I just finished about a 2 week back and forth with a GOP/Fox supporter who posts on FoxNews. He doesn't support Trump, but I can't tell you how many times he accused me of hating Trump so much that nothing I say can be trusted or believed. He acts as if I'm the issue...not Trump. He thinks that the Durham report proves that the entire Russia investigation was a political hit job and chastises me for thinking that the weaponization of the government is not the actual story with Trump.
In his defense, he's done his homework, but his homework didn't include watching the 1/6 hearings or reading the Mueller report.
To your point...I tried to tell him that if he was going around posting on FoxNews and attacking someone like me who is simply trying to share some facts/truth on FoxNews....then he's just as complicit as the Trump loving MAGAs.
It didn't end well...although it was short of really derogatory name calling.
I suspect most Republicans are good, decent people in the way they conduct their personal lives. But that is also true of most of the supporters of Hitler & Mussolini. I think it is hard for us to acknowledge that the Republican Party is full bore fascist now because we don't see the darkness in people we know.
I didnтАЩt see it back then, but I have been seeing a lot of it recently. People that I have known for years have lost their damn minds, and it has been quite an eye-opener. ЁЯШ│
Me too. Although I donтАЩt always agree with the Bulwark team, I appreciate the lively discussion, as well as their insights into what makes the GOP tick.
I was a registered Republican in a well off suburban NJ county that is governed by Republicans. Most are really decent folks. But I keep wondering how can they live with their party.
My son, among others, has observed that humans are still essentially apes, and that party affiliation is at its heart tribalism. Even when the tribal leader is cruel and selfish in treatment of the tribe, when under threat, tribal members instinctively defend the tribe and by extension the tribal strong man. It took humanity centuries to come up with the concept of governance by consent of the governed, and we all to easily slip back into the tribal mentality.
Isn't that the current crux of the problem? Decent folks who are being seriously mislead by conservative media and the GOP.
The kool-aid runs deep...because you just can't discuss anything with them without it ending up that our opinions are all tainted because we just simply hate Trump.
I'm not sure how they can't figure out WHY we hate Trump OR that we can still be mature adults and manage the emotional right side with the left side of our brains.
NJ-2 Democrat here, represented by full-maga republican and Jan. 6 electoral-vote objector Jeff Van Drew. I keep wondering how he and his supporters can live with themselves.
I am still a registered Republican, because there really isn't any point (where I live) to change registration. It isn't worth the effort of the paperwork.
At the local level, there are zero Democrats running for office. Zero. It is always a battle between various flavors of R or even further rightwards independents. At the state level I vote D--which has some effect as my district incorporates part of Las Vegas, which is heavily D.
I have zero interesting in being directly involved in politics. I definitely do NOT have the personality for it and I lack driving ambition... and running on the local level as a D here is a gateway to losing.
I have little patience for fools and less patience for pretending that I do have it.
I have a different sense - for me, why can't the county organization simply depart from then national org. Most of these guys are relic of the sort of Republicanism that was around with Ike.
Sorry but unless you have spoken to Republican office holders in Morris County, you are talking out of your hat. While I despair of what is going on, I remain unable to understand why there is not a revolt against the national party. Christie is a lying fuck (he was a county official in the early 1990s. But Bolton is not like the locals who manage county affairs well - so the levy taxes, hire and fire the county employees, manage county assets etc. No big ideas here. Bolton always wanted a place at the table to national affairs- well you need to sell your soul for that. But a county official who is in charge of elections - well here she has behave well.
Sorry but your comment was to disabuse my of my misconceptions. You have not. While the GOP morphed into what the Southern Dems were, in places like CT, NY, NJ the roots of the GOP were not in the Southern Strategy. Our GOP were much more old money etc.
I should add that, regarding the above incident, Secular did an end run around JVL and reposted his tirade the next day on Morning Shots, whining about how he had been mistreated by JVL and JVL just wouldn't listen to reason.
If you choose to engage with him, understand that he is looking for an argument and takes anything other than a "Like" as all the provocation he needs.
A word of advice, Terry...ignore him. You'll note that he never posts on The Triad. JVL yanked one of his rants, telling him "No. Do better." Apparently he is incapable of that and either has chosen to no longer participate over there, or JVL has made him persona non grata.
Sorry but as late as 2000 in NJ we had folks like Marge Roukema who were of the old sort. She was manhandled by Dick Cheney (lost committee assignment) so left Congress. Agreed that the party has changed but I know some of these people and they are closer to Bush I than Trump. so it saddens me.
Yes. I've been to some post-church lunches on Sundays when the good Christians in attendance, comfortable with the crowd they were keeping, had some very disturbing things to say about Blacks, Jews, and others. It is a large part of what led me to estrangement from the church community -- not necessarily religion, rather its practitioners, whose Bibles carry no guarantee against fundamental human prejudices of both the mind and the mouth.
I just don't understand how good, people can look at Trump and how he debases women and rips people off and openly mocks people and say that's person admire and want to be President.
God bless the Righteous Gemstones. Just watched the latest installment.
Haven't been tripping like this since Green Acres. A lot of good stuff: biting satire, monster trucks, blasphemy, class-struggle, innuendo, and over-the-top outbreaks of violence. Guilty pleasures? Certainly.
But this is the week that indulgence turned a comedy corner.....
Five simple words: prolonged full-frontal male nudity.
From "In the beginning..." to "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." KJV, no less. Spent an average of over an hour nearly every morning before getting ready for work. "Numbers" was quite the slog. Leviticus was just bizarre.
Took me the better part of a year. How many people do you know who would read "Cujo" or "Pet Sematary" or "The Stand" by cherry picking a sentence here, a paragraph there and try to convince you they had "read" any of them?
"Teachings of Jesus?" The Jesus that said," тАжif anyone slaps you on the right cheek turn to him the other one also." Or the Jesus that said," Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." Or the the Jesus who said," Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.тАЭ
So many conflicting, contradictory passages in a book written by bronze age desert nomads and later then Hellenized descendants. What are actually his teachings (rhetorical - sects have been fighting over this for as long as people have been writing stories about him)?
My point is that you can find anything you want in those books to support nearly any position you want to take.
The so-called authors of the Book were uniformly illiterate. His teachings were presumably handed down word -of-mouth through genertaions until a literate person was able to put it to paper (papyrus?). How much distortion occurred over that interval of time?
тАЬDo not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own householdтАЭ (Matthew 10:34-36).
I did not. I have seen Christians use this verse to support their militancy or actions that would directly contradict the other two (love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek).
There's another story in the gospels (Mark 11:12-25) where Jesus kills a fig tree because he was hungry and the tree didn't have any figs because it was out of season. Again, not peaceful, cheek turning Jesus.
Have been for years now. There was a time to be in the party but apart from Trump, but when the party stood by him for his first impeachment, that should've been the final straw. It laid out very clearly what the rest of us knew, that the president was an amoral creature who respected no law that could restrain his power.
Basically defectors past that point generally have been of the Liz Cheney/Kinzinger flavor where they only turned after MAGA trespassed directly against them.
"Basically defectors past that point generally have been of the Liz Cheney/Kinzinger flavor where they only turned after MAGA trespassed directly against them."
Let's not forget about Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, who called BS and bowed out as soon as Trump came on the stage. OK, granted they knew they couldn't be re-elected while publicly stating the emperor was naked, but at least they didn't pull a Stefanik.
Not to put too fine a point on it: anyone who is still a member of the gop is complicit.
I just finished about a 2 week back and forth with a GOP/Fox supporter who posts on FoxNews. He doesn't support Trump, but I can't tell you how many times he accused me of hating Trump so much that nothing I say can be trusted or believed. He acts as if I'm the issue...not Trump. He thinks that the Durham report proves that the entire Russia investigation was a political hit job and chastises me for thinking that the weaponization of the government is not the actual story with Trump.
In his defense, he's done his homework, but his homework didn't include watching the 1/6 hearings or reading the Mueller report.
To your point...I tried to tell him that if he was going around posting on FoxNews and attacking someone like me who is simply trying to share some facts/truth on FoxNews....then he's just as complicit as the Trump loving MAGAs.
It didn't end well...although it was short of really derogatory name calling.
We don't want a one-party political landscape.
Trump should just form the maga party so it's distinguishable from GOP and Dems.
We only have one party that believes in democracy right now. Of course I'd rather have 2! But we don't need a semi-fascist second party.
semi ?
I suspect most Republicans are good, decent people in the way they conduct their personal lives. But that is also true of most of the supporters of Hitler & Mussolini. I think it is hard for us to acknowledge that the Republican Party is full bore fascist now because we don't see the darkness in people we know.
I didnтАЩt see it back then, but I have been seeing a lot of it recently. People that I have known for years have lost their damn minds, and it has been quite an eye-opener. ЁЯШ│
I'm a labor Democrat who has made common cause with Never Trump Republicans--as many Bulwarkers are. Purging the fascists is the goal.
Me too. Although I donтАЩt always agree with the Bulwark team, I appreciate the lively discussion, as well as their insights into what makes the GOP tick.
I was a registered Republican in a well off suburban NJ county that is governed by Republicans. Most are really decent folks. But I keep wondering how can they live with their party.
My son, among others, has observed that humans are still essentially apes, and that party affiliation is at its heart tribalism. Even when the tribal leader is cruel and selfish in treatment of the tribe, when under threat, tribal members instinctively defend the tribe and by extension the tribal strong man. It took humanity centuries to come up with the concept of governance by consent of the governed, and we all to easily slip back into the tribal mentality.
Isn't that the current crux of the problem? Decent folks who are being seriously mislead by conservative media and the GOP.
The kool-aid runs deep...because you just can't discuss anything with them without it ending up that our opinions are all tainted because we just simply hate Trump.
I'm not sure how they can't figure out WHY we hate Trump OR that we can still be mature adults and manage the emotional right side with the left side of our brains.
NJ-2 Democrat here, represented by full-maga republican and Jan. 6 electoral-vote objector Jeff Van Drew. I keep wondering how he and his supporters can live with themselves.
Sadly South Jersey is Maga-land. so is much of Morris County and points west.
It's their team. That's how.
I am still a registered Republican, because there really isn't any point (where I live) to change registration. It isn't worth the effort of the paperwork.
At the local level, there are zero Democrats running for office. Zero. It is always a battle between various flavors of R or even further rightwards independents. At the state level I vote D--which has some effect as my district incorporates part of Las Vegas, which is heavily D.
Normally I'd say "Well, why not run yourself as a D at local level?"
But the way the country is at the moment, one of your "Neighbors" would probably set fire to your house. . .
I have zero interesting in being directly involved in politics. I definitely do NOT have the personality for it and I lack driving ambition... and running on the local level as a D here is a gateway to losing.
I have little patience for fools and less patience for pretending that I do have it.
I have a different sense - for me, why can't the county organization simply depart from then national org. Most of these guys are relic of the sort of Republicanism that was around with Ike.
That isn't the people in charge of the party organization here, it is the RW nut jobs.
RINOs need not apply.
But Nye County NV has always been the Land of Fruits and Nuts... at least as long as I have lived and worked here (since the mid 90s).
Sorry but unless you have spoken to Republican office holders in Morris County, you are talking out of your hat. While I despair of what is going on, I remain unable to understand why there is not a revolt against the national party. Christie is a lying fuck (he was a county official in the early 1990s. But Bolton is not like the locals who manage county affairs well - so the levy taxes, hire and fire the county employees, manage county assets etc. No big ideas here. Bolton always wanted a place at the table to national affairs- well you need to sell your soul for that. But a county official who is in charge of elections - well here she has behave well.
Sorry but your comment was to disabuse my of my misconceptions. You have not. While the GOP morphed into what the Southern Dems were, in places like CT, NY, NJ the roots of the GOP were not in the Southern Strategy. Our GOP were much more old money etc.
The Bulwark is a place for nuance.
I should add that, regarding the above incident, Secular did an end run around JVL and reposted his tirade the next day on Morning Shots, whining about how he had been mistreated by JVL and JVL just wouldn't listen to reason.
If you choose to engage with him, understand that he is looking for an argument and takes anything other than a "Like" as all the provocation he needs.
A word of advice, Terry...ignore him. You'll note that he never posts on The Triad. JVL yanked one of his rants, telling him "No. Do better." Apparently he is incapable of that and either has chosen to no longer participate over there, or JVL has made him persona non grata.
Sorry but as late as 2000 in NJ we had folks like Marge Roukema who were of the old sort. She was manhandled by Dick Cheney (lost committee assignment) so left Congress. Agreed that the party has changed but I know some of these people and they are closer to Bush I than Trump. so it saddens me.
Yes. I've been to some post-church lunches on Sundays when the good Christians in attendance, comfortable with the crowd they were keeping, had some very disturbing things to say about Blacks, Jews, and others. It is a large part of what led me to estrangement from the church community -- not necessarily religion, rather its practitioners, whose Bibles carry no guarantee against fundamental human prejudices of both the mind and the mouth.
I just don't understand how good, people can look at Trump and how he debases women and rips people off and openly mocks people and say that's person admire and want to be President.
Most of the loudest bible thumpers have, with the exception of certain select passages, never read the damn thing.
Loving the Gemstones. Do you indulge?
God bless the Righteous Gemstones. Just watched the latest installment.
Haven't been tripping like this since Green Acres. A lot of good stuff: biting satire, monster trucks, blasphemy, class-struggle, innuendo, and over-the-top outbreaks of violence. Guilty pleasures? Certainly.
But this is the week that indulgence turned a comedy corner.....
Five simple words: prolonged full-frontal male nudity.
From "In the beginning..." to "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." KJV, no less. Spent an average of over an hour nearly every morning before getting ready for work. "Numbers" was quite the slog. Leviticus was just bizarre.
Took me the better part of a year. How many people do you know who would read "Cujo" or "Pet Sematary" or "The Stand" by cherry picking a sentence here, a paragraph there and try to convince you they had "read" any of them?
The Stand. i love that book. Cujo and Ps are good too.
"Teachings of Jesus?" The Jesus that said," тАжif anyone slaps you on the right cheek turn to him the other one also." Or the Jesus that said," Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." Or the the Jesus who said," Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.тАЭ
So many conflicting, contradictory passages in a book written by bronze age desert nomads and later then Hellenized descendants. What are actually his teachings (rhetorical - sects have been fighting over this for as long as people have been writing stories about him)?
My point is that you can find anything you want in those books to support nearly any position you want to take.
The so-called authors of the Book were uniformly illiterate. His teachings were presumably handed down word -of-mouth through genertaions until a literate person was able to put it to paper (papyrus?). How much distortion occurred over that interval of time?
Like a game of telephone...
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+10%3A34-36&version=NIV
тАЬDo not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own householdтАЭ (Matthew 10:34-36).
I did not. I have seen Christians use this verse to support their militancy or actions that would directly contradict the other two (love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek).
There's another story in the gospels (Mark 11:12-25) where Jesus kills a fig tree because he was hungry and the tree didn't have any figs because it was out of season. Again, not peaceful, cheek turning Jesus.
Have been for years now. There was a time to be in the party but apart from Trump, but when the party stood by him for his first impeachment, that should've been the final straw. It laid out very clearly what the rest of us knew, that the president was an amoral creature who respected no law that could restrain his power.
Basically defectors past that point generally have been of the Liz Cheney/Kinzinger flavor where they only turned after MAGA trespassed directly against them.
"Basically defectors past that point generally have been of the Liz Cheney/Kinzinger flavor where they only turned after MAGA trespassed directly against them."
Let's not forget about Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, who called BS and bowed out as soon as Trump came on the stage. OK, granted they knew they couldn't be re-elected while publicly stating the emperor was naked, but at least they didn't pull a Stefanik.