I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's bumper stickers, the Professor's bow-ties, Wade's sweaters and Rembrandt's vocal warmups that my views do not represent those of Sliders.TV.
I would identify as liberal, but I don't see most mainstream Democrats as liberal. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were quite determined to prop up the banks that crashed the global economy, Biden presents as socially liberal but is economically and legislatively conservative. Again, this is where James Carville Jr. would say that a liberal political party needs to have its ideology as wide as possible to be broadly tolerable by centrists and those on either side -- "majoritarian" -- or it will never acquire sufficient votes to gain political power.
Why have Republicans become a cult that declares their leader cannot be questioned or criticized? Because their gerrymandering and closed ranks have helped them win political power and keep it without any serious challenge to losing it. It's a position of (political) strength.
And this is why I find Carville Jr.'s mentality alarming: I wouldn't want Democrats to simply become oppressors who wear blue sweaters instead of red hats. But he points out, not unreasonably, that if Democrats don't win, then they have nothing but empty, symbolic gestures of process and rhetoric in the House and the Senate.
Slider_Quinn21 and I have a mutual friend. And while our old conservative pal would declare that I do NOT understand him, I suspect that I understand him perfectly. Our acquaintance is an ardent Trump supporter who declares his supreme leader cannot be criticized and declares that anyone who does so is off their meds and needs psychiatric help.
It might be helpful to look at his attitude on a different subject -- and observe his angry declarations that no criticism of MAN OF STEEL or BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN is acceptable, valid or reasonable even when there are at least two flaws that are objectively present. MAN OF STEEL has a climax where Zod and Clark tear up Metropolis and crash buildings into each other, the equivalent of a citywide terrorist attack -- and the ending has people cheerily traipsing through the city with no trauma, grief, loss or even visible damage to the city.
Then with BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN -- Bruce spends a portion of the film befriending Wonder Woman, but when she shows up, Bruce nonsensically says he thought Wonder Woman was Superman's friend. Our acquaintance simply ignored these two errors, declared us wrong to note them -- because he couldn't reconcile the idea that something to which he'd pledged allegiance could have genuine flaws or it would mean that reality does not always reflect his inclinations and preferences and he's spent too many years insisting that it does.
Then there's his consistently declaring that the Marvel movies are "a failure" and that they "don't work." If a 23 film series over 11 years is a failure by this gentleman's standards and measurements, then his metric is deeply flawed.
I am not immune to this myself. I was once infuriated by fellow fans who declared that Quinn in Season 4 was a valid depiction of the character. I pestered poor Slider_Quinn21 for daring to dislike Rey in STAR WARS. I was grossly inappropriate in my absurd contempt for pilight's ideas for rebooting SLIDERS. I was at the time angry that the world and others didn't reflect my inner thinking.
After some time and reflection, I came to realize that if I had nothing open-minded, kind or constructive to say, I should shut the fuck up. Also -- it is vital that we realize our likes and dislikes are not necessarily how the world around us is formed. That we may make mistakes ourselves.
We might have jumped on the wrong bandwagon, might be out of step with reality, might have backed the wrong horse or chosen someone whose conduct is ultimately not in line with the beliefs our political party of choice supposedly represents. I was certain VENOM would crash and burn at box office. I was wrong and it clearly struck a chord with a large audience.
Maybe my distaste for Biden will be proven wrong. I just know that Biden isn't the horse I would personally choose to ride. But I respect that Slider_Quinn21 is not blindly joining Biden's cult (if Biden has one) and sees Biden as (a) flawed but better than the worst and (b) a path forward. I can respect Slider_Quinn21 supporting Biden because Slider_Quinn21 remains capable of criticizing his chosen leader.