shouldn't be put into a position like that.
UNLESS there's a means to remove him (and there isn't) to wind-back the clock ... it's IRRELEVANT. And we need to be honest about the quality and efficacy of the decisions, today.
Unfortunately, there's been waaay too much to hammer him with on an ongoing basis.
Tangentially, holy ****** The CIA and FBI (and The House) were UTTERLY corrupt in that BS investigation, tactics and claims ... wholesale! I have a background in Law Enforcement, in search warrants, investigating crimes, rights of the accused, the criteria, etc etc. From every lawyer in Mueller's bullpen having donated to Democratic candidates, to Strzok's text messages ... yet, supposedly there wouldn't even be the APPEARANCE of prejudice..? Are. you. freaking. KIDDING me..? If someone can't admit that, the conversation's OVER. They are NOT intellectually honest. Why continue..? What a STUNNING miscarriage of due process and rights! That investigation was SO corrupt! I feel confident there WILL be indictments, prosecutions and even convictions. Once the accused admits guilt and is sentenced ... we can continue this conversation. As of now, other than Michael Tracey, virtually NO ONE has shown themselves to be intellectually honest.
Mmm. There's a lot to poke at here, but rather than directly addressing it. I'm going to direct you to
the current Mueller Investigation Thread if you want more direct discussion on that topic. That you're bringing up Strzok's text messages, which were cherry-picked and then fed for release to try to give a wildly different impression than the whole gives, is just one of the things that rather undermines the impact of your statement here.
Gorsuch didn't scare them as much. Kavanaugh changed the odds.
Changed the balance, morelike - but that's moving the goalposts a bit from your original statement. Even so, I was taking that into account when I called your claim BS. With that said, though, your hyperbole about the intended to be private to her Senator sexual assault story serves you very poorly here - and when it comes to valid objections to Kavanaugh, the whole having a history of committing perjury for partisan hack reasons was already enough to be disqualifying were decent standards being applied, quite frankly. The way that the Republicans rammed Kavanaugh down our throats while only allowing potential review of a miniscule fraction of the relevant documents, pre-selected by a Republican was also farcical. Still, again, I poked you in the direction of the Kavanaugh thread, so I think that that's enough of a response here, to try to prevent too much OOC.
I might mention, I'm pro-choice. I'm also an atheist, ANTI-THEIST, who's spent years loving the process of debating how inane people who believe in a god, let alone, religion.
Good for you. Personally, I'm not quite an anti-theist, though I do tend to abhor bad arguments being used to try to offer false legitimacy to beliefs.
If the left calls DATA white supremacist propaganda ...
No.
White supremacists
cherry picking from the data, ignoring a whole bunch of very relevant things, and spinning the cherry picked data to serve their preferred narrative makes it white supremacist propaganda.
Does that make the point clearer?
Blacks being more likely to commit crime, for example? Blacks are overwhelmingly more likely to live in poverty and poverty has a very significant effect on crime levels. Why are they more likely to live in poverty? The single biggest answer is systemic racism and pointed attempts to suppress them for political and financial gain that's lasted... well, it's still ongoing, really, though since the Civil Rights movement, things have gotten quite a bit better than they were. That does end up making it a touchy subject, though, regardless, and one that is far too easily cherry-picked to support whichever narrative one prefers. As for media coverage? There's a fair bit going on there, though I think that this isn't the best place to go too far in depth. I will point out, though, that "poor black man robs white woman on the street, hurting her in the process" and "young gang member shoots other young gang member" are generally less click-baity than "white woman cop shoots and kills unarmed black man in his own home, claiming that she thought that it was actually her home." What the more national media tends to give more time to tends to be particularly egregious, unusual, or otherwise click-baity things. That's one of the hazards of profit-motive being allowed as a driver for news, though.
Again, regardless of our disagreements, I appreciate the manner in which you went about it.
I am ever happy to try to have a civil discussion, as well. I am also appreciative that you are willing to have one.
But then, it might be worth poking back at an old concept. If one cannot disagree with a friend, they're probably not actually a friend in the first place.
For your convenience I can PM you the links if you'd like ...
Mmm. For future reference, there should be a button just above the entry box that looks like a world with a two link chain below it. That button will let you embed the links.
