Let's take stock of the past two years. First a mob attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, hoping to hang Mike Pence so that he couldn't announce that Donald Trump had lost the 2020 election.
Then six men tried to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
A couple of months ago a guy assaulted an FBI office with an AR-15 rifle because he was mad about the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago.
Today a man broke into Nancy Pelosi's house, but couldn't find her so instead attacked her husband with a hammer.
Election workers have been quitting in droves thanks to threats on their lives from MAGA fans convinced they're stealing votes.
Ditto for MAGA threats against school board officials, librarians, and even the grand marshal of a July 4th parade.
An executive at Dominion Voting Systems was forced into hiding after furious Trump supporters put a million-dollar bounty on his head for allegedly switching votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
All of this is against the background of Trump's infamous campaign chant "Lock her up"; his continuing insistence that the 2020 election was stolen and Democrats need to be punished for it; and the increase of serious threats on right-wing social media.
Am I missing anything?
On the other side, one deluded guy wandered by Brett Kavanaugh's house this summer with vague thoughts of killing him. But he never did anything and shortly afterward called 911 on himself.
Again, am I missing anything?
Yes. Yesterday’s attack on Paul Pelosi. The guy comes straight out of the MAGA swamp.
“Today a man broke into Nancy Pelosi's house, but couldn't find her so instead attacked her husband with a hammer.”
What’s actually missing is the calls to commit violence like this one from Tucker Carlson:
“And to prove it, they can even run mentally defective candidates who can barely speak. And not only expect them to "win," but expect you to accept the outcome no matter how transparently absurd it is. On November 9th, they'll be telling you that John Fetterman got 81 million votes in Pennsylvania, and they'll threaten you to put you in jail if you don't believe it. Why wouldn't they do that? It worked with Joe Biden.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-says-it-would-be-absurd-voters-accept-pennsylvania-election
There was the Bernie-bro that shot Steve Scalise, but that's pretty much it from the left.
That dude is a hero. It’s a shame he missed scumbag scaleeze.
You should be banned for that comment.
Plus 1000
Almost 75 million despicable pigs voted for trump. Maybe you should think more about how to ban them. Scumbag scaleeze is one of them. Fuck him.
You think? When Obama and the US military killed Osama bin laden, lots of folks thought the killers were heroes. Terrorists (and Russians) are killed by military all the time.
yes, you should.
Still in denial… I’ll wait. Eventually you'll see it. Ignoring my comments doesn’t change anything in the real world. You don’t want to acknowledge what’s happening.
That is unacceptgable language ina democratic country.
Somebody tried to knife Zeldin in NY. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/21/zeldin-attacked-knife-campaign-00047342
I wouldn't have remembered it but saw a reference in comments on another blog. Confirmation bias at work, I think, but I"m still sure more violence from the right than the left.
The "knife" was a key chain. According to police, the guy didn't even know who Zeldin was. He was drunk, and presumably decided he objected to someone shouting about politics on the sidewalk. Very understandable.
The assaults on the Portland courthouse. The firebombing of pro-life pregnancy centers. The burning and destruction of a Minneapolis police station. The Carmine's waitress sent to the ER by BLM supporters. Schumer's warnings of "the whirlwind" on the steps of the Supreme Court.
You're missing that everything listed (except the guy stalking Kavanaugh) was *obviously* part of the antifa/BLM/FBI deep state plot to frame and discredit Republicans. /s
Again, am I missing anything?
A Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty today to threatening the life Eric Swalwell.
A Florida man was found guilty for threatening the life of Cory Booker (but that was a couple of years ago).
Hard to keep up.
Has anyone compiled a list of all the GOP pols who use guns in ads, tweets, xmas cards, and other promotional material? A few can be seen here
I'm old enough to remember the Jeb Bush tweet in '16 with a gun and the word "America." That was kind of freaky. Palin, I guess, preceded that. Now it's not uncommon to see GOPers like MTG wield military-grade weapon like she's a one-man army.
This is the party that blames Dems for rising crime.* That takes chutzpah.
* Murder is up, the other 99% of crime cases not so much.
Yes, this began brewing a while ago (Palin was the most high profile one I can remember), but it really began getting ugly when Trump started encouraging his supporters to be physically violent against opponents at his rallies during the 2016 campaign, and regularly retweeting ads where he was portrayed physically attacking Hillary. Since then a whole lot of Republicans and right wing media personalities have gone all in with the violent imagery and rhetoric, if not flat out encouragement of violence against opponents.
Beside those you mentioned, there's also Jim Lamont from Arizona who in his campaign ad early this year appeared shooting at lookalikes of Biden, Pelosi, and Mark Kelly (a truly appalling thing to do given his wife was shot in the head when she was a Congress member).
No guns, but we might throw in Joni Ernst's first campaign in Iowa, where her ad showed turkeys being beheaded behind her.
That was Palin with the turkeys, iirc.
Ernst was the one bragging about cutting the balls off pigs on an Iowa farm.
https://www.politico.com/video/2014/04/joni-ernst-ad-squeal-003396
So hard to keep track.
The name of the hospital where Paul Pelosi underwent brain surgery today:
Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.
Who rights this stuff?
In this case, Mark Zuckerberg, in exchange for $75M.
The second American civil war started on 1/6 or maybe even before... Charlottesville or the summer 2020 protests?
Our civil war won't be armies battling in the fields or streets. It will be more like today's assassination attempt, some organized action like the "protest" at the Michigan capitol, and the anti-vax protests in Toronto, and 1/6. Of course, one can imagine some of these various mass shootings are also part of the war.
I'd even suggest that some of the increased gang violence is part of this war. Armed drivers taking shots at each other on the roads too! Seemingly disconnected actions coming together to terrorize the country.
And the media and political class keep throwing gasoline on the fires. Good luck.
"Crazyface Pelosi."
That's one of the Dems who Jim Lamon, GOP candidate for Senate from Arizona, fired his gun at in this ad. It's only fun and games until the bloodshed.
https://youtu.be/ZOb1AXX5hsU
Bad aim. I hadn't planned to post this as a reply here.
Just made reference to this one in my response to you above. Hadn't scrolled down enough yet.
I'm still amazed Obama served eight years and made it out alive.
SNL did a skit many years ago about the first Black President--who also picked Dan Quayle to be his vice-president so he wouldn't be assassinated.
What's missing any response from the political media to hold the Republicans accountable for promoting violence against Democrats. Instead, they will make every effort to deny any connection & will ignore or condemn anyone who suggests that there is a connection.
I don't think I need or want a "response from the political media". They aren't the police, after all.
They might blather on a bit about 'what we need to address is mental health' with no one reminding them that they do everything they can to prevent that.
See! Both sides!!
Not attempting to diminish the horrific and completely irresponsible rhetoric on the right that is spawning this violence, but are we forgetting the entire summer of 2020?
Just here in Seattle:
* CHOP which descended into dystopian horror with self appointed armed security threatening anyone they didn't like (local businesses, unsympathetic reporters, etc) and ended when these security people shot-up a car killing one young black man and gravely wounding another. After covering up the crime, they all disappeared.
* Protests late at night targeting individual council members homes
* A protest lead to the Mayor's personal house -- a location that was federally protected because of threats to her life because she used to be a prosecutor
* Several attempts to trap and murder police in their precinct, by sealing doors and then burning the building down.
* Police attacked with rocks, fireworks, and molotov cocktails.
In Portland Oregon the Federal Courthouse was attacked for weeks -- people trying to force their way into the building and attacking with molotovs and other burning debris. Additionally several police stations (and IIRC a police union hall) were attacked.
This is just a small sampling of the violence and intimidation that took place that Summer.
And of course pretty much all of the Republicans that are fanning the flames of this current wave of insanity were stridently critical of the violence in the Summer of 2020.
What does the CHOP turning out to be a mess have to do with politicians being attacked? And please point me to the evidence that there were several attempts to trap and murder police in the precinct. I live in Seattle so I can remember 2020 pretty clearly.
Exactly. And where were Dems' and "liberal" media's support such violent actions?
.....silence....
Don't bother him while he gets his info from his Russian troll feed.
The difference is that actual elected Republican officials and so-called conservative media commentators on established media platforms such as websites or TV networks are actually formenting the violence. Whether you like it or not Democrats (not talking about Greens or DSA) actual Democratic Party members or mainstream liberals are not doing so.
None of your examples really make sense in this context as they were not political violence.
You need to be careful with this. You're implying equivalence of property damage to attempted murder.
Shooting at Steve Scalise was attempted murder. Is that now officially a non-event?
This is just a small sampling of the violence and intimidation that took place that Summer.
Actually, that's not a small sampling at all but describes the bulk of what went went on. The PACNW has long been a magnet for radicals. And, very definitely in the case of Portland, the violence was actively stoked by Bill Barr's DOJ—they were hoping to foment unrest to create a law and order backlash to rescue the Trump presidency. It almost worked.
I spent the entire summer of 2020 in Seattle, for what it's worth, so I think I have a reasonable handle of what went down.
Social conservatism is inherently terroristic, it's about excluding all who aren't you.
And in this case it's uniquely focusing the substrain of low-end douchebags who cultivate the notion that they're outlaws, demi-criminals who spend the day stewing over anything they can think of as signs of disrespect.
Again, am I missing anything?
Huge increase in antisemitic violence and antisemitic rhetoric, the demonization of trans people everywhere, and the mass violence against women in the form of anti-abortion laws.
These aren't separable issues, they're all attacks on humanity.
👍👍👍👍👍
Why go back only two years? We overlook Robert Jay Mathews, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse - not to mention how ever many violent perpetrators have been involved in abortion clinic bombings and murders...
A proper list of these turds would overflow a sewer pond.
Right. Jared Lee Loughner, who shot up Gabby Giffords and a bunch of other people in Tucson in 2011 and killed several of them.
And now nearing three years ago, in the spring of 2020, that time when a bunch of open-carrying dudes took up positions around the Michigan legislature's visitor gallery when it was in session.
George Zimmerman was not acting based on political beliefs.
His undoubted racism and the support that he received from people on the right signify that it's likely that he is one of them.
For some reason, the pipe bombs (one each outside the DNC and RNC) on the night before Jan 6 haven't been retained in our memories.
Those of us who have walked in the area to pay our respects to Congressmen Cummings and Lewis in recent years haven't forgotten those bombs or the fact that the guity person remains unidentified and free.
Some day we’ll really need that anti-fascist military. Maybe we can recruit Ukrainians after we help them conquer Russia. 😂
The Whitmer kidnapping attempt occurred several months before J6 and was really an omen of just how bad things were going to get.
"Am I missing anything?"
It depends on your objective. If it's to demonstrate that the radicals on the Right are worse than the radicals on the Left, then no; you've made your point. If it's to raise concern about how bad it can get, then maybe, but it's bad enough already so what's the point. If it's to identify action that has a hope of turning this thing around, then yes. And I have a suggestion.
You can't solve a problem unless you understand it's cause. To understand the cause of social discord, understand this: The line that separates good and bad is not between conservatives & progressives, Christianity & Islam, science & religion, rich & poor, educated & uneducated, or capitalism & socialism. The line is between those that are willing to treat others with respect and those that aren't. Full stop.
If you're tempted to call me a fool, go ahead but you're wasting your effort. Do your homework and tell me something I don't already know.
Also, I am not making the bothsiderism argument. That's legit when one side is respectful and the other side is not. Otherwise, it's just the Left wanting to keep its license to be selfish while suspending the Right's, to which they reply, "Why? Because we're better at it than you?"
And I'm not saying their behavior should be enabled. The difference between respect and enabling is the same as the difference between up and down. And the difference between respect and retribution is the same as the difference between up and down. That is to say ... enabling and retribution are two sides of the same coin.
I offered what I believe is the necessary action with a recent post, which is to stop thinking that Christianity and capitalism is bad and start calling out the radicals on the Right for the hypocrites they are, which they are when they use those terms for selfish purposes.
What am I missing? Maybe there's a better question. Does anybody have a better idea? Complaining doesn't count.
The line is between those that are willing to treat others with respect and those that aren't. Full stop.
Glad to see you finally saw the light. So how do we get these far-right MAGA election deniers to respect us? How do we get them to respect the rights of people who happen to be LGBTQ+? I assure you I'm all ears.
You are asking the right question. The answer is in every legitimate religion and philosophy, including science. But I think the MAGA crowd associate themselves more with Christianity and capitalism.
So, a Christian is someone that follows the commandments of Jesus Christ, or so you would think. He's quoted in the Gospel over and over again saying that Christianity = respect. Just for example: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12 NIV). That is the polar opposite of "I'm better than you because you're different than me."
And a capitalist is someone that follows the philosophy of Adam Smith, which he laid out in his book, A Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). He uses the concept of "sympathy" to explain his theory. He defines sympathy by saying that it “operated through a logic of mirroring, in which a spectator imaginatively reconstructs the experience of the person he watches.” I don't know about you but, to me, that sounds a lot like he was in agreement with Jesus.
I could go on but this is just to show that I'm not making this stuff up.
You didn't answer my questions: How, specifically, do we get these Christian Nationalist types to respect us? How do we get them to respect LGBTQ+ people, people of other faiths, other colors? Don't put us off with vague bromides.
The priority at the moment should be to keep the Republican party from controlling either house of congress. You're not going to change a MAGA mind with a rational argument. But the Republicans advantage is that persuadable voters are leaning Right because their concern about the economy and crime exceeds their concern about social issues.
The message should be that there is one issue, and that is the question of whether it's better to vote for the candidate that cares only about special interests or the candidate that cares about everyone's interest. The former is bad for the economy, bad for crime, bad for social issues, and bad for everyone, even the special interests they support - they get a short term benefit and a long term detriment when things get bad because of the bad idea that is currently driving their behavior. That's what's happening in Russia.
I don't have all the answers, but if that message is out there, then my bad. I missed it. And if it isn't out there, then don't complain. Help me get it out there.
Getting that idea into everyone's head is a short term and long term goal. The conversation should be leading voters to realize that putting anyone that don't care about some of the people they'll be leading - because of their faith, color, sexual orientation, material wealth, or whatever - makes everything worst. Whereas caring about everyone makes everything better.
The short term goal is to get that idea in the heads of enough persuadable voters to save democracy. The long term goal is to get it in everyone's head, at which point whatever remnants there are of any fundamentalist ideology - to the extent that it still exists - is a powerless fringe.
I didn't finally see the light. I look for respectful ways to get through to people that I think aren't being respectful. If someone is being disrespectful, and you tell them they're being disrespectful, they'll think that you're being disrespectful. It takes a real conversation to work that out. Starting with respect on both sides doesn't make it easy, just easier.
There are different kinds of respect. One can grant another the right to live his/her/their life as they wish, so long as their actions do no harm to others, respecting their right to be left in peace in return. That is less than the respect I have for those who actively work to improve the lives of others.
If people can live their life as they wish without any conflict of interest, there's no issue. The question is how to deal with the inevitable conflicts of interest. The two options are zero sum and greater than zero sum, aka respect. Respect is when the two parties work together to resolve the conflict in favor of their combined interest, which is to say their relationship.
You act as if we haven't called them out for their very obvious hypocrisy.
Not much point in continuing to reward continuing incendiary words & deeds with respectful words, turning the other cheek, & staking out the high ground, as recommended by Michelle Obama - as I certainly experienced from dealing with now--former friends' casually forwarded Christian-Republican emails, starting in 2015.
And encouraging conversation with those in another "silo" when half of the conversation constitutes blatant bigotry & lies is futile.
I understand your argument. What I don't understand is how, just for example, a group can refer to themselves as Christian, violate the most fundamental principle of Christianity, and get off Scot-Free. Maybe it's me not paying enough attention.
Just for example, there is a group of Georgia voters that call themselves Christians, say they love and worship a guy that says 'do unto others as you would have others do unto you,' and that they're not voting for the candidate that says 'do unto others as you would have others do unto you.' Instead their voting for the guy that says 'do as I say and not as I do.' How do they make sense of that? Is it 'thanks Jesus for your advice but no thanks ... we'll take it from here'?
And their rational is that women have to listen to the government, and not listen to Jesus when he tells them that their relationship with God is direct, and not through some "God's law" expert (ref: Matthew 22-34-40).
In other words, don't just call them hypocrites, be specific.
Don't tell them they're wrong to be originalists. Be the originalist and explain to them what that means.
Don't tell them they're wrong about the primacy of God's law. Tell them that there is God's law, there is the scientific principle,* and the two are different phrases that have the same meaning.
* The scientific principle involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. Nowhere does it say that the observer's cognitive assumptions get a free pass.
The scientific principle is not the scientific method. The former is independent of context and the latter is either a means of adhering to the principle in specific contexts, or it is a means of violating that principle. Very few of the people with science degrees I know understand that, nor do they want to because it implies that you have be responsible, and that tends to complicate things. Fortunately, whoever wrote the 1st paragraph of Wikipedia's article on the scientific method understands the difference between science and science in name only.
Apologies for the rant if it appears that I got too carried away.
You are mistaken, the radical on the Right are all in for White Male Supremacy - Christianity and Capitalism are simply the vehicles they choose to ride in. No amount of "being nice" or "being respectful" will change their minds - remember we already tried that in 2009-2017 and things only got worse.
If I'm mistaken, explain where I've made my mistake in language I can understand. In other words, understand what I've said and point to the flaw in my logic.
I'm saying be respectful and do something different than has been done in the past. I'm not saying be nice. Nancy Pelosi was respectful when she was asked in a press conference if she hated Trump, and she was not being nice.
I get it that what I'm saying is an order of magnitude more complicated than a tweet, but it's also an order of magnitude less complicated than the process you went through to pass the knowledge test that granted you your beginners driver's license.
One piece of advice is to consider that your concern relates to the discomfort that comes with admitting to yourself that there's a flaw in your world view. If so, welcome to the club.
Again: What, specifically, do you suggest that hasn't already been tried? _Specifically_
There's not much more I can say in this format except maybe to say that respect applies in every context and is different in every context.
I work hard on this every day and what that's taught me is that all the good in the world comes from people taking action to be above the line when the opportunity presents itself, and the source of all the bad is doing something else instead.
My hope is that there's something in what I've said that will give some reader an idea for a positive action.
Thank you for your questions.
I don't know about you, but after reading all of this man's posts, it isn't clear to me that he even understands what he posts - or how any of the rest of us have attempted to deal with the rightwingers.
His comments about Pelosi being "nice" or not seem particularly unclear, even strange. And there is ertainly little reason to direct blame at her for the verbal attacks on her, when she has shown so much more restraint than seems possible.
This one sounds like a souped-up ELIZA.
Republican charity baseball game 6/14/2017?
Guys in fatigues just hanging by ballot drop boxes in Arizona. Just getting coffee, no intimidation intended I'm sure.
You forget, this isn't the first time the Pelosi residence has been attacked. One was from abortion activists, and another was "Cancel Rent!," "UBI!," and "We Want Everything!" vandalism.
That's not on the same level as assault, no. Still, I gotta wonder, what is it about San Fransicko that attracts the crazies?
While I don't disagree with Kevin's summary, it would be nuts to think only one side will resort to violence as the rule of law breaks down. Right-wingers seem to think they're the only ones with guns; they'll discover how wrong they are.
It's a pity Paul Pelosi didn't have one.
Ok, I'll bite. It's not a pity at all Mr. Pelosi didn't possess a gun. I'm very sorry he was assaulted. And I'm glad he survived. But wishing he had possessed a firearm feeds into the intellectually and morally bankrupt notion that America is safer because it's the most heavily armed country on the planet. In fact, just the opposite is true: the generally vastly less well-armed other rich countries are all substantially less violent than the United States.*
(I do think, though, that the country has clearly received a wake up call in terms of broadening and strengthening the security measures protecting government officials and their families.)
*For the record I don't personally have a problem with firearms ownership by responsible citizens, provided it's very tightly and prudently regulated. So, on one level, sure, maybe we'd have seen a better outcome for Paul Pelosi had he been armed; though the man is in his 80s, so that's far from clear.
The attacker was clearly seen by the police as forcefully wresting that hammer from Paul Pelosi's hands & then fracturing his skull with it.
And you would have preferred a similar outcome with a loaded gun?
Also, extremist conservatives believe we're already in a state of civil war. Mainline conservatives aren't far behind them either.
I'm going to ignore the "why" except to state that this goes far beyond Donald Trump (the most obvious symptom of the larger disease). What I want to focus on is where to go from here.
The way I see it, liberals can fight that civil war, likely lose, and send America and maybe the world into a dark hole that we might never recover from. OR, liberals can de-escalate - back off the rhetoric, abuses, and shit they cause and invite conservatives to do the same. Yes, conservatives are worse, but this means it's easier for liberals to take the high ground and convince the other side to de-escalate too. Yes, the extremists won't, but they lose much of their power if the mainstream conservative doesn't support them anymore.
And yes, liberals will lose. Liberals may have guns here and there (good luck with that, with your antigun laws), but conservatives hoard them (likely the reason for the antigun laws). Conservatives are also much more likely to either be able to convert their semi-auto weapons to full-auto, or know someone who can. Conservatives aren't afraid of how assault rifles look, either. And the extremist conservatives aren't afraid of a little "ethnic cleansing".
73.6 million people voted for Trump. Let that sink in. If you don't find some way to coexist with them, America is finished, and everything you've tried to accomplish will be for naught.
De-escalate how, though? To begin with, Donald Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy are still mostly in place, and there is no indication that economic inequality is declining in the United States. Conservatives are unhappy despite, or perhaps even because, they are getting the economic regime they want.
Democrats could have responded to McConnell's games with the Supreme Court by increasing the number of judges on the court. Probably wisely, they decided to de-escalate instead. So that may be an example of what you are suggesting, but you wrote your comment anyway, which indicates that more de-escalation is needed. The problem is that a consistent policy of de-escalation rewards bad behavior by the political right. How much de-escalation can Democrats do before it becomes self-defeating by just encouraging more bad behavior?
There are a few examples that come to mind.
Education: Anything that interferes with a parent's right to control their children's education is going to get them spitting mad. "Don't Say Gay": this law was aimed mostly at schoolchildren who shouldn't be taught this at young ages (and with some exceptions, wasn't), but was branded this anyway. CRT gets them going too, as it points out differences in skin color and makes people responsible for the actions of their ancestors. Forcing biological males to be allowed into girl's restrooms and locker rooms? They hate that, and people like Lia Thomas aren't doing you any favors in trying to calm them down. And those sexual assaults that kept repeating in Virginia? That's the stuff of nightmares for conservatives.
Attacks on guns: frankly, there are far more lethal guns than assault rifles, so it doesn't make sense on either side, but they despise the fearmongering in this. The existence of "may issue" states has pissed them off for some time; states like New York that continually buck the new SCOTUS rulings especially draw their ire. And divisive rhetoric like Obama's "they cling to their guns and religion" doesn't help matters either. The bottom line for conservatives is that their personal weaponry needs to keep pace with infantry in the Army, so that just the existence of said personal weaponry keeps the government from descending into tyranny. This is also why the liberal reaction to school shootings falls flat with conservatives; they are eyeing "the bigger picture".
Attacks on religion: I'll start with Obama's quote again, "clinging to guns and religion", as a good way to earn the spite of every conservative. I'll even go as far as to opine that this divisiveness (on this and other issues) opened up the path for Donald Trump to become president. Every time a conservative is forced to bake a wedding cake for a ceremony they object to, or deal with lawsuits, etc etc, they take note. In many places, the days of "we can withhold service for any reason" are gone, and with the exception of monopolies (where, if service was withheld, you'd have nowhere else to go to) they despise this. Then there's abortion, or as conservatives call it, "baby murder". They've despised Roe v Wade from its inception, and will fight tooth and nail to see it never reinstated. They'd love to go further, but a nationwide ban is just as unlikely as a nationwide pro-abortion law and they know it. But make them listen to people saying how glad they are to have had an abortion, or talk about partial-birth or even post-birth abortions, and they might puke on the spot.
Energy: liberals have mostly won the argument about climate change, which is great, but they haven't won the argument about what to do about it. Conservatives don't want to sacrifice their standard of living to fix the problem (from what I've seen, neither do independents). This means we need consistent domestic oil production able to meet our needs until renewables can replace it all. Killing the production before the renewables in place is a big no-no. This includes the transportation and refining infrastructure. When Biden killed Keystone XL on day 1, he pissed off every single conservative and they have not stopped hammering the point home with independents: Biden is not energy friendly, the US is no longer a net-oil-exporter (yet was under Trump), and that was reflected in gas prices before Putin invaded Ukraine. Every time you go to a pump and see one of those "I did that" stickers with Biden's face on it, with his hand pointing at the price, a conservative did that. They're so pissed off about it that they don't even care that they are vandalizing property.
"Mostly peaceful protests": When someone brings up Jan 6 to them, they brings this up as their form of "whataboutism". As far as they're concerned, Jan 6 was "targeted" away from civilians, and it was the BLM riots that were terrorist in nature because innocent civilians were attacked.
What to do about all this? Meet them on neutral ground. Pick one issue to push, listen to their objections, and help them reason out why it won't be so bad. Then police that issue so that the crazies don't give any reason to alarm them. Don't ever just dismiss or ignore their objections. Once that issue is mainstream, move to the next. Will this slow progress down? Absolutely. But it will also avoid war.
Personally, I'd start with climate change; after all, nothing else matters if we lose the planet. Solar panels are down in price enough that it makes sense in most areas to put them up. You can stress the cost savings, and how government can help get that going for everybody. Suggest a tax on gas guzzlers that provides a rebate on hybrids. Point to Texas of all places, and all the wind turbines they've put up; they reach all the way to the border of liberal New Mexico - and then abruptly stop. Some of the concrete alternatives are not quite price-comparable regarding the initial costs, but the long-term savings make up that difference, and then some. Above all, don't threaten the oil supply; that would be making their lives worse, not better.
Climate change is a symptom. It's okay to treat a symptom, but that one's not going anywhere until we cure the disease, the disease is hypocrisy, and the cure is that we act like real human beings by demanding respect for each other from ourselves and form each other.
That's hard to do because it makes you vulnerable, but that's the point. A person that is respectful pays a price in the short term and everyone gains in the long term. A person that gains in the short term by not being respectful loses in the long term along with everyone else. If we become respectful of each other, addressing the climate crisis goes from being impossible to possible.
Don't feed this particularly loathsome troll.
Won't bother to respond to all of the above, but by mentioning "And those sexual assaults that kept repeating in Virginia, " are you referring to the TWO occurrences in Loudoun County schools?
Your litany is just as over-the-top as the RW media - referencing their hatred of just about everything but themselves as if their hatred is justified (& Christian!), while continuing to accuse the rest of us as "hating trump."
We quite naturally fear & dislike such irrational & bigoted people & those of us who live among them (& can't afford to move) do not want to experience additional incidents of someone lurking in the dark to express hatred of me for a bumper sticker, shrieking at me due to my wearing apparel, or trying - in vain - to block me from voting.
You're on the wrong team for excusing their antidemocratic words & deeds as if their denial of OUR rights is just fine & dandy.
Put down the crack pipe dude. There weren't "so many sexual assaults in Virginia". One student in Loudon County Schools, a heterosexual male who does not wear woman's clothing was a troubled youth who sexual assaulted fellow female students on two occasions - while awaiting trial for the first he was transferred to a different HS where he assaulted his sometime girlfriend after she refused to have sex with him in the girl's bathroom on the day the guys wore skirts as a stunt for Powerpuff Football day where girls played in a football game.
OMG no it didn't work for Neville Chamberland and it didn't work for America in 1860. I will not surrender to the darkness. You can't be the boss of me, so sorry not if that hurts delicate conservative men's feelings.
80 million of us voted for Joe Biden. But in your view, ‘conservatives’ have no obligation to find a way to coexist with us? The burden is entirely on us? Why?
Was it Ann Coulter who said, of non-Republicans, 'These people need to know they can be killed.'?
What about school shootings?
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/28/us/st-louis-school-shooting-friday/index.html
Couldn't pass a background check, but can buy a gun privately. Family called cops on him, but he could legal own a gun--no red flag laws.
Thanks Republicans...
Yeah, you're missing something. The vast majority of murders, rapes and violent crimes are committed against ordinary citizens by the Democrats' core constituency in Democrat-controlled states.
If I'm a fox (pun intended) wanting to get into your hen house, and I know that you'll let me into your hen house if I put a letter 'R' beside my name, I'm going to put a letter 'R' beside my name. And when you ask me what happened to all your hens, I'll belch and blame it on the Democrats knowing that you'll believe me.
"Weird" then that the majority of states with the highest violent crime rates are R-controlled and that the majority of states with the lowest violent crime rates are D-controlled.
Untrue, & you know it.
I notice you were careful to avoid any mention of white-collar crime. Why the studied omission?
Caitlyn Jenner on Fox saying the attack on Paul Pelosi was his own fault for not having better security and we shouldn't make this a partisan issue.
Blaming the victim is another form of false flag, something hardwired into baboon colony DNA.
Indeed sundry MAGAs tried to blame Nancy Pelosi for January 6th, based on similar "reasoning."
You missed all the threats and intimidation of public health personnel during the pandemic. That was the MAGAts for the most part as well.
Am I missing anything?
The synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh a few years back. Not MAGA per se, but hard right wing/neonazi. While we're on the subject, there's Kanye West's (Ye's) implied threat of antisemitic violence ("deathcon 3 on the Jewish people") a few days ago and the GOP Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee's openly antisemitic rhetoric, as well. Indeed Trump himself has used highly questionable rhetoric with antisemitic overtones, including within the last couple of weeks. MAGA and neonazi sentiment aren't literally identical, but they're very first close cousins.
Theodore Kaczynski--The most famous incel and mostly on the left but really 'incel' is probably the biggest factor.
I think most conservatives view all 'race' riots as a manifestation of left violence and intimidation. When Biden said rioting is bad after Kenosha, he was dragged by left activists as dispiriting the base. Just covered on NPR. Now, if you are on the left and you even hint that maybe the police are not the cause of most black people's experience of violence, well then, you support institutional racism. So left politicians are quiet during these periods even though the aftermath (less police) is quantifiably WORSE for black residents in terms of violence.
But the left does not have a mainstream industry competing for the best violent rhetoric. The right wing media is in a capitalism-styled competition for ever-increasing politically violent rhetoric. More clicks, baby!
Show, don't tell. Because all I see you doing is regurgitating talking points that were well past their sell-by in 90's.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0735648X.2019.1652921
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/17/1129402144/the-persuaders-examines-the-front-line-fight-for-hearts-minds-and-democracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
Deliberate obtuseness is not your friend. I won't go into details about the dodginess of your sources because you clearly want this to devolve into a he said/she said (would it kill you to come up with a new strategy?) No I'm quoting it so that you have no (or at least less) wiggle room:
Souces? Now. Jeeze you guys brew weak tea.
You know SOV when you are at a party, talking at people, and everyone keeps excusing themselves to get more cheese dip? I wonder how it feels to realize there is no cheese dip at that party?
Fuck off, you piece of shite troll.
Ha! You know the feeling!
Perhaps if you used all caps people would get your point.
Oh and 'shite' are you trying to sound British and interesting? Good luck with that...
BTW, you commented on my post and ignored my response so I think you are the troll.
Dateline, Arlington, VA, June 14, 2017: Bernie Sanders volunteer tries to murder Republican members of Congress and nearly succeeds in killing GOP Whip, Steve Scalise.
Dateline, Rochester, NY, July 20, 2022: David Jakubonis, 43, attacks Republican Gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin with an edged weapon.
Yeah, you're missing that from a conservative perspective, Antifa committed plenty of violence, but liberals just say they don't exist and aren't a thing (which apparently absolves them off all guilt). Pretty cool setup you guys have given yourself in that regard. The issue is that even though you may believe that, conservatives don't, so there's the rub.
Quick question(s) 🙋 for stupidquestion: Does belief trump evidence? And if so, is that why you never present any evidence?
SHAME on you, Kevin, for not solemnly announcing that "Both sides do it." Haven't you learned yet? It's not because of Donald Trump and his MAGA cult; it's because we're "so divided as a nation," and we just need to stop being that way.
Yesterday Judy Woodruff was asking David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart to weigh in on the Paul Pelosi hammer attack, and she finished with "It's just so hard to understand!" I found myself shouting at the TV, "No, it's not! It's EASY to understand! It's Trump!"