American Politics: Discuss and Debate (Page 57 of 57)

You are treating this like a joke. You are fixated on mockery and ridicule.

Trump is trying to have deranged loyalists run the Department of Justice and the FBI and they would most certainly pursue Biden's son for revenge. Biden's family and everyone who's ever opposed Trump -- the Clintons, the Bidens, Jack Smith, Gretchen Whitmer -- they're all going to be targets.

Show some respect and take it seriously.

I was not asking you to respect Republicans; I was asking you to show some respect for how Trump is going to use law enforcement agencies to target Democrats and their families and take the threat seriously instead of treating it like a joke.

I am raising a serious subject of threat and danger, morality and ethics, and you are making light of it.

You are deliberately mischaracterizing a call for serious discussion as a demand to respect Republicans, and your mischaracterization is obvious and ridiculous.

Your LOLs are completely inappropriate for the subject matter at hand. If you can't discuss serious subjects seriously, go somewhere else.

dYou have repeatedly accused anyone who doesn't share your political talking points of being a Trump supporter or a Republican, and now you have done the same with me. I tried to have a sensible, serious discussion about Biden's use of his pardon power, you turned it into another campaign of accusing another poster, in this case, me:

I didn't tell you to respect Republicans. I am absolutely sick of your harassment. You have repeatedly mischaracterized other people's posts, deliberately and willfully.

On multiple occasions, you have falsely accused posters of being racists or Republicans and Trump supporters when they didn't share your talking points of choice or weren't as fervently supportive of the Democratic National Party as you demanded.

You have harassed people for reporting that Kamala Harris lost the election and for not buying into your unproven conspiracy theories.

You are now harassing me by claiming that I demand you respect Republicans when I try to discuss how much threat Biden must see in Trump for Biden to pardon his son Hunter.

This is a clear pattern of harassment in your behaviour.

You have been warned about all your forms of harassment repeatedly, you have been warned that any further harassment in any form will lead to a ban and I am sick of warning you.

This is your final warning, I will not speak to you about it again.

This is yet another example of you trying to weasel out of your behaviour: you focus on your most recent harassment and minimize or deny it while avoiding how you have a lengthy history of harassment.

Your history includes accusing someone with doubts about Biden of being a Trump supporter; accusing someone who disliked a speech from a black person of being racist; accusing someone who reported Kamala Harris' 2024 loss of being ignorant for reporting basic facts of public record; accusing anyone who didn't buy into unproven election denialism of being a Trump supporter; accusing someone trying to have a serious discussion about pardon powers of demanding respect for Republicans.

You have also repeatedly posted election misinformation to intimidate anyone with criticisms of Democrat politicians and campaigns. You falsely insist that Democrats won. You do this deliberately to make people uncomfortable criticizing Democratic strategy and hesitant to say that Kamala Harris lost the election; you want them to fear your misinformation and accusations.

You are a serial harasser. Your defense is to claim that whatever harassment you engaged in most recently didn't happen while ignoring the massive track record of harassment behind you. It is perfectly clear at this point that despite multiple warnings, you have no intention of curtailing this behaviour.

This track record of repeated harassment and intimidation both overt and subtle is why you are no longer welcome to post here.

Out of love, gratitude and respect for Slider_Quinn21, QuinnSlidr's ban will be lifted on Wednesday morning (Eastern Time).

But my mental health really cannot handle any more discussions getting derailed into unproven conspiracy theories and weird accusations of insufficient loyalty to Democrats or fealty to Republicans for the crime of criticizing Democrats and how they lost the election. There probably isn't a single poster here whom QuinnSlidr hasn't accused of treachery or fascism because they didn't buy into his talking points. I only have so much energy in a day and shouldn't be devoting so much of it to monitoring and moderating and addressing this behaviour. I have a day job and my mother needs a lot of attention and care. The only reason I am posting right now is because I am ill at home for the day after my COVID vaccination.

Out of deference to Slider_Quinn21, the ban will be lifted on Wednesday. Because, well, I respect Slider_Quinn21 and I am honour-bound to try things his way even if I foresee only exhaustion and grief waiting for me.

Thank you.  And I hope QuinnSlidr comes back and respects your wishes.

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On Biden.  I really have cut myself off from the news.  No social media.  No news apps.  No cable news.  I just can't stand to think about it.  At Thanksgiving, my family is not very political and no one wanted to talk about it.

But I agree with you that he did what he had to do.  I think Trump is absolutely going to us the Department of Justice to go after his enemies, and I wouldn't be surprised if several of them left the country.  I don't know where they'd go.  I assume they'd go to an extradition country, and I can't imagine any of them protecting a former president over the current one.  And Trump would absolutely try to punish anyone who harbored one of his enemies.

It's a mess.  My only hope is that Trump is content with the power and the title and being out of trouble and just leaves everyone alone.  If his advisors can sway him from doing anything too extreme, maybe we can get through it.  But if he decides to follow through on any of his extreme campaign ideas (or is encouraged to do so), we're in trouble.

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My family and I went to Disney last week.  In EPCOT, there's such a focus on the future and hope and learning from our mistakes.  The front of the park has this futuristic/inspirational instrumental music, and Spaceship Earth (in the iconic EPCOT sphere) is all about how we can build on the past to make a brighter tomorrow.  Other parts of the park are about our natural world, our shared planet and differing cultures, and our imaginations.

On one hand, I was inspired to make the world a better place.  On the other, when my mind would wander, I was just depressed at how things are going and how bad things could get.    And how my kids might have to pay for what's happening now.  And that just sucks.

Thank you, ireactions. May I please calmly state my piece? I want to apologize. There is no anger in this post about you or your actions, ireactions. I understand why you took the actions you did. But, I have a few points I would like to make. And I will move forward with the topic at hand afterward.

I really was not harassing you, ireactions, on Sunday night when I was legitimately trying to start a conversation. I wasn't just saying that to "weasel out of any behavior."

I also apologize for how you took that republican comment. I could have worded it differently when I initially said it, because I meant what I said about not respecting republicans in general. I did not know you would take it that way. I certainly did not mean, however, for you to take it as an attack on you. And that's the absolute truth. I know you are not a republican, and I would never call you that because of that fact alone.

For past actions: For people/usernames I don't know very well, I do not put it past any Trumper to pose as an independent or otherwise obscure their voting party in order to get people to let their guards down, spread vaccine disinformation, and other disinformation and right wing talking points, in order to put up a facade and make people trust them more online. This is because outright being a Trumper doesn't work very well anymore. It's a common tactic in use by these individuals. I can't tell you how many I have been right about this elsewhere online, and they reveal themselves when backed into the corner of an argument. I have lost count. Here, however, I have apologized and owned up to my mistakes towards other posters in the past, and smoothed things over with the posters involved. My right wing radar has always - generally - been accurate in the past down to a few characters because of their speech patterns, but I can be wrong as well, and I am not afraid to admit when I am wrong.

And I meant it.

I'll also admit because of my past actions, yes, I was angry. But not anymore. And this election's aftermath has been difficult to work through. We are on the verge of losing the very fabric of our democracy that our grandfathers fought for because of a worthless fascist demagogue who worships Putin, Kim Jong-Un, and Hitler. And he has his little buddy Leon Muskolini working for him. I'm not very happy about that at all. All threats need to be taken seriously. I know we all feel the same way here.

We have a great fight ahead of us still. We still have to come back together as democrats and put an end to the infighting and focus on the future. We should not leave ourselves to split the party in two or three or more factions in a ton of different ways. That's where the republican party should be going. Not us.

John Pavlovitz explained it perfectly (I included a portion of his write-up at the end of this post). The conclusion of the 107 days of this election was so much more than just "losing an election." It was a loss of hope...of what can be. And what we will not have.

By the way...I really need to take a page out of Slider_Quinn21's book and simply turn off the news entirely for a bit. It just continues to get worse, darker, and even more depressing. I need to focus on more positive things. The sequel is, more often than not, much worse than the original.

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We're Not Going Back. Or Are We? - by John Pavlovitz

https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/we … kor-are-we

This isn’t just a political loss, as devastating as that has been to come to grips with.

It is about so much more than a transfer of power and a Congressional renovation and the legislative ripples that will result.

This is about about one hundred and seven hopeful days, and the fact that there could have been so many more. It is about grieving the what-might-have-beens and the what-never-will-be’s.

I was talking with a dear friend last week and she said to me, “The last one hundred and seven days gave me something that I’d given up on: they gave me hope. Instead of spending the past three months mentally and practically preparing myself for the horrible things that I’d previously resigned myself to, I ended up getting fooled into believing again. That’s what hurts the most.”

She felt she’d gotten distracted by months of hope, only to have it all snatched away in a matter of hours. There’s an emotional whiplash to it all that many of us are living with right now.

And that’s probably the heart of this grieving.

Over one hundred and seven days, many of us went from a place of certain dread and resignation, to the prospect of possibility; and almost reluctantly to an expectation of victory, to anticipatory joy, to preemptive elation—and now we feel like that’s all been squandered time. It feels like a waste.

But I don’t believe the last one hundred and seven days have been wasted at all. I believe they were reminding us just what the hell we live for, and because that is the place we begin. That is the spot from where we start today: they why of our lives.

I can't recommend it for everyone because I think its important to stay apprised on local news and stuff like that.  But it has felt really good to not have to worry about Trump or hear his name.  I don't know if I can keep it up for 4 years, but it has been good for my mental health.

It's also let me take a step back and realize that the truth of the situation will probably be somewhere between Trump being the worst president ever and the best parts of his first term.  I think some of my anxiety came from doom-and-gloom people on the left who, like Republicans, are selling fear.  I've allowed myself to rationalize with myself that maybe it won't be worst case scenario with Trump.  There are certainly horrible things that are going to come out of it (the Supreme Court, global warming, and Trump getting away with all the crimes he's already done), but we have to rely on a couple things:

1. I truly believe Trump is a unique animal, and I don't think enough Republicans want to be a part of burning down the United States.  Naive or not, I'm choosing to believe that if Trump pushes things too far, enough Republicans will stand in his way.  In the past, people have.  Let's hope they continue to.

2. Republicans are really bad at being in control.  I think they're the opposite of Democrats - great at politics but terrible at leading.  I think there will be infighting, I think there will be a disagreements on how far to take things, and I think they don't have even "concepts of a plan" to get anything done.  I think this was all about keeping Donald Trump out of prison, and they accomplished that.  They're a dog chasing a car.  Now what.  Maybe I'm wrong.  The president gets 100 days to get stuff done, and Trump is fairly terrible at getting things done.  He's good at being popular and convincing idiots to support him, but that won't help him now.

Let's see if some his dumber ideas (10% across the board tariffs) get done.  Let's see if he actually rounds up a bunch of immigrants or just does some dog and pony shows at the border.  I think we'll know pretty soon if we're getting Trump the Dictator or Trump the impotent showman.  And for my mental health, I'm choosing to believe that we'll see more of the latter.