this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Discourse evaporated when the rightwing and Faux "News" declared "compromise" as blasphemy. That's why so many moderate Republicans will still vote along party lines, despite knowing the candidate is batshit crazy. To vote Democrat is to commit suicide to those people.
Edit: was trying to get this comment done before kid woke up from nap and barely made it. Fixed the faux pa.
I've only ever heard left wingers claim that compromise is 'blasphemy' or that "center politics" is just for people who are too afraid to admit they are right wing.
Fuck, there's even memes abotu being centrist is being OK with half the holocaust or the KKK.
Your comment is exactly the insane shrill partisan hackery that is the problem.
BAM - just immediately guns blazing accusing the other side of what your side is guilty of.
It was right wingers and centrists who allowed the holocaust to happen... source: rise and fall of the third reich
True. But it was left wingers who killed millions of Russians in gulags, who committed the Cambodian genocides, the long marches and purges of Maoist communism.
So maybe there's something to be said for moderation eh?
I'm not a communist, social democracy is the way.
I was raised in a particularly right wing environment, grew up with those values, and have shifted dramatically leftward in my adulthood, and I can say with absolute certainty that you're either lying or willfully ignorant. Are parts of the online left prone to litmus tests? Yes, but most often in the sense of "hey, I'd appreciate it if people who claim to be in my corner don't join hands and sing Kumbaya with people who want to eradicate my particular minority from the face of the Earth, please." They're a reaction to intolerant right wing fanaticism, rather than a statement of intolerance themselves. You have to go all the way around to the extreme fringe of tankies way out on the left arm of the political-alignment horseshoe to find a level of ideological fervor equivalent to what is now mainstream in right wing politics. The right pioneered single issue voters with the Moral Majority way back in the Eighties, and have led the charge on (sometimes literally) demonizing their opponents since the early days of talk radio. I know, because I was there.
If the modern left doesn't really want to try and find common ground with a right wing that views them as something between subhuman scum and actual literal hell spawn, I'd argue that's entirely the right wing's fault.
The reason people say that is because a lot of the time these centrist people just vote Republican every time. They're not really independent and as much as they say they don't fully agree with people like Trump they keep voting for him despite everything he's done.
I've always been curious to when people will realize that voting Republican or Democrat is really the same thing. They both grow government, one side just happens to want to take away a particular set of liberties while the other side wishes to take a different set. In the end nothing changes because we're too scared to vote for a candidate who actually cares because they have "no chance of winning."
This was obvious ten years ago, I thought the internet would have caught on by now. Perhaps not though, because since they're so similar they HATE one another because they really dislike that they have many of the same views so the ones they differ on are so extremely upgraded in importance.
Note: I know I'm not the first or only one to figure this out, plenty of people realize this, so no offense to you. I'm just surprised the truth is such a niche category online, in-person, in the media, etc...
This "truth" hasn't caught on because it's complete bullshit. What set of liberties does left want to take?
If this isn't a joke, and you're on the left. Then learn the values of your own party.
Liar.
It doesn't even matter. Hard right and hard left are all just fucking nut job low IQ idiots with different flavours of asshole populism.
Horseshoe theory is as clear as day to anyone not on the extremes.
One side wants to kill black people and ban non binary and trans folk from the public square
One wants people to see doctors and not starve.
BuT bOtH sIdEs
One side is pure good and does nothing wrong! The other side is evil!
One side is cartoonishly evil, openly calling for eradication of their enemies and those they dislike with language drawn directly from Hitler. One side is the relic of a busted status quo. ObViOuSlY tHeYrE tHe SaMe.
Nobody cares, dude. The quiet part is out loud, you don't have to vote or like dems, but running this purposefully disengenuous BoTh SiDeS defense for the right just shows you're batting for the fascists.
MuH bOtH sIdEs
He certainly didn’t lie about the meme.
Yes, I agree! It's the OTHER guys who are to blame this!
Like, share and retweet BTW if you want them prosecuted for their crimes.
I remember when those crazy Democrats got a bunch of their voters to storm the Cap- oh wait…
You’re acting like this didn’t literally just happen.
Or this, back in 2018.
They also definitely never bombed the Capitol.
Those are all right wing conspiracy theories.
All of those things did happen, but they are worlds apart from Jan 6.
Your first link is clearly a peaceful demonstration; they didn't even damage any property as far as I can tell. The article calls it "civil disobedience," and apparently the vast majority were arrested for "demonstrating in the Capitol". I shouldn't have to remind you that the Jan 6 insurrectionists destroyed property and murdered people with the express intent of taking over government.
Your second link is again a peaceful demonstration. People were again arrested for "unlawfully demonstrating". There is no mention of any destruction of property or injury. And again, they were not trying to seize the government.
Your third link is closest. There was obviously destruction of property and while no one got hurt, someone absolutely might have[1]. But even then, this was not an insurrection by and for the Democrats; it was from a fringe left group. Democrats immediately and to this day condemn the attack. Jan 6 was orchestrated by the leadership of the Republican party, and still receives support from said leadership.
Anyway, this is you:
[1]: The bombers did make an effort to not hurt people: they gave 30 minutes notice, and the explosion happened in the early hours of the morning. But something could still have gone wrong.
Ah, yes, but the point is that we went from “Democrats would never…” to “Democrats actually did (but it’s different)”.
As for January 6th, none of the protestors had actually planned to enter the Capitol, and neither did Trump tell them to. He only told them to march towards the Capitol building to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”.
The deaths that occurred that day have all been ruled as accidents, i.e. nobody was deliberately murdered.
The damage, which was initially reported as likely exceeding $30 million was later quietly corrected down to only about $1.5 million.
Basically, almost every single thing you likely believe about that event has been blown wildly out of proportion, but you probably never heard about any of this because outrage is what sells clicks and ad impressions, the truth doesn’t.
Well, anyways… I guess this means I’m not quite as enlightened and morally superior as the guy in your meme.
Yes, Trump and the GOP party leadership spent months plotting to overthrow a legitimate election, but when it came time to do so, one line in a speech sounded nice. Then the protest started getting violent and destructive. To be clear, they were doing this for him (in the sense that they wanted him to continue to be president). He could have shown up and told them to stop and they would have. But he didn't. He made no meaningful attempt to stop it at all. He did, however, say something nice earlier in the day. That's true.
Yes, I said murdered when I should have said manslaughtered. Sorry. The protest was still violent. I've seen the footage; they managed to make me feel sorry for a cop.
I did never make a claim as to the level of damage. I've never really thought about the dollar amount; it's more about the fact that they broke in. If someone broke into my house, I wouldn't be worried about the dollar amount of the damage. I'd be worried about what that means about their intent.
You are being obtuse. None of the differences you've pointed out are salient. None of the similarities you have implied are. The post you replied to never said "Democrats would never...", nor did I. And I disagree that Democrats actually did. The examples you gave are nothing like January 6th, except in facile similarities like the location of the events. I will say though, I agree that you aren't enlightened or morally superior.
My point was mainly proving that the idea that "Democrats would never storm the capitol" was wrong. Yes, January 6th was perhaps still more violent than Democrats' previous attempts to do so, but if it's about the amount of violence each party is guilty of, all we have to do is look at riots in the wake of George Floyd's death that happened a mere 6 months later in many cities across the US, and continued for a very long time. Those protests caused far more death, injury, and property damage than January 6th, and while you could claim that they weren't political in nature, it is a fact that it was overwhelmingly Democrat politicians who supported them, and Democrat voters who attended them.
I'm not really keen to get into an argument about which party is responsible for more violence, since counting up dead bodies seems rather sordid and probably won't help much anyways to convince either of us to change our opinion on anything, so I propose we call this one a draw and simply say "both parties are perfectly willing to use violence in pursuit of their political goals and have clearly demonstrated this in the past".
So, to recap:
Someone pointed out that Republicans did January 6th, a violent attempt to seize control of the government by overturning the results of the election. You then gave examples of Democrats supposedly doing the same thing. I pointed out that none of the examples you gave were anything like January 6th. You then gave reasons why January 6th wasn't bad. I pointed out that none of those reasons changed the fact that it was a violent attempt by Republicans to seize control of the government by overturning the results of the election. You still have not provided an example of the Democrats doing the same thing.
Now you say, well, people from both parties do violence sometimes, so let's call it a draw. I appreciate the wisdom of making a strategic retreat, but no. You made bad arguments. Now you have to admit you are wrong one of two ways. You could just be explicit, come out and say it. More likely you'll do it implicitly, by changing the subject or not responding at all.
I get it. I don't like getting into losing arguments either.
No, someone said “yeah I remember when those crazy Democrats got a bunch of their voters together to storm the Capitol” and then I gave 3 examples of when they DID, in fact, do that.
Basically, the claim was that “Democrats would never…”, so that’s what I set out to disprove.
All you’re doing now is moving goalposts in order to make those events appear more reasonable when it was your side doing them, so you can continue vilify the other side for doing the same thing. Which means you are excusing political violence while simultaneously opposing it.
That’s not tenable position, you understand? It’s just wanting to have your cake and eat it, too.
Enlightened centrist moment
There’s a reason you’ve never heard the term “enlightened partisan”
You heard a compliment? A moth nosediving into a campfire is more enlightened than centrists are, the reason only centrists get called enlightened is because it's a sarcastic remark
Luckily, sarcasm is my love language.
Now stop sweet talking me, you handsome, intelligent bastard.
It'd be nice but unfortunately there's too many batshit republicans in office to pass any laws for that to happen.
Like I said, it's the OTHER guys who are at fault for this.
Therefore, we need more prosecutions and also guillotines. There can be no peace on earth until the other guys are all dead.
Can't wait for you to start using them. Or are you going to keep posting sarcasm to hide the fact that right wingers are terrible people?
Yes, the OTHER guys are terrible people. If WE did something terrible, it's only because THEY forced our hands by being terrible people first. But they started it!
Seriously dude, there are 5-year-olds out there who are more mature than you.