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+--- Thread: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement (/showthread.php?tid=7582)
A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Weltall - 29th November 2024
So, as a short recap of what's been going on, the Republican Party is a clown's kingdom from top to bottom, and yet it is the Democrats who end up wearing pie. You might be asking yourself, what year is it? Is it 2010 and we're talking about the Democrats letting the Tea Party curb stomp Hope and Change before it is able to even walk? Is it 2014, and we're talking about the Democrats learning, to their evident surprise, that Obama's re-election was no more a national mandate on Democratic politics than was his first win? Is it 2016, and we're talking about how the absolutely unstoppable Death Star managed to blow itself up just as it was about to wipe out those pesky rebels once and for all?
Haha no, nothing may have changed whatsoever about the ineptitude, arrogance, and blindness of the Democratic Party, or their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or their laser focus on squandering of whatever gains they actually do realize. However, it is, in fact, a different year on the calendar, and it is a new episode of let's be sad and argue about it.
On today's episode, Donald Trump, at his weakest, oldest, and most pressured, managed to win a clear, undeniable victory over the forces of good. It was the most decisive outcome of his three campaigns. We join each other, with a lot of questions to ask ourselves.
Is the United States dominated socially, economically, and politically by racist morons, and should we apply that label to everyone who ever voted for Trump until they see the error of their ways and learn to vote correctly?
Did the Democratic Party seriously torpedo its own credibility and lose 20 million voters, or did those 20 million voters owe their votes to the Democratic Party, and should we focus on blaming and shaming them until they vote correctly with more consistently?
Why did all those idiots vote for Trump because of the economy? Couldn't they see how good the economy is? Are they stupid?
Is it because Kamala Harris was a woman, or because she was a black woman?
Was it even really as bad as it looks, since we did make a few marginal gains here and there?
These debates, and more, on the 2024-28 episode of the traditional politics megathread
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 4th December 2024
And Cheney's daughter is, notably, NOT Dick himself. I don't get this total obsession the democratic party, or partisan politics in general, has with "dynasties", but it's sickening. I don't care if someone's "a Kennedy", least of all NOW, but it's simply a fact that if the democrats had approached him with similar position offers, he'd have gone to them, and I'd be angrily debating with ABF over how horrible a decision it was to ally with this particular Kennedy. That being, Robert Kennedy Jr., a living Ren & Stimpy character who heard about a beached whale and told his daughter "Get the chainsaw, I have an idea!".
This entire concept of someone coming from "good stock" should have died in America's founding. The very fact that TWO Bushes managed to become president is utterly disgusting simply because statistically speaking, the odds should have been vanishingly small, but people projected "Bushiness" onto the son, and were prepped to go further and get another Bush in the form of Jeb later on until Trump went gliding down the escalator. The democrats even fielded Hillary, because primarily, "she's a Clinton". Say what you will about her experience and qualifications, she was picked because she's a Clinton, and then after her loss, they were suddenly talking about getting Michelle Obama to run. Legacies and dynasties need to die, because after Trump's death, we ALL realize who's going to come crawling out of the woodworks to run after him right?
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - A Black Falcon - 15th December 2024
(29th November 2024, 3:15 PM)Weltall Wrote: On today's episode, Donald Trump, at his weakest, oldest, and most pressured, managed to win a clear, undeniable victory over the forces of good. It was the most decisive outcome of his three campaigns. We join each other, with a lot of questions to ask ourselves.
There's a lot to agree with here, but I have to push back against the 'most decisive outcome of his three campaigns' point, because I don't see any way that that is true. In terms of national vote margin it is the first time that Republicans have won the national popular vote since 2004, and only their second time doing so since 1992 began the trend of Democrats usually winning the popular vote, but it was close -- the final margin's 1.5 points, less than the 4.5 point margin of 2020 or the 2.1 point margin of 2016. Trump's going to end up with under 50% of the vote and the smallest US House majority of an incoming President since 1930. He won, and it reflects incredibly badly on the American people that they were stupid enough to fall for his nonsense AGAIN, but it was not a blowout or 'the most decisive outcome', unless you just mean that the fact that he won at all and with any kind of popular vote margin makes it more decisive than the past two even though the margin is closer than either one. And on that point... well yeah it'll surely get awful over the next four years but no, it wasn't a more decisive win than the last two.
Quote:Is the United States dominated socially, economically, and politically by racist morons, and should we apply that label to everyone who ever voted for Trump until they see the error of their ways and learn to vote correctly?
Did the Democratic Party seriously torpedo its own credibility and lose 20 million voters, or did those 20 million voters owe their votes to the Democratic Party, and should we focus on blaming and shaming them until they vote correctly with more consistently?
Why did all those idiots vote for Trump because of the economy? Couldn't they see how good the economy is? Are they stupid?
Is it because Kamala Harris was a woman, or because she was a black woman?
Was it even really as bad as it looks, since we did make a few marginal gains here and there?
These debates, and more, on the 2024-28 episode of the traditional politics megathread
It is worth noting again that almost every single ruling party in the world that had an election in 2024 did worse than their previous election. The US actually was one of the least o the collapses on the list, most other countries did even worse. The only places where the ruling party actually held on to power without losing margin were Ireland and Mexico, and in the Mexican Presidential election the collapse of the opposition was a big factor in why. Everywhere else, from Japan to the UK to France, Senegal, South Africa, India, and more, incumbent parties all lost.
With that said though, given that the US economy really is in a pretty decent spot right now, better than almost anywhere else... yes, I think that I entirely agree with what you said about the US electorate being so spoiled that they don't realize how good we have it. Yup. Is there a better explanation for people voting for the guy promising to ruin the economy because they don't think it is good enough? If there is I can't think of it...
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - A Black Falcon - 23rd December 2024
Broke: Caring about Ukraine
Woke: Threatening war with Canada, Mexico, Denmark, and Panama
Trump's going to do great, no issues here at all.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 23rd December 2024
(23rd December 2024, 7:19 AM)A Black Falcon Wrote: Broke: Caring about Ukraine
Woke: Threatening war with Canada, Mexico, Denmark, and Panama
Trump's going to do great, no issues here at all.
I have no idea what this means.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - A Black Falcon - 23rd December 2024
Trump's saying that he wants the Panama Canal and Greenland, on top of his trade wars with Canada and Mexico.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Weltall - 24th December 2024
Quote:With that said though, given that the US economy really is in a pretty decent spot right now, better than almost anywhere else... yes, I think that I entirely agree with what you said about the US electorate being so spoiled that they don't realize how good we have it.
I think what we saw was that, when individual voters experience rising grocery prices and skyrocketing rent, being told the US economy is doing really well sounds hollow and out-of-touch.
Insofar as it being his most decisive result, it isn't about the numbers. It's the fact that he barely squeaked it out the first time, lost outright the second time, was indicted almost a hundred times, was convicted of three dozen felonies, and in spite of all that, this election was essentially over as soon as the polls closed, and there was absolutely no uncertainty of the outcome 24 hours later. You could call 2016 a fluke and 202 a correction, but in many ways, this is a confirmation that the Democratic Party is broadly lacking in credibility with voters and painfully lacking in competence with regards to managing campaigns and messenging, at the game of electoral democracy in general, and worst of all, unwilling to adapt even in the face of catastrophic defeat, as we are seeing with the wizened neoliberal losers in command continuing to demonstrate that personally empowering themselves and enriching each other is all they really care about.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - A Black Falcon - 22nd January 2025
... So it's only been a few days but thanks to a huge lineup of executive orders and the (expected but incredibly evil) pardons of the Jan. 6 rioters, this is already surely one of the worst weeks in American political history, and am I even exaggerating?
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 24th January 2025
Only a little. The good news is a number of the orders given were... contradictory or not within his actual powers and are being challenged. The bad news is the supreme court is where those challenges will end up. The good news is that'll take years.
Anyway, congratulations to Donald Trump, first female President of these United States! Look I know the order I gave is going to cause direct harm to real people, but I am taking a little humor where I can.
Also, protect yourself ABF. This is going to be a long and dangerous four years. We've been hiding our identities online for quite some time, and I'd recommend you keep that up. Numerous news stations are engaging in unprompted preemptive compliance with the current regime, and it's already resulted in a meteorologist being fired for calling a nazi salute what it is... on a private account.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 24th January 2025
Some more good news:
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Weltall - 10th February 2025
I would say that it's a sure sign of these times, that the birthright citizenship thing already feels like it was a year and a half ago. Anyway, how are we all enjoying the cheap groceries and gas prices?
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 12th February 2025
(10th February 2025, 8:40 AM)Weltall Wrote: I would say that it's a sure sign of these times, that the birthright citizenship thing already feels like it was a year and a half ago. Anyway, how are we all enjoying the cheap groceries and gas prices?
Hah! It's just getting worse, and for that matter, now we have a very specific order that refugees "of European decent" are being allowed and no one else. It's straight up racism coded into law directly.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - A Black Falcon - 6th April 2025
It's almost Orange Monday (the term is now trending), the day worldwide stock markets absolutely crater because OBVIOUSLY Donald Trump would never actually follow through on his promise to massively raise tariffs. I mean, duh! Who'd ever do something that stupid? Nobody. So no, have no fear about voting for Trump, it'll be just fine. So said the press, and peoples' minds where they love to create fictional worlds where Trump will do whatever they want and not what he's saying.
Oh, wait, he actually believes this? Well, this is probably the first time a worldwide economic collapse had one very clearly identifiable person as the reason. That's fine though. Go Trump! Who needs an economy?
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 11th April 2025
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - A Black Falcon - 7th June 2025
Aww, Elon and Donald had a falling-out, how sad! Such a beautiful friendship is over...
Which brings us to this perennially relevant cartoon from the first Trump administration:
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 8th June 2025
"This is how strong men resolve their differences!"
Apparently, throwing temper tantrums in front of the whole world is how "strong men" lead.
But for one thing, what's getting "resolved" here? Sounds to me like it's just over between them. However, as public as this is, let's not get too distracted from DEPLOYING THE NATIONAL GUARD INTO L.A.! That seems to me to be the big story. I've actually heard some people claim THAT'S the distraction, and well, I'm going to have to quote one of Murphy's Laws here. "The distraction you're ignoring is the main attack."
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Sacred Jellybean - 9th June 2025
The White House knew that most of the people they deported had no criminal records. Guess they made the mistake of having brown skin and being in the wrong place and the wrong time (the place is America, and the time is after Trump was elected).
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-el-salvador-deportees-criminal-convictions-cecot-venezuela
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Geno - 10th June 2025
(7th June 2025, 7:43 PM)A Black Falcon Wrote: Aww, Elon and Donald had a falling-out, how sad! Such a beautiful friendship is over...
Elon said that Donald should be impeached. I agree! (For all the good it did the first two times.)
Steve Bannon said that Elon should be deported. I agree!
My enemy's enemy is... also my enemy, turns out.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Sacred Jellybean - 11th June 2025
Quote:Elon said that Donald should be impeached. I agree! (For all the good it did the first two times.)
Steve Bannon said that Elon should be deported. I agree!
My enemy's enemy is... also my enemy, turns out.
https://clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-know-just-made-a-gr-1825121606/
I'm surprised Trump's response to Elon has been so subdued. I feel like if anyone else called him a pedophile online, with millions of devoted followers, he'd fall into conniptions that'd last for months. Kind of disappointed that he didn't continue the feud, but it's amusing in its own right that he backed down and just grumbled something about Elon's government contracts.
I guess Elon sobered up because he deleted the tweet calling Trump a pedo (probably the others too).
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Geno - 11th June 2025
(11th June 2025, 5:26 AM)Sacred Jellybean Wrote:Quote:Elon said that Donald should be impeached. I agree! (For all the good it did the first two times.)
Steve Bannon said that Elon should be deported. I agree!
My enemy's enemy is... also my enemy, turns out.
https://clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-know-just-made-a-gr-1825121606/
I'm surprised Trump's response to Elon has been so subdued. I feel like if anyone else called him a pedophile online, with millions of devoted followers, he'd fall into conniptions that'd last for months. Kind of disappointed that he didn't continue the feud, but it's amusing in its own right that he backed down and just grumbled something about Elon's government contracts.
I guess Elon sobered up because he deleted the tweet calling Trump a pedo (probably the others too).
If Musk knew that Trump was on the Epstein list and said nothing about it until he got mad at Trump, then Musk is not a good person. And if Trump is in possession of the Epstein list, one would think he'd want to absolve himself of allegations about being on the list by immediately releasing it to the public... that is, unless Trump actually is on the list. And I mean... we've all seen the photos. We know they were buds. We know sexual misconduct was happening. The evidence is in plain sight.
Sadly, Trump seems to be immune to all consequences to his actions. The Biden years gave me some false hope that accountability might occur. Instead, Trump became president again. Why, oh why, do we let the worst, most contemptible people alive run our society? I'm to the point where I sincerely believe that even the most moralistic of purity-culture-peddling evangelicals who support Trump are completely aware of their own hypocrisy in continuing to support him... they just don't care. (I guess purity culture is intended more to suppress women, but even then, all of the Christian Right's past criticisms of Clinton are at least equally true for Trump, but again, they don't care.)
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - alien space marine - 30th June 2025
The Governor of Maine is begging us Canuck's to visit trying to make us all feel guilty saying it’s safe, Is Stephen King’s favourite horror setting safe for Canadians tourists? ?
45% of Maine voters who participated in the 2024 election voted for the real world President Greg Stillson, the antagonist of Stephen King’s “the dead zone” a maniac destined to become president and use the nuclear football to start ww3 if the protagonist fails to take him out.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 3rd July 2025
(11th June 2025, 7:59 AM)Geno Wrote:(11th June 2025, 5:26 AM)Sacred Jellybean Wrote:Quote:Elon said that Donald should be impeached. I agree! (For all the good it did the first two times.)
Steve Bannon said that Elon should be deported. I agree!
My enemy's enemy is... also my enemy, turns out.
https://clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-know-just-made-a-gr-1825121606/
I'm surprised Trump's response to Elon has been so subdued. I feel like if anyone else called him a pedophile online, with millions of devoted followers, he'd fall into conniptions that'd last for months. Kind of disappointed that he didn't continue the feud, but it's amusing in its own right that he backed down and just grumbled something about Elon's government contracts.
I guess Elon sobered up because he deleted the tweet calling Trump a pedo (probably the others too).
If Musk knew that Trump was on the Epstein list and said nothing about it until he got mad at Trump, then Musk is not a good person. And if Trump is in possession of the Epstein list, one would think he'd want to absolve himself of allegations about being on the list by immediately releasing it to the public... that is, unless Trump actually is on the list. And I mean... we've all seen the photos. We know they were buds. We know sexual misconduct was happening. The evidence is in plain sight.
Sadly, Trump seems to be immune to all consequences to his actions. The Biden years gave me some false hope that accountability might occur. Instead, Trump became president again. Why, oh why, do we let the worst, most contemptible people alive run our society? I'm to the point where I sincerely believe that even the most moralistic of purity-culture-peddling evangelicals who support Trump are completely aware of their own hypocrisy in continuing to support him... they just don't care. (I guess purity culture is intended more to suppress women, but even then, all of the Christian Right's past criticisms of Clinton are at least equally true for Trump, but again, they don't care.)
This is why they call him Teflon Trump. Nothing sticks to him, even though he looks so very... very... sticky.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 29th July 2025
And they're defending pedophilia now...
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Geno - 31st July 2025
(29th July 2025, 11:03 AM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: And they're defending pedophilia now...
Of course. Everything you think might be "the line" for conservatives, they just brush off as no big deal. These same conspiracy nuts have been peddling this narrative about deep state sex trafficking within the Democratic party for years, including the infamous Pizzagate scandal wherein Hillary Clinton was allegedly running a sex slave ring in the basement of a pizza parlor that... didn't have a basement. And now that it's becoming increasingly more difficult to deny that Trump was an Epstein client, suddenly pedophilia is okay. I even saw one comment (on Facebook, which I'm convinced is the website that convinced Ultron that the Earth can only be cleansed in fire) saying that we should forgive and forget because something something Jesus died for our sins. They're pretty much admitting at this point that he's a pedophile, but they just... don't care. Which doesn't surprise me in the least. If they didn't care about the Access Hollywood recording, why would they care about anything else he says, does, or has ever said or done for the rest of time?
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 4th August 2025
Which begs the question... what do they see in this guy? What's his appeal?
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Weltall - 4th August 2025
His wins are their wins, and he always wins. His enemies and opponents always look like fools in the end. What's not to love?
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Geno - 6th August 2025
I also frequently wonder what the appeal is given that his amoral behavior and hateful, divisive rhetoric are directly antithetical to the Christian values the right purports to endorse (namely anything Jesus said--the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, etc.--they seem more obsessed with Old Testament, vengeful, Levitican-style legality, "rules for thee, not for me" theology). He's not even good at pretending to be morally upright. He's a pathological liar, and he's not even good at it; his lies are so unconvincing. He's not the slightest bit charismatic (Reagan at least had that going for him).
But yeah... as Weltall pointed out, they love how vulgar and hateful he is because he appeals to their basest instincts. He's "owning the libs." In the end, that's what's most important to them. He shares their enemies. He hates the same people they hate. And that's all they care about. Any morals, values, or principles that they claim to possess can easily be compromised or even discarded in favor of sticking it to those damn librulz. The MAGA cult is not unlike the KKK or the Nazi Party in their ability to rationalize obvious evil and still act like a loving, merciful God is on their side--such is the ways of cults.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Weltall - 6th August 2025
On the other hand, I have a 19 year old co-worker who is a kind, courteous, empathetic, and emotionally mature young man, not even jokingly racist or sexist, and he voted for Trump because he sincerely believed that the economy would improve.
Lumping all his voters together feels good, but I also think it's counterproductive. It feels important to communicate with this guy, on the subject, in a completely unantagonistic manner. No disrespect. It's a little challenging, but maybe worthwhile.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 8th August 2025
Say something often enough, people start to believe it. The biggest mistake young people are making right now is the naive assumption that "no one gets to that point without having some talent/knowledge/basic competency". Disabusing them of that notion, that sometimes the least qualified really CAN make it all the way to the white house, if they're rich and connected enough, is a very tough pill to swallow. After all, he says these lies so confidently and even casually, as if "everyone knows" that.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Geno - 12th August 2025
(6th August 2025, 4:09 PM)Weltall Wrote: On the other hand, I have a 19 year old co-worker who is a kind, courteous, empathetic, and emotionally mature young man, not even jokingly racist or sexist, and he voted for Trump because he sincerely believed that the economy would improve.
Lumping all his voters together feels good, but I also think it's counterproductive. It feels important to communicate with this guy, on the subject, in a completely unantagonistic manner. No disrespect. It's a little challenging, but maybe worthwhile.
This is indeed challenging, and it's something I have to check myself on constantly. I have relatives who voted for Trump and will stand by that vote seemingly no matter what happens. Are they bad people? No. My mother, in particular, doesn't like anything about Trump but has been religiously conditioned all her life to oppose Democrats, and so she feels that Trump was "better than the alternative." She's also politically disengaged, so that doesn't help. But it also doesn't help that my uncle (her brother) is very politically engaged in the sense that being in right-wing echo chambers counts as engagement, and my brother is falling further and further down that rabbit hole himself (with a much more religious fundamentalist branding on his preferred echo chambers), and their views influence what little political belief my mom has. My uncle is very confident even when he is objectively wrong, but he's also not a bad person or even a dumb person--perhaps just a closed-minded and hard-headed person; he also claims to be a political moderate even though 99% of his ire is directed toward the left. My brother used to be much more politically moderate, and the abortion issue is why he skews right, but he's seemingly becoming more radicalized over the last few years. And yet, he is generally a kind person and has as much of an anxious, people-pleasing mentality as I do, probably even more.
All this to say that people are indeed nuanced, and as easy as it is to fall into the trap of lumping them all together as contemptible, terrible, stupid people, if we do that, they will perceive us as unhinged and continue to remain safely in their echo chambers away from those angry, hysterical liberals (which, in turn, also leaves us in an echo chamber of our own screaming into the void--cathartic, but ultimately not helpful). Conversely, there are actual MAGA fanatics out there who spout hate speech and complete idiocy with a smug confidence. There is no reasoning with those people. But not everyone on the right is like that, and many of them feel alienated by the left. My wife is a lot better than I am at helping my mom to see other perspectives without coming off as angry; it helps that my wife comes from a fundamentalist background and has seen the Heritage Foundation cult for what it is, but she also understands where the evangelical right is coming from because she, too, was once entrenched in that very same "us vs. the world" rhetoric.
Shit's complicated, yo.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Weltall - 13th August 2025
I absolutely, positively, 100% refuse to ever talk about politics with my dad, ever again, for the rest of his life. Period. For the sake of my mental health and sense of self-worth.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 13th August 2025
(13th August 2025, 5:08 PM)Weltall Wrote: I absolutely, positively, 100% refuse to ever talk about politics with my dad, ever again, for the rest of his life. Period. For the sake of my mental health and sense of self-worth.
I suspect there is a recent story here, and I must admit my curiosity while respecting your desire for privacy.
For so long as privacy is still legal at least.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Sacred Jellybean - 17th August 2025
I suppose I'm lucky. My family are all pretty firmly liberal, grew up watching Bill Maher (good god has he fallen from grace, though - his recent sane-washing of Trump was enough for us to ditch him). My mother's side of the family are all also mostly Democrat, save for a cousin who loves Trump. We usually just don't bring up politics on our yearly visits.
I've got a couple of friends I grew up with who, for reasons I will never understand, love Trump. It's really bizarre - one of them excoriated the Song of Ice and Fire book series, insisting to me that they were offensive to her as a woman. Years later, she's posting Trump's inauguration speech, saying how inspirational he is. She's also an evangelical Christian tradwife who's on like her sixth child. So it's not completely out of nowhere, but again, I don't understand these people's philosophy.
The other fell down some antivax rabbit holes and loves RFK Jr. He's just icing on the cake, though: she voted for Trump twice before 2024. It's really bizarre, because she otherwise seems like an intelligent, well-read, well-reasoned, charitable, open-minded person - not racist or homophobic. She's always been a Republican, or libertarian, whatever, but Trump?
I'm just completely perplexed in what these people see in him. I've earnestly tried to keep an open mind and see things from their perspective, listened to what they had to say. One of them linked this Cracked piece which honestly helped a lot. But I'll never 100% get there.
I really want to know what they think of him now, after everything that's happened, but I refuse to have a conversation about it. It's just going to make my blood boil. I don't keep in touch with the first friend, and the second friend, if politics comes up, I just try to be deferential and steer things to common ground. There's no point in losing friends/family to politics (for me personally, at least). I've made that mistake before.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 26th August 2025
(17th August 2025, 4:45 AM)Sacred Jellybean Wrote: I suppose I'm lucky. My family are all pretty firmly liberal, grew up watching Bill Maher (good god has he fallen from grace, though - his recent sane-washing of Trump was enough for us to ditch him). My mother's side of the family are all also mostly Democrat, save for a cousin who loves Trump. We usually just don't bring up politics on our yearly visits.
I've got a couple of friends I grew up with who, for reasons I will never understand, love Trump. It's really bizarre - one of them excoriated the Song of Ice and Fire book series, insisting to me that they were offensive to her as a woman. Years later, she's posting Trump's inauguration speech, saying how inspirational he is. She's also an evangelical Christian tradwife who's on like her sixth child. So it's not completely out of nowhere, but again, I don't understand these people's philosophy.
The other fell down some antivax rabbit holes and loves RFK Jr. He's just icing on the cake, though: she voted for Trump twice before 2024. It's really bizarre, because she otherwise seems like an intelligent, well-read, well-reasoned, charitable, open-minded person - not racist or homophobic. She's always been a Republican, or libertarian, whatever, but Trump?
I'm just completely perplexed in what these people see in him. I've earnestly tried to keep an open mind and see things from their perspective, listened to what they had to say. One of them linked this Cracked piece which honestly helped a lot. But I'll never 100% get there.
I really want to know what they think of him now, after everything that's happened, but I refuse to have a conversation about it. It's just going to make my blood boil. I don't keep in touch with the first friend, and the second friend, if politics comes up, I just try to be deferential and steer things to common ground. There's no point in losing friends/family to politics (for me personally, at least). I've made that mistake before.
I think one key factor here is... the liberals don't have the answers to our problems. They just aren't willing to go far enough to actually do what's needed, waffling about how they are focused on things like "making health insurance available", which you will note... it always has been, it just isn't AFFORDABLE. They're too in bed with the donors funding their campaigns to want to rock the boat. It's old school Thatcherism. Just remember all the times liberals would speak out against gay people (including Obama and Hillary), only to have a "change of heart" the very instant public opinion was deemed to have shifted enough, but they'll only do that for things that don't threaten the bottom line.
So, the republicans promise THEY'LL fix everyone's actual problems. They make them far far worse, and they create brand new problems instead. We're in a state where there's a lot of people who vote for "the other one this time", nothing changes, and next cycle, they vote for "the other one this time".
You'll note I'm talking about a whole lot of different groups of people and their mindsets, but it all feeds into the Trump fundamentalist, who doesn't live in a vacuum, just a semi-isolated information silo. They do GET visions of the outside world, filtered down through their social media feeds, and so they see some of this and it feeds their decision to worship this one golden man.
Bill Mayer's turn makes complete sense as well, when seen from the outside. He supported his OWN status quo, the one he grew up in, fed this notion that the US had already solved all the major problems. The man literally believes there isn't a problem with poverty in the US because he didn't see any poor people outside his LIMO driving in the rich side of town.
That's why I've shifted so far left over the years. I don't consider myself an extremist, certainly not a violent one, but I understand that by U.S. politics, I am very far left. By global politics, liberals, the leadership of the democratic party, are firm centrists. The dream that a semi-free market and merely regulating against active discrimination would solve all our issues, but that dream hasn't been realized. Corporations found ways around all of that stuff, and of course, they've never been our friends either. Why did Target SUDDENLY turn against black people and the LGBTQIA alliance? It's because they were never on their side in the first place. They sided with the money, and that's it. It's why Cracker Barrel changed their logo. It's why Land O Lakes got rid of their mascot. That's the only reason they make any decision. Oh, and as to that Cracker Barrel thing? That one's hilarious to me, because I LIKE their old logo. No one I knew found anything offensive about it whatsoever. They didn't even change it to appeal to any sort of progressive values. They literally did it for the same reason every company has been sand blasting their logos into generic bland versions of their old symbols. Just look at what Mozilla did to their Firefox logo. All the identifiable details are brushed away into a generic hint of the original intent, like they're almost embarrassed at having an identifiable animal and planet in their logo. That's why Cracker Barrel did it, and you got a whole bunch of weirdos screaming about "wokeness" or whatever. But, back to my point, corporations make these choices to appeal to the widest audience and gain the most money, so of course they will ALWAYS go full racist if they think it'll be the biggest boon to their profits. If they thought they could get away with it, they'd sell snuff films in Target. That's just the reality. They, like all gigantic corporations, are MERCENARY. Sometimes more literally. Walmart's got no problem selling guns in their sporting goods section for example. They got rat poison in the same aisle as their candy, because they know how ridiculously oversugared their treats are and don't have an issue selling it.
They sold vapes to kids right up until the moment a law was passed restricting that, and of course now we know just how deadly vaping actually is... except the upcoming zoomers and alphas are already coming up with the same defensive attitudes about it that my grandparents and parents did for smoking... "Well, those studies are biased and we should wait for ALL the evidence", you know, lines they got FROM advertising reps hiding around online, and that's not even a secret. These companies are open about spreading their propaganda through "unique channels" like engaging with the youth online.
Sorry, I'm getting off track here. Back onto my point, when you have the motive, you can predict the result. I'm rarely surprised these days, once I realized just what motivates a lot of people and institutions. You want to find someone honest? Find someone who's got a motive to BE honest. Find someone who doesn't take donations from corporations. They are RARE, but they exist.
With that said, survival is also a good motivator, and right now, there are a lot of democrats worried about whether or not they might just be executed right now. MSNBC had a very VERY late moment of finally acknowledging the death of democracy in our country, long after the experts who'd been warning us on the signs of fascism for years had already fled the country, and they're starting to see just what's at state, such as their own lives, and that seems to push out concerns of funding so more and more are actively calling Trump the dictator he is at this point.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 26th August 2025
Also, it has been like pulling teeth to tug the democratic liberal core over to seeing that... right now there's an actual genocide going on and Israel are the ones doing it. Even bring it up the very first talking point, like talking to damn parrots is, "Hey, but doesn't Israel have the right to defend itself?" The answer to that is... "Yes, BUT, that's not what they're doing. They're committing a genocide. It has nothing to do with self defense, if it ever did." It's a core international relationship issue, and when it comes to international politics, they have nothing to do with morality. They don't, and that's a hard pill to swallow, but it's the practical reality. ALL international politics are about maintaining power, or gaining power. That's it. Morality is the excuse tacked on after the fact. But internally? We DO care about morality, and so when republicans who think morality is zero sum find that they agree with liberals who just think that rocking the boat is a very bad idea, you get people actively trying to fight back against THE most exciting mayoral candidate New York has had in many many years. What ever happened to "vote blue no matter who"? Well, the reality is... they didn't mean it. It was a slogan.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Geno - 4th September 2025
Watching the Democratic Party flail around and accomplish nothing is quite frustrating. When they control both chambers of Congress as well as the presidency, they struggle to get a traffic light installed. Meanwhile, Republicans (by which I mean Trump overreaching executive authority) can just completely dismantle democracy in the span of a few months. The Sinemas and Manchins of the Democratic Party spend more energy fighting progressive upstarts within their own party than they do fighting MAGA fascism. I would be delighted to see them get primaried into irrelevance, but we know they'll kick and scream the entire way, as we see with Cuomo.
The GOP underwent a rebranding in the years since Dubya. The 2006 midterms and 2008 election were a rejection en masse of conservative politics, warmongering, and economic (mis)management, so they've shifted their focus to cultural wars. They kicked and screamed their way through the Obama years, and in the end, business-as-usual conservatives like McCain and perceived "moderates" like Romney proved ineffective--they both lost. Trump got results for the right, so it's hard to convince a conservative to go back to the politicians of yesteryear when those guys were "losers." All this to say... I wish we could see something like that occur on the left. Left-wing policies like universal healthcare and living wages are extremely popular, but they're not profitable. Donald Trump ran as a Washington outsider who did not take donations from the corporate machine, and that resonated with people; Bernie Sanders ran an even more grassroots campaign based on similar principles, but the DNC wanted so much to quash his campaign so they could push their establishment candidates on us (first with Hillary Clinton, and again later on with Joe Biden), then they'd tell the Bernie Bros to "vote blue no matter who" (a principle that indeed does not seem to apply when the "blue" is someone they don't support--rules for thee, not for me). And for what it's worth, I did vote blue in all those elections--for Hillary Clinton, for Joe Biden, for Kamala Harris. And we're 1-2 in the last three elections (2016 popular vote notwithstanding).
I'm not saying I necessarily want the liberal version of Trump. But I would like to have left-wing politicians who aren't completely useless once elected. Also, Democrats shouldn't defend Netanyahu because he certainly won't defend them; he wants MAGA Republicans running the USA. (Also, he's a genocidal maniac and a war criminal and a very evil person, so there's that.)
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 4th September 2025
Elected officials have a treaty based reason to avoid actually calling what's going on in Gaza a genocide, and that's because they would be forced to take definitive action against the perpetrators. None of them want to open that can of worms, so they just... pretend it's not a genocide while children starve to death. I mean, "a country has the right to defend themselves" right?
Meanwhile, Cuomo... Stop trying to get people to like that guy. It's not going to happen. He left in disgrace over terrible abuse charges, and he has no idea how to relate to normal people. Why the hell would anyone ever want him in? They're going to start trotting out that "electability" nonsense again...
Yes, no one snatches defeat out of the jaws of victory like an establishment democrat, that's for sure.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Weltall - 5th September 2025
When October 7th happened, my first thought was, this was the best thing Trump could have ever hoped for. You could not ask for a more perfect wedge issue to take total control over leftist dialogue and turn it against the liberal establishment. I have no doubt in my mind that FREE PALESTINE voices are amplified by the right, because it does so much of their work for them. Your average American voter who is trying to make ends meet and navigate life right here, does not give a fuck about Palestine. Hate it all you want, but that's reality, and leftists just can't adapt to that. They seem more focused on destroying the Democratic Party and replacing it with a million different conflicting vibes. It's no wonder Republicans win.
I've come to the conclusion that there's no ideology left for the likes of me. Establishment liberal politicians have absolutely zero credibility outside their own partisan universe, are in it only for their own personal perks, and just kind of assume everyone hates Republicans enough to vote for them instead. Establishment voters don't want their own comforts compromised by change, things could be better, but establishment liberals tend to view real problems as abstractions in need of the perfect message, which they always find, and always deliver it in the least genuine ways they can think of. Leftists, in general, are just a complete mess, there is no coherence, insane amounts of infighting, an overall highly negative and fatalistic attitude towards America, making it impossible to achieve the meaningful capacity to make any of the changes they talk about, because their messages are tailored entirely to themselves and their like-minded friends. Worse, I am firmly convinced that leftist online discourse is thoroughly infiltrated with bad actors, both from American right wingers and from foreign antagonists.
In my opinion, both liberals and leftists unwittingly conspired to hand the country over to Trump.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Geno - 5th September 2025
What's sad about the infighting is that I often find myself agreeing with parts of what both sides (liberals and leftists) are saying. Yes, I want real, tangible change to improve our quality of life, make advancements in human rights, and stop the genocide in Gaza. In that sense, I agree with leftists and am also frustrated with virtue-signaling establishment Democrats. On the other hand, I don't do protest votes and don't seek out ideological purity from candidates. I voted for Kamala Harris because she was the best chance we had at that point to defeat Donald Trump. I voted for Joe Biden because he was the best chance we had at that point to defeat Donald Trump. I voted for Hillary Clinton because... you get the point.
I've seen some people go so far as to say that a vote for Biden or Harris is a vote for genocide. As if Trump is any more of an ally to the Palestinian people than Biden was or Harris would have been? The man wants to turn Gaza into a golf course. I can't stand the self-righteousness that they feel for basically having handed the government to Trump not once, but twice. "At least I didn't vote for genocide!" We still got genocide. And now trans people are less safe, people with brown skin are being sent to concentration camps regardless of legal status or genuine efforts to attain legal status, and... oh, look at that, grocery prices are still up. My vote for Harris last November was not a character witness testimony. I am not married to the person I vote for. It was a strategic move to try to have the least terrible four years possible.
Do I want real change? Yes. Do I want ranked choice voting? Absolutely. Do we need more political engagement so that people vote in primaries and we can get better candidates in the general election? Hell yes. Do we need to get money out of politics? Should've happened ages ago. But I also want to survive in the short term. I vote in the primaries for progressive candidates, then I vote in the general election for the better of the two viable options we have, knowing full well that I live in a deep red state, but... hey, if Georgia can flip purple, who knows?
I don't know that there's a political ideology for me either. I want human rights and information literacy (verifiable facts regardless of ideology) to be our ruling principles, which unfortunately does not describe the world we live in. Beyond that, labels like "liberal" and "conservative" are... restrictive. At best, they often inhibit our ability to think critically and innovatively. At worst, they divide us into factions that hate each other and wish to inflict suffering and harm onto the "others."
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 5th September 2025
I understand that sometimes I have to vote for the lesser of two evils, but I've seen accusations of "purity testing" get thrown out by competing democratic candidates during primaries too often to find it genuine a lot of the time. What they really mean is they refuse to change their position in order to win an election. Two things can be true at once, and in this case, it's both true that establishment democrats who refuse to change their stances due to big money interests are horrible, and that people who refuse to vote at all are effectively giving the election away to whoever wins. I can be mad at both groups in this case, but I'm more angry at the establishment dems refusing to change, because they know exactly what it would take to convince those ideological purists to vote, and they REFUSE TO DO IT. Ultimately, my anger is better spent on the candidates actually running than the voters, or I'd be raging against Trump voters all day, and that's not going to get anything done either.
This is beside the point I know, but I've moved from wanting ranked choice voting to wanting scored voting. Don't get me wrong, ranked choice voting would be a dramatic improvement from our current first past the post system, but it still suffers from the voting paradox, which scored voting sidesteps entirely. It's generally considered the best possible version because the only rational way to vote under scored voting is to simply give an honest vote. Anyway, where ranked choice asks you to well... rank everyone, scored voting just asks for a score. Dump points into any candidate you like, and you can give all your points to one and none to the others, or even score two equally. This additional information you are providing, who you consider equal and who you consider so below you wouldn't even give them a single point, breaks the voting paradox completely. Not many people know about it compared to ranked choice (and compared to our default, barely anyone knows alternatives exist at all), but it's what I'd push for if I had a say.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Weltall - 7th September 2025
Quote:Ultimately, my anger is better spent on the candidates actually running than the voters, or I'd be raging against Trump voters all day, and that's not going to get anything done either.The political content you choose to consume is designed to keep you angry and engaged. Would you say that this benefits you, personally, at all?
The thing I said about my dad a while back, the heart of the matter is that he has always been addicted to right wing politics, and it's 100 times worse now that he is retired. It has overwritten both his brain and his heart. All he does, all day, is scroll social media, consuming endless amounts of bullshit, and never questioning any of it. He legitimately hates my wife because she doesn't like Trump.
That's not just a right wing thing, though. There are no shortage of left-leaning people who do exactly the same thing, consuming endless propaganda and casually spreading it around, because it sounds right to you, and you already agree with it (which is why you're seeing it in the first place). They rarely go out and interact with anyone who isn't aligned with them ideologically, and after long enough, it's pretty easy to believe that your alignment is one half of a binary, and anyone not in your half is actively making everything worse, on purpose, because they hate you.
My dad is a devoted red hat, Trump means more to him than his family. There is never any hope of getting through to people like him. But, he is not representative of the average person who voted for Donald Trump. There are millions of those kinds of people, who made their choice for their own reasons, and none of them had anything to do with ideology. Being attacked and demeaned for the choice they made is a big part of what makes them ideological, and to identify personally with these amoral monsters currently steering the ship. I think it's more important now than ever, to do the tough thing, and make an effort to reach out to those willing to hear you, because the only two sides there really are, are normal people, and the amoral monsters. The monsters require normal people to enable them. Oh, and they absolutely exist on both sides, too. Just because our general belief system is based nominally on equality and empathy, does not mean powerful people won't exploit this for their own ends.
Hence, no more ideology for me.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Geno - 8th September 2025
I've wished for decades that we would do away with political parties and ideological labels, and instead just convene as concerned citizens, discuss actual problems, work together to find solutions, be open to people poking holes into our arguments, all with a shared goal of making society better for us all. Unfortunately, it seems to be human nature to divide into cliques. I've seen this at every workplace I've ever been at. In politics, cliques often divide into smaller cliques. We already have this idea of American exceptionalism, which may be most pronounced on the right, but it very much exists on the left as well--this idea that America > everyone else. Then, within America, we of course have "the left" and "the right (and "moderates," which still suggests a political binary). Then you look within the two major sides, and there are even smaller divisions--fiefs within fiefs, if you will. The right has their more traditional small-government, low-taxes, church-going conservatives as well as MAGA, and I suppose libertarians as well (they could be considered their own thing, but most libertarians I know prefer non-MAGA Republicans over Democrats, and if they're non-religious, they're more likely to be part of this wing of "the right"). Among the left, we have liberals, leftists, progressives, welfare capitalists, democratic socialists--whatever label one prefers to differentiate from those liberals. That's not even getting into the single-issue voters (i.e. people who hate abortion but don't give a shit about same-sex marriage, or people who care about economic issues but are indifferent to immigration). Those divisions can also include other factors such as city dwellers vs. suburbanites vs. rural people, religious beliefs (and even sects within the same religion), racial divides... heck, even sportsball teams. We love to create our own divisions even when it comes to hobbies.
Even if the labels aren't anything officially recognized within our Constitution, we treat them as if they are part of the system by design, not just in the media (i.e. through televised debates to which third-party candidates are seldom ever invited), but even on various states' voting ballots, wherein candidates are labelled by political party. And yet, even if we put a stop to this practice, I feel like our political discourse would still be consumed by ideological labels, purity tests, and various cliques within cliques within cliques. This ideal system of "let's have a conversation to solve problems" may be a pipe dream, but I would love to be proven wrong.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 8th September 2025
(7th September 2025, 5:53 AM)Weltall Wrote:Quote:Ultimately, my anger is better spent on the candidates actually running than the voters, or I'd be raging against Trump voters all day, and that's not going to get anything done either.The political content you choose to consume is designed to keep you angry and engaged. Would you say that this benefits you, personally, at all?
The thing I said about my dad a while back, the heart of the matter is that he has always been addicted to right wing politics, and it's 100 times worse now that he is retired. It has overwritten both his brain and his heart. All he does, all day, is scroll social media, consuming endless amounts of bullshit, and never questioning any of it. He legitimately hates my wife because she doesn't like Trump.
That's not just a right wing thing, though. There are no shortage of left-leaning people who do exactly the same thing, consuming endless propaganda and casually spreading it around, because it sounds right to you, and you already agree with it (which is why you're seeing it in the first place). They rarely go out and interact with anyone who isn't aligned with them ideologically, and after long enough, it's pretty easy to believe that your alignment is one half of a binary, and anyone not in your half is actively making everything worse, on purpose, because they hate you.
My dad is a devoted red hat, Trump means more to him than his family. There is never any hope of getting through to people like him. But, he is not representative of the average person who voted for Donald Trump. There are millions of those kinds of people, who made their choice for their own reasons, and none of them had anything to do with ideology. Being attacked and demeaned for the choice they made is a big part of what makes them ideological, and to identify personally with these amoral monsters currently steering the ship. I think it's more important now than ever, to do the tough thing, and make an effort to reach out to those willing to hear you, because the only two sides there really are, are normal people, and the amoral monsters. The monsters require normal people to enable them. Oh, and they absolutely exist on both sides, too. Just because our general belief system is based nominally on equality and empathy, does not mean powerful people won't exploit this for their own ends.
Hence, no more ideology for me.
Unfortunately, ideology is inescapable. Even saying "no more ideology" is itself an ideology. I completely understand not wanting to soak in nothing but talking points from rage baiting videos, which absolutely exist on the left side by unscrupulous sorts trying to feed on anger and nothing else.
So don't take me pointing out that I want to "spend" my anger on particular targets as a suggestion I only care about anger. It's an emotion worth having, but there's a lot to focus on. At the moment, my strongest emotion is desperation, and I'm well aware that too can be easily manipulated. The biggest danger, right now, is hero worship or taking the side of powerful figures offering all the answers. I get my focus realigned a bit thanks to certain commentators who are focused more on putting things in perspective than outrage, and as far as news consumption... well PBS Newshour has been my news source of choice for a while now because they actually ARE just straight reporting, unlike a lot of raw commentary that permeates Youtube and the like these days.
I focus on individual issues when I can. I know what label I ascribe myself, but my first concern isn't "does this fit my label?", it's "does this fit my issues?". That's why I can easily criticize even candidates I intend to vote for, because actual issues matter to me more than partisanship.
But, I can't just stop caring either. I want to get involved more and more in a real and effective way, and I've been seriously considering getting into local politics. I just don't know where to start.
RE: A Left Wing Cannot Flap Alone, Which Is Why We Needed Dick Cheney's Endorsement - Dark Jaguar - 9th September 2025
Good gravy who the hell are these imaginary "The Bailies" and why can't Chuck just ask his ACTUAL constituents what they think? He's invented a total fiction and that's how he convinces himself of what positions he should take. Chuck Schumer is a joke.